WMV + GIMP = Animated Avatars

[Krilari]

Yes it does.

[Piroska]

Also question; Does coth-wiki support .gifs?

Why yes, Ural. Yes it does.

[Ural]

Must... resist...

This is terribly fun!

[Krilari]

Jooooinnn ussss...

[Piroska]

It's a lot of fun. I've still got a list of about twenty avatars that I will be making (I had a handful of requests), but then I'm eventually going to make animated images for all of my characters to place on the wiki in the charbox template. I think that having an animated image there is spiffy.

That said, if you're going to upload animated images to the wiki I have two suggestions:

1. Make sure that the image eventually gets placed on an article. I periodically go through and remove all unused images since many times they are either duplicate images or images that were removed from articles (often in favor of newer images).
   
2. Don't make them too horrendously big, both in file size and dimensions. For one, it needlessly takes up a lot of space. For two, having a huge image load on an article is tedious and can detract from the contents of the article.

Let me know if you have any questions or need some trouble-shooting! Good luck.

[Ural]

Mah pony, he is ever so lonely. Is there a way to merge two .gifs together?

I imagine it could be done manually... The pony run is like 14 frames. Thoughts?

[Piroska]

It could definitely be done. I'd probably do it manually, it would be unenjoyable. You'd have to manually combine the frames into each layer since GIMP treats each layer as a separate frame of the animation. It would be easier if you had Photoshop, since its animation tool allows you to have frames with multiple layers. A little less manual work. You might want to hit Google to see if someone has written a script to simplify the process, like the tutorial's use of sg-combine-bg.scm to add the background and frame overlay to the jormungar.

Plus you'd have to make sure that the durations of the multiple GIFs mesh well together otherwise you'll end up with skipping. For example, your fourteen frames pony would work with an animation that was seven frames long. Or 28. Or some combination that would allow they both to finish at some point together and then resume the cycle.

If you're looking to put multiple ponies together, it should be fine as long as they're making the same animation. You could even have one horse start at one part of the animation and another slightly after so that it they would still maintain the same duration but not be running perfectly in sync.

Let me know if you run into any troubles with the latter scenario. I might make an example just to figure it out and then I could show you. Assuming you have Skype, I could even let you watch my monitor as I go through each step, like I did with two or three others who attempted this tutorial.

[Piroska]

So, it's not horribly difficult to do, mister Ural. You just need to be a little savvy (and also choose animations with few frames)! I took your horse as an example because it was pretty quick and easy.

1. First, I selected the animation that I wanted in WMV.
   
2. I set the skin to your pinto and exported it.
   
3. Without modifying the view of the model, I then changed the skin to the black horse and exported that as well. I did this to keep the same perspective (it may have looked weird if I had shifted it!).
   
4. I opened both animations in GIMP.
   
5. I transferred each slide of the pinto horse into the black horse's animation. I started by putting that image's original frame (Background) just below slide ten. I did this so that the animation wouldn't begin and start at the same point; I didn't want the horses running perfectly in sync.
   
6. VERY IMPORTANT STEP: Once I had moved each slide of the pinto horse into the black horse's animation while maintaining the exact order, I linked all of the pinto horse's frames. In the layers window, there are two boxes beside each layer: one that has an eye (which means that it is visible) and a blank one. Clicking on the blank box places a little chain in it. Any layer with this enabled is linked so that any change made to this layer will affect any other linked ones.
   
7. With the pinto layers linked, I then moved the pinto horse behind the black horse and then resized it just a little (95%, I believe).
   
8. I then merged down each black horse frame onto the pinto horse frame located in the layer below it.
   
9. If you remember from the tutorial, GIMP uses the name of the layers as notes regarding how each frame works. Since I had merged the layers, some of these notes were modified (I believe that they all ended up with the word copy at the end). I had to go through and manually ensure that each combined layer had (50ms ) (replace) in its name.
   
10. Cropped and resized.
    
11. I then optimized the file for animation (GIF) and saved it as an animation.

I came up with the following:

[Ural]

Ooo that's fantastic! Now to squeeze some time and try it out myself. Thanks Piroska!

[Ural]

Inspired by one of my better signatures, I picked Lak'tusk and the random elfer to experiment. Huzzah! Out of sheer luck, both their running animations are 13 frames.

1. Ok to note, I opened the elf as the main image then opened Laktusk as new layers.
   
2. First, I converted to RGB mode.
   
3. Next I expanded my canvas to match my prefered signature ratio, 625x125. But the models I exported are much bigger than that, so I ended up with a canvas size of 2500x500. Quite large compared to my wimpy laptop screen.
   
4. I resized the canvas with the ratio lock on to maximize the elf's height within the signature. Ended up being 1875x375.
   
5. I linked the images like you suggested, and moved each character to either end of the canvas.
   
6. Next came the merging. The elf's frames were simply called Frame 1,2,3ect, and Laktusk's called Laktusk. So starting down at the bottom I merged down each Laktusk frame onto the elfer.
   
7. I didn't have to crop the image, but I next resized down to 652x125.
   
8. Hmm quite plain. Needs moar funny. How about some flavor text? Ctrl+Shift+D is your friend!
   
9. Merged each layer of text onto each frame.
   
10. Optimized and saved as .gif
    

[Sersay]

*Derp* Nevermind, trying even more colors. Hopefully something wont be on the model.

Double Edit: Ok, yeah this is indeed an issue. Its not an animation, but when taking screenshots using WMV, certin items for character models seem to turn transparent after the shot, no matter what background colors, or particles turned off. The current avi I have had that problem even, with the shoulder armor. Im saving those files as .png, and opening them in gimp, but the exact same areas of these items just want to be see through. I'v tried every general color range for a background as well. Any idea? Fist of the Deity is one such problem item.

[Ural]

I added a slight blur to each frame.