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midora

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I have installed this plug in, but find it very hard to make something like the examples shown here :( any chance of a pdf "how to" in the future please ;)

Edited by sashwilko

swIFX9v.png

 

 

 

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I have installed this plug in, but find it very hard to make something like the examples shown here :( any chance of a pdf "how to" in the future please ;)

 

Tutorials with images yes.

Dedicates pdfs I don't know.

But there is a print button at the bottom of the forum pages and you may print to a PDF printer (like PDFCreator) to create a basic PDF.

If you like to create one of these photo realistic animations then maybe racerx will create a tutorial. These are out of my scope.

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@Sasha - I made a tutorial here to get one started with this fun plugin.  As for the more intricate animations, what I did was open Midora's PDN file in paint.net and study his layers and times.  Yes, they are complex, but one then gets a general idea of how it works with the layers and also with the Sprites.

30b8T8B.gif

How I made Jennifer & Halle in Paint.net

My Gallery | My Deviant Art

"Rescuing one animal may not change the world, but for that animal their world is changed forever!" anon.

 
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@ Sasha, Pixey made a great tutorial and that is were you may want to start. Animation is just like video, it's just a series of still images with a specified duration. I may create a Tutorial, but it will use multiple tools and may not be for everybody.

 

@ Midora, I figured out how to use ffmpeg's palette gen + bayer dither to save to PNG image sequence @ 256 colors. Then it's a simple process of loading the PNGs into Paint.net and apply settings as needed with dither disabled. It works well for reducing banding on gradient backgrounds like this 224 color example I submitted in the sig contest.

 

Sunrise2.gif

 

I can post the script if you'd like.

Plane_Sig2.gif

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@Sasha - I made a tutorial here to get one started with this fun plugin.  As for the more intricate animations, what I did was open Midora's PDN file in paint.net and study his layers and times.  Yes, they are complex, but one then gets a general idea of how it works with the layers and also with the Sprites.

Thank you Pixey, for some reason I missed that tutorial, I will have to try my hand at it :)

 

@ Sasha, Pixey made a great tutorial and that is were you may want to start. Animation is just like video, it's just a series of still images with a specified duration. I may create a Tutorial, but it will use multiple tools and may not be for everybody.

 

@ Midora, I figured out how to use ffmpeg's palette gen + bayer dither to save to PNG image sequence @ 256 colors. Then it's a simple process of loading the PNGs into Paint.net and apply settings as needed with dither disabled. It works well for reducing banding on gradient backgrounds like this 224 color example I submitted in the sig contest.

 

Sunrise2.gif

 

I can post the script if you'd like.

Thank you racerx for your help too :) Nice picture btw.

Tutorials with images yes.

Dedicates pdfs I don't know.

But there is a print button at the bottom of the forum pages and you may print to a PDF printer (like PDFCreator) to create a basic PDF.

If you like to create one of these photo realistic animations then maybe racerx will create a tutorial. These are out of my scope.

Thanks Midora for your answer and help also :)

swIFX9v.png

 

 

 

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@ Midora, I figured out how to use ffmpeg's palette gen + bayer dither to save to PNG image sequence @ 256 colors. Then it's a simple process of loading the PNGs into Paint.net and apply settings as needed with dither disabled. It works well for reducing banding on gradient backgrounds like this 224 color example I submitted in the sig contest.

 

Sunrise2.gif

 

I can post the script if you'd like.

 

You may be right that an ordered dither without error diffusion may be better for animations. I guess I will add a DitherMethod command (and dialog option) to select between different methods. For the Bayer case DitherLevel may control the size of the matrix.

 

Dithering modifies the image only if the layers contain more than the maximum allowed colors. But if you add a foreground to an existing image then switching dithering will make sense to keep the original dither in most places intact.

 

Post the script, always good to see how people are working.

 

The image loops quite well in the bottom part but it looks a little bit strange in the middle because the larger waves do not break. Waves are really difficult to catch in a loop.

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New ImAPNG.FileType 0.3 (6.4.2015)
- First public test release
- Only load is supported.
- The plugin uses an unmanaged dll based on libpng with apng patch plus
  modifications. There is a variant for 32-bit and 64-bit environments.
 

Update ImAGIF.FileType 0.11 (6.4.2015)
- Added switch to create non-animated GIFs from flattened layers
- Added support to load true color gifs (save is disabled, because most
  viewers are not able to view them correct and Animated GIFs are not able to
  support true color).
- Added 'NoDups' command (default: true) and dialog option.
 

Update AnimateIt.Effect 0.4 (6.4.2015)
- Added support for APNGs (the ImAPNG.FileType must be installed!)
 

Edited by midora
  • Upvote 1

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Now I am confused - New ImAPNG.FileType 0.3 (6.4.2015)  - Only load is supported. So how would I go about saving what I have created please ?

swIFX9v.png

 

 

 

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Now I am confused - New ImAPNG.FileType 0.3 (6.4.2015)  - Only load is supported. So how would I go about saving what I have created please ?

