Guide to the Animated GIF.

Got questions about Shipmaker? Get answers here. Please read the stickied topics first!

Moderators: th15, Moderators

Post Reply
User avatar
LactoseTolerant
Captain
Captain
Posts: 413
Joined: Mon Oct 05, 2009 10:00 am
Contact:

Guide to the Animated GIF.

Post by LactoseTolerant »

So you come across a uber idea of a transformational trigger and want to show it to your fellow Wyrdysmites. But all you have is a pile of screenshots. Have no fear, for getting that animated shot is easy and completely free!

You will need GIMP for this process.

(And you do know how to use SM screen capture, right?)

GIMP is a free image modification program that is very similar to Photoshop. It can be downloaded here:

http://www.gimp.org/downloads/

Once you install GIMP, open it up and "Open" to your SMFrames directory. Don't worry about the "Open As Frames" or other functions, we'll be covering that next.

Select your first frame to open. It should look like this after you load it:

http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/1812/demo1n.jpg

Now, go back to the "File" header and click on "Open As Layers". Go to your SMFrames directory and select all the frames you've used except for the first one. Be sure they're all listed in numerical order, or else the animation may not play out right!

Once it's done loading, go to "Image" -> "Mode" -> "Indexed". Click on it, and hit the "Convert" button below. Ignore the rest of the options for now.

http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/3857/demo2l.jpg

Once it's done converting, go to "File" -> "Save As". Find your location, and make sure to type out the extension ".gif" at the end of the file name. Click "Save", then click on the "Save as Animation" button that comes up with the next window.

Congratulations! You've made your first animated GIF! It is recommended that you upload it via Filesmelt, as other image sites will not be able to host it due to it's size. If you do upload it via Filesmelt, you can show it as an image by copying the download link and wrapping it in [img] tags.

Some final notes:
Try to capture as little as possible with the SM frame capture, and for as little time as possible. This is to cut down on the total size, so it doesn't take forever for the GIF to load.
With a little experiance with GIMP, you can select and remove/reorder some of the frames using the Layers Palette.
While using "Open as Layers", it will tell you the total size of the GIF so far. Try not to exceed 20 MB (In comparison, most Newgrounds movies are under 10 MB. Think about it)...

~Acknowledgements to Squishy and Arcalane, who showed me how to do this in the first place.

v1.1
Got questions about ShipMaker? Look here!

Life happens.
Kaelis
Moderator
Posts: 1590
Joined: Fri Dec 14, 2007 4:46 am

Post by Kaelis »

Resize, crop or thumbnail your images. Not everyone uses a 1600+ resolution.
Post Reply