Rendering an animation as a GIF in 3dsm

Enix

I'm trying to render an animation as a gif in max,I only know how to do it as a video. I would convert the video to a gif, but that always comes out looking like crap.

Keg

if you have photoshop/imageready. Render the scene out to a png/jpg per frame than build the animation within imageready.

Enix

I was gonna do that as a last resort because I have 100 frames XD. Unless there is an easier way in photoshop than importing each frame as a layer then hiding them all, then making a frame, and unhiding the next layer each frame.

Okt

Enix, I believe there is a function built into imageready which allows for importing of a folder, as long as the files are named systematically it should do all the work for you. Hope it works out for ya.

Keg

You really should avoid gif animations of that many frames. Is it a turn around?

also with imageready: http://www.edharriss.com/tutorials/tutorial_xsi_and_3d_animated_gif/animated_gif_tutorial.htm

if you have photoshop you have imageready (unless they've changed that) and that tutorial applies to any app really. just place them all in a seperate folder. not that hard to do and gives you more control. since you don't have to re-render to change the gif around.

Enix

Yea, I have CS3 and that was an automated option (very slow lol), but I still had to hide all frames and manually create a frame, hide that frame and unhide the next...100 times. That is easier than making the frames into layers my self, but still tedious, I felt like a robot the whole time.

t4paN

I did this with this gif;



Like Keg said only a bit more tedious in my approach.

I saved it as a divx .avi, put it in virtual dub (didn't even think about saving it as successive jpegs ) to save as separate frames, deleted half the frames (every other frame because it was too slow with all the frames enabled) and then put it into Imageready, which is an automated process, "import folder as frames" lower the colour depth, save via "save optimized" and you're done.

I'm actually using Adobe cs3 as well, but have a copy of cs2 just for Imageready, I use it to create funny gifs and crap like that.

It's far from a streamlined way to work, but it's fast none the less.

sir-knight

graphics gale... the best gif animator you'll ever get for 20 bucks... load an image sequence as an animation, basic layer support, can even save as avi.

MoP

I just render them out as a series of TGAs then use ImageReady's "load folder as frames", then save as GIF. No extra work required.

Sage

Yeah what mop said. I forget if quicktime pro lets you save to gif, if it does it's the same thing.

Alex