 

Just save it as AGIF in the moment Sash.

 

At the end of development there will be a whole set of image formats to load and save animations. Next will be AWEBP.

But for the typical user only GIF is relevant because only GIF is supported by all browsers.

The problem of GIF is that it supports a maximum of 256 colors and simple transparency.

APNG and AWEBP allow true color with alpha channel.

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Why am I getting such bad 'jaggies' on this animated carpet?  I used this Flag tutorial to bend the carpet - could this be because the image is now 'bent' ? I even tried to add solid lines to the carpet, but still had no luck :(  Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

 

 

carpet%20with%20outline%20added%20200ms_

30b8T8B.gif

How I made Jennifer & Halle in Paint.net

My Gallery | My Deviant Art

"Rescuing one animal may not change the world, but for that animal their world is changed forever!" anon.

 
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Hi Pixey, I guess you are fighting with the basic limitation of the gif format: the missing alpha channel.

There is only the possibility to set a pixel to fully transparent or opaque.

Thats the reason for this threshold setting in the dialog or the layer title commands.

 

First check that the border of your carpet uses alpha transparency. You should see this in the main window of paint.net or check with the color picker.

If there is no alpha then the border will always look jagged.

If the carpet border is ok then there are several possibilities which may solve your issue.

- add a solid background to your animation (but this means you have to decide for a background color)

- if you like to keep the transparency then try to lower the threshold.

- you may render each frame against a colored background and then use magic wand to remove this color with a tolerance. This means that you pre-multiply your transparent pixels with a color.

 

I'm thinking about to add the feature of pre-multiplying the alpha to values above the threshold.

 

Still there is always a problem with transparent gifs. The animation may look fine on one background color and bad on an other.

That's the reason why people introduced apng or awebp file formats. They both support an alpha channel.

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Ahhh - Magic - no pun intended ;) .  Thanks so much Midora for that advice, which did the trick by adding a bacground color.  I learned something new today :D .

 

merge%20chicks%20on%20carpet%20realigned

 

 

  • Upvote 1

30b8T8B.gif

How I made Jennifer & Halle in Paint.net

My Gallery | My Deviant Art

"Rescuing one animal may not change the world, but for that animal their world is changed forever!" anon.

 
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Ahhh - Magic - no pun intended ;) .  Thanks so much Midora for that advice, which did the trick by adding a bacground color.  I learned something new today :D .

 

merge%20chicks%20on%20carpet%20realigned

 

@Dear Pixey! Very nice. Thank you so much.

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.

Gandhi

 

mae3426x.png

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LookAtIt.Effect Update 0.5 (16.4.2015) The curtain version.

 

LookAtIt.Effect.FileClosed.jpg

 

- Changed the name from 'Animate It' to 'Look At It' to avoid that people
  expecting that you can create animations with this tool.
- Added Drag and Drop support (supports showing the drag image from FileExplorer
  and some browsers like Firefox).
- Added some navigation features to make it easier to switch between images.
- Added some basic view features like rotate and mirror.
- Added a background image which is shown if no image is open.
- Added support for AWEBPs (the ImAWEBP.FileType must be installed!)

 

Please remove all files starting with AnimateIt.

 

  • Upvote 2

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Take a seat and have a look to your art. :-)

 

Great incentive for me to make more.  I just love making these gifs, and thanks to your Plugin they are so easy.

 

I just noticed you are in Switzerland.  I lived there for five years; first in Nidau and the last year in Geneva. Much preferred Nidau and absolutley loved Bern ;) .

30b8T8B.gif

How I made Jennifer & Halle in Paint.net

My Gallery | My Deviant Art

"Rescuing one animal may not change the world, but for that animal their world is changed forever!" anon.

 
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Hope you had a good time in Switzerland.

 

I'm living in Solothurn, that's just 15 miles from Nidau. Arrived 16 years ago from Germany, working on a Satellite-Mobile project for a US company. During this time I spent nearly 2 years in La Jolla, San Diego, CA. There are so many nice places in the world to live. But hey, for me, Switzerland is the best place ;-)

 

Great that we will see more of you art in the future. Hope I can help to make some steps easier so that people like you can concentrate on creative job.

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  • 3 months later...

This was much easier to make than that bouncing head.

 

PDN%20DRipple.gif

 

It's such a good thing you're doing here. Thanks so much.

 

 

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This was much easier to make than that bouncing head.

 

You are right the precise movements are tricky.

A user has a specific experience of the world. And if an animation does not match this experience it will look strange.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Been wanting to try this plugin for a long while but was busy with school and life and all. Anyway, I had to try it someday :)

 

Tuzki%20dancing%20midora%20you%20are%20t

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:-)

I'm so sorry that my time is limited to close some of the open projects like this one or the path effect.

But both need some man-days to finish. I case of of the Animated images the webp support is not really working...

 

I like this little figure. Hope it will tell us more stories in the future.

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In my humble opinion, both plugins are equally impressive and useful in their current stages, and perhaps you tend to demand a lot from yourself. You can only do what you can Laie_98.gif

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