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.
Very pleased with the results. Have used the program many times but find the program not working at times. Hope to see a more consistent process in the future. Great program when it works!
fantastic
For some reason I can’t convert a gif to a targa file anymore on your website. I see the targa file, but when i try to download it, it says ‘Sorry, but what you’re looking for is not here’, or similar words. Is it a bug in the website or am I doing something wrong?
I believe you were using it just as I was doing an upgrade yesterday. I put in some sanity checks on source GIF files (overall size, total frames, etc) that should improve server stability.
Thank you for writing this converter. It’s pretty awesome and saves me a ton of time and money.
But I did notice on a recent run that it compressed my source image width (512×64 to 128×64) and created a tga of 8×4 frames (1024×256. I was expecting a 1024×1024 tga with 2×16 frames. Is this intended behavior? Should I compensate by altering the size of my source image? I can provide you with the source if you wish.
Thanks again for a wonderful tool.
Mister
Is the web site down? I am not getting the frames after I process. Also says you are looking for something that is not there
getting the same error here, no texture found. gives the script but the picture is broken. may have to undo the change hun
Hello! Is the Animated GIF conversion tool currently down? I’ve been attempting to process two frame animations and have received a broken picture in place of where the .tga file should be.
http://gyazo.com/5b666c7fba001c92263ae7040fada79a.png
Hope his is fixable! I’ve used this in the past and must commend you for an excellent resource for Second Life creators.
Heh, check the date on the post – it was working mostly fine for years. Unfortunately, I have no staff and rarely log into Second Life any more. If someone else wants to take over the tool, you’re more than welcome, but there are probably better tools out there at this point (I believe there are several on the SL wiki).
Regards,
-Flip
hello, peregrinesalon.com/anim doesn’t work since 1 week,it is really nice to work but I am so sad I can’t see frames no more,I used to use it more than 1 year,would you please leave me a comment? thank you
Hi is ther a program that will do what your website does..I used to be able to use it but for some reason no longer works and I had used it for several conversions before. It no longer works no matter what I do to the gif file ! So is ther a program that you know of that will break the gif into a grided file for sl animation? Also wanted to say it was a cool deal till it quit working
Thank You 
Hey there, it seems like this tool is saving to a place that doesn’t exist. I see that you aren’t working on it anymore, with that in mind I was wondering if you could possibly share the code or maybe set the place its saving to another place.
Thanks,
SqueakyP
I’ve been trying to use this and each time the image refuses to show, it says frame#1 and has a little grayed out icon. If I click the icon it tries to install MS Office to my computer. If I click the tet link to download my “targa” file, it goes to a 404 page not found error page…
Nothing works… is the site down? I get the script and it looks ok, but no image file is generated
I love this but it stopped working
Can you pretty please fix it.
Hello, will the tool be back online again? I need it so immediatly :-/ if not, is there any other tool known that does the same? I dont find any..
ANY IDEA WHEN THE http://www.peregrinesalon.com/anim/ SITE WILL BE BACK UP AND RUNNING.
Sorry for the delay, I’ve been really busy. However, the tool is now fixed:
http://www.PeregrineSalon.com/anim/
Enjoy!
Ive tried many times to convert my gifs but I can only convert if the file is so tiny that I lose quality.
It is pretty simple math, really. The maximum width or height of a Second Life texture is 1024 pixels. Now, let’s say you have an animated GIF with 27 frames. Each frame can’t be 1024 pixels wide, they must all fit on a single SL texture. So, for 27 frames, you would need to lay it out into a 9 by 3 frame grid. That means the maximum width each single frame can be would be 1024 divided by 9, or approximate 114 pixels. That’s pretty small, and wouldn’t look entirely good when blown up in Second Life. Your best bet is to use frame counts that are as close to square as possible – 4 frames would be 2 by 2. 9 frames would be 3 by 3. 16 frames would be 4 by 4, and so on. I hope this explanation helps – it is an unfortunate limitation of the SL textures, not this tool.