Source Graphic to Convert to SL Texture
I finally had some free time for the first time in years. I’ve done some major upgrades to some of my products – trivia got a major overhaul, and now, I’ve done a much needed upgrade to the animated GIF to SL texture conversion tool.
It now handles GIF transparency correctly after quite a battle to get it to work, but it does. Give it a whirl:
http://www.peregrinesalon.com/anim/
As always, it is free, and with transparency now working, a lot more useful.
There are still some known issues – the amount of frames in the animated GIF has to be something that will form a grid properly (IE, 49 frames will tile nicely at 7 by 7, 48 frames will tile nicely at 8 by 6, however, 47 frames will NOT tile nicely at 47 by 1).
Also, GIFs that are saved with progressive scanning now work – so if you used to see problems with white pixels appearing on frames after the first in your conversion, they should work as well. I’ve tested it with quite a few, and those two major problems seem to have been fixed. Your mileage, as always, may vary… but let me know how it works!
12 frames total, tiled at 4 x 3, transparency maintained - goal!
For those who are curious in what was needed to get this all working, the trick was to convert the GIF to a GIF making sure it is coalesced so each frame is full, then convert all those frames to the PNG with transparency, and then assemble all of those frames through a montage into the gridded texture file.
To the left is an example of how a final graphic might look of the source animated GIF to the right, of lovely Corsican singer Alizee – although I’ve resized it down from 512×512 for the web site, and put the transparent checkerbox in the background.
I use a mac and after converting my gif I tried to download via the link but all I get is a whole bunch of text. It says for macs to use cntrl click to save as but the link doesnt work. Perhaps its not mac compatible after all?
I don’t have a Mac to test on – I make sure it works under Ubuntu and Windows. What browser are you using? Mac does funky things with attachments and data streams that no other OS does. I’ve seen it happen before as well.
Dont just click the link,but ctrl click it and choose “save image as” from the dropdown menu. works like a charm on my mac. great job, ill be exploiting this !
I’ve occasionally receive comments from people saying, “it isn’t working.” So far, in all of these cases, it has been because of an issue listed under “known issues”, like using a source graphic with a bad potential frame layout.
Be sure to pay attention to this paragraph!
“There are still some known issues – the amount of frames in the animated GIF has to be something that will form a grid properly (IE, 49 frames will tile nicely at 7 by 7, 48 frames will tile nicely at 8 by 6, however, 47 frames will NOT tile nicely at 47 by 1).”
Hi! I’m having a problem converting gif files with 50 or more frames. I’ve also tried to use ImageReady to save the files as .tga, but am unable to figure out how to save the file as a cascading grid (sorry if that is the incorrect terminology). I am only able to save one frame as .tga. Additionally I’ve searched for help with ImageReady but it doesn’t seem many people are sharing this knowledge. Thank you for any advise or help. And thank you for creating such an amazing tool. It is so very helpful!
If you have a graphic with 50 frames, that would convert to a 10 x 5 grid. It would be better to do 49 frames, if you can drop one, which would be a 7 x 7 grid.
Where you’re make a mistake is with trying to save as Targa. In ImageReady, if you image is 50 frames, simply trash one frame to make it 49, and save as a GIF, not a Targa. Then run the GIF through the converter on my site, and you’ll have an automatically created Targa to upload to Second Life.
Ok. I’m with you on everything except gifs that have over 50 frames. Thank you!!
If you have 56 frames wouldn’t it be using 8 x 7 grid? I’ve tired to run it through your amazing program, but it gives me an error message. I’m unclear on how many frames to add or delete depending on how many frames are in the gif. I hate to bug you with such elementary questions, but I just don’t seem to be picking it up. (I have converted many files successfully, but my group of larger gifs is giving me problems. I should have paid attention in math class.)
error message:
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
Please contact the server administrator and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.
More information about this error may be available in the server error log.
Additionally, a 500 Internal Server Error error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.