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Hoof to: Making gif's Using GIMP Free and simple way to create awesome banners! ~ Intoduction For the second or third time, I was asked how did I make my animated banners in my signature. Though I wish the answer would be 'professional' sounding, I'm actually using a simple method. + PROS - It's very easy (assuming, that you know the basics of using GIMP) - It's 100% Free - No quality loss like it happens with movie-to-gif converters (pixel~shading corruption) '- though there is still the gif type file's color limit - FULL control on every single pixel, frame and timing - CONS - It requires some time to make gifs - It may take ages to create complex gifs - Requires patience (dependable on complexity) ~ Let's hoof it! Don't be scared by the amount of steps and text in here. ^^ There's that much stuff, because I'm showing step by step, how I'm making my gifs, but if you have your layers ready (let's say you have 5 images and you want to make a gif with them to display all of them in one image file), then simply skip the first steps and check how to create a gif with your images. STEP 1: Create a New Image [►] SKIP TO NEXT STEP IF YOU KNOW THE BASICS OF GIMP [►►] SKIP IF YOU HAVE YOUR LAYERS ALREADY AND JUST WANT TO MAKE A GIF OF IT Just click "File" tab and select "New..." or simply use [Ctrl + N] shortcut. Then select your dimensions and click OK. For this tutorial, I'll create a simple progress bar gif with a size of 300x20. And we'll get this: And you have a new image! Well done! That's it! Now export it and upload to your signature! JK! ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) STEP 2: Draw or Import Your Banner [►►] SKIP IF YOU HAVE YOUR LAYERS ALREADY AND JUST WANT TO MAKE A GIF OF IT Well, now you need to draw your banner. It is important to keep things in separate layers, to not have problems later. For this tutorial, I've made a silly progress bar: STEP 3: Animate Animated Parts [►►] SKIP IF YOU HAVE YOUR LAYERS ALREADY AND JUST WANT TO MAKE A GIF OF IT Now we'll have to multiply our blue layer and make a simple animation with it. In this tutorial, I'll be simply moving these 'arrows' to the right. Complexity of the gif depends on how fast you'll get back to the beginning, for example I'll need 12 layers to make one arrow cover another, which will allow me to loop it. So first, let's duplicate the blue layer and move its content to the right by one pixel: I have marked the copied layer with purple, so now let's copy the purple layer and move it again to the right by one pixel: Repeat that action until you'll get a loop with the first frame (the blue layer): WARNING! Big gif, opening this spoiler may cause lag ( i ) NOTE: As seen on the gif above, the animation goes from the BOTTOM to the TOP, so the animation starts with the very bottom layer and goes all the way up. Now as you can see, it will loop, so now we're able to move further. STEP 4: Clean Remainings [►►] SKIP IF YOU HAVE YOUR LAYERS ALREADY AND JUST WANT TO MAKE A GIF OF IT Probably you have noticed, that the arrows are getting out of the bar and that's right, we need to remove them. Make every animated layer visible at once and you'll get this: Now you can see all animated layers at once and you can clearly see how the arrows are getting out. Now use selection tool (it can be either the normal Rectangle one or "Free Select Tool" or whatever you're comfortable with) to select the area with the arrows outside the bar: Now simply scroll though the animated layers and delete these parts. You can highlight the top frame and just press [DEL] then [ ↓ ] and again [DEL], [ ↓ ] and repeat... Be careful to not delete that part in a BASE layer etc.. After cleaning, you'll see this: STEP 5: Merge Stuff [►►] SKIP IF YOU HAVE YOUR LAYERS ALREADY AND JUST WANT TO MAKE A GIF OF IT Now let's merge the animated part with the base, but keep the percentage layer separate for future. Our awesome animation took 12 frames, so let's duplicate the BASE layer to make 12 of them and merge animation layers with the base ones, so each layer will have BASE and the ANIMATION: Now we have the base prepared! STEP 6: Put the Values! [►►] SKIP IF YOU HAVE YOUR LAYERS ALREADY AND JUST WANT TO MAKE A GIF OF IT Let's assume we have 20% of the progress, so we'll have to edit the percent layer and create a new one (I'll name it "FILL"), where we'll fill the bar: Note, that all the BASE (with animation) is at the bottom and the changeable stuff is at the top. Now SAVE all of this as a PROJECT to be able to access it (the layered version) later in case if you would like to change the percentage and move the bar etc.. As you can see, the banner looks generally ready, but we still need to put the percentage and fill on each frame, so when everything is ready, merge FILL with PERCENTAGE and duplicate it to be able to combine it with each BASE. Technically do the same as when merging arrows (animation) with BASE. Now don't save! Because you'll have troubles with editing it later as the layers will be merged. You may however, save this as a new project if you want to, but keep the raw version, because it's important. STEP 7: Exporting GIF! [◄◄] GO BACK TO SEE AN EXAMPLE ON HOW TO PREPARE IMAGES Now there's the main point of this tutorial, so if you have skipped the previous parts, because you know the basics and stuff, then you'll be totally fine from there. We have a project with 12 layers: WARNING! Big gif, opening this spoiler may cause lag Now we want to make a gif of it, then it's a very simple process. > Click 'File' tab and select "Export As..." OR simply use the shortcut by pressing and holding [Ctrl] and [shift] then pressing the [ E ] button. > Name your file and put .gif extension to it. For example name it: Progress Bar.gif > Oh noes! A warning emerged! This is because for some reason (I wasn't paying attention where it exactly happened) my layers are bigger than the image size: ~so this warning box is telling me, that I need to get rid of the extra-size of the layers in order to export the file as a gif. Don't worry it's nothing scary, just use the "Crop" skill and you'll one-hit-KO that enemy. Fun fact: When you'll click "Cancel" then GIMP will freeze for a moment. I think it's a bug, but after ~20 seconds it will un-freeze and throw an error, that you need to crop the layers or something. > Setup your gif ● Tick "As animation" box ● Tick "Loop forever" box ● Set delay between frames (it applies to ALL* frames) ~ the less, the faster '-> 15 is minimum. A value less than that, will result in slow-motion ~ the gif will be played weirdly ● Set "(replace)" in the frame disposal, so it will be displaying the layers one after another (You can use "(combine)" when dealing with transparency stuff ~ ~ one layer will be covering another and combining ~ you can experiment with that) > AND CLICK EXPORT! ^^ * ALL - I'll show how to setup different delays for each frame later, no worries. [ I I ] PAUSE HERE AND CHECK HOW TO SETUP DIFFERENT DELAYS NOW Step 8: Checking the exported gif [◄◄] GO BACK TO SEE AN EXAMPLE ON HOW TO PREPARE IMAGES [◄] GO TO PREVIOUS STEP TO SEE HOW TO EXPORT A GIF Now you have your gif file, so you'll probably want to see how it looks like. You can open it with "Windows Media Player", but this guy doesn't play gifs very well, especially when dealing with transparency. As long as you don't have any transparent points and you're basing only on "(replace)" then it should play it nicely. Personally I'm checking my gifs by opening a new tab in "Google Chrome" and just drag'n'dropping the file to the browser, then it will play the gif perfectly. Now when it does look right, upload it to image hosting sites, such as Imgur and simply use the image's URL in the text editor like with normal (like .png) pictures. STEP +: Setting Different Delays to Each Layer As you know, you can set the delay between frames during exporting the gif. You probably also noticed, that it says "where unspecified" - yes, you can set it before exporting. You just need to add 'commands' in the layer's name. for example "(50ms)" - will set the delay of this frame to 50ms. Putting for example (10000ms) in a layer's name will make it stop for a while on that frame. How it looks like in GIMP: You don't have to setup delays in every single frame. You can, for example when wanting to let's say put a delay of 2000ms in two frames and put 40ms in the rest, then you can simply add "(2000ms)" to the two frames and the rest fill automatically during exporting, where it asks what delay to set for frames, where it is unspecified. You can also during exporting tick a box, that will overwrite ALL layers and set the delay you'll enter there for all frames. [◄◄] GO BACK TO WHERE YOU'VE PAUSED (BEGINNING OF STEP 8) RESULT: With delay set to 40 ms: With delay set to 15 (minimum) ms: With the delays (with stops) set manually from Step +: THE END [ I◄ ] BACK TO THE TOP FAQ Q: What is the maximum possible delay of one frame? A: To be honest I don't know. I was using values like (20000ms) and it was working. I wasn't using higher values, but I guess you could go much higher than that. Q: How to edit the gif when I'd like to move the bar and stuff? A: That's why I told to save the project and keep the raw version. After you'll merge the layers and export the gif, it is quite difficult to edit. Having the 'raw' version will allow you to start from step 6, which is easier than struggling with each frame, though it also depends on complexity. Q: The gifs that you were posting all over the place - are they all made that way? A: Yes, all of my gifs were made using GIMP. Even this one: Q: Why it takes ages to export a gif? A: The more layers gif will have, the more time it will require to render. This process is not visible, so just wait. Q: I don't have GIMP, but I would like to download it, where I can do this and it is free? A: Yes, this program is free and you can download it from here. Q: I don't like GIMP - I'm too pro for this and I'm using Photoshop, how can I make a gif there? A: Sorry, no idea. I'm using GIMP. Q: Can I do this in Paint? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) A: I have no idea, but I doubt it ~ haven't checked, at least. Q: How big and long gifs I can make? A: I was making gifs that had about 200 frames and besides slightly long export time I've not encountered any issue, so I'm not sure if technically there's any limit. Q: For a comparison, how many frames your gifs have? A: My MLP Progress bar has 20 frames and each frame have delay set to 40ms. The MLP banner above the progress bar has 24 frames and also with delay set to 40ms for each frame. Q: lol Riki, how much time did you spent making this tutorial? A: 6 hours. Yes, I have really spent 6 hours on that (from ~8:00PM to ~2:00AM) working along the tutorial to give as much accurate images as I could and then polishing stuff at the end. If you'll have any questions or if there's a problem with something (grammar issue/typo/other) then let me know! ^^ I hope it will be useful for somebody! (= [ I◄ ] BACK TO THE TOP [ I◄◄] BACK TO GENERAL RM TUTORIALS [ I◄◄◄] RETURN TO COMMUNITY INDEX