Hi Joe,

Joe Smith wrote:

Seems simple enough, I could do the end points with Gimp in 5', but to make all the intermediates to get a smooth transition is not happening. Besides, an animated GIF in OOo or PPT seems to simply loop, which is no good.

Any suggestions? Pointers to something helpful?

You need GAP, the GIMP Animation Package.

There's a tutorial that jimmac did at http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Advanced_Animations/ - in particular, the "Move path" tool is particularly useful for the scale & move type operations you'd like to do.

Cheers, Dave.

Hi,

David Neary wrote:

You need GAP, the GIMP Animation Package.

There's a tutorial that jimmac did at http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Advanced_Animations/ - in particular, the "Move path" tool is particularly useful for the scale & move type operations you'd like to do.

I'm no expert, but I managed to throw this together pretty quicky with GAP (someone with more time and a better eye could probably do much better): http://dneary.free.fr/stuff/gnome_feet.gif

Cheers, Dave.

On Thu, Jun 01, 2006 at 06:42:33PM -0400, Joe Smith wrote:

David Neary wrote:

You need GAP, the GIMP Animation Package.

There's a tutorial that jimmac did ...

I'll have another look, but--not to put too fine a point on it--without any computer animation background (vocabulary and some idea of the process), I couldn't understand either GAP or the tutorial well enough to get started.

Could you (or someone) describe in a few clear steps how to make a simple animation with GAP? Or point me to something like that?

I'd enjoy investing a little time to learn the basics, but as you might guess, having a nifty transition isn't all that important in the grand scheme.

i dunno about schemes, grand or not -- but i do know that i learned a lot from the tutorial written by the gap author which is hosted on my web site:

http://carol.gimp.org/gimp2/animation/gap/move_path/

my web site is transition right now and at the nifty part of it, so i apologize for that. also, this tutorial does not address your questions directly, however, i found after i went through this tutorial, i had a much better mind for gap and how it works. the Move Path dialog is very very powerful with many many options. the one example shown here is a little look into how the rest of the dialog works -- at least it was for me.

learning gap gui was worth the effort.

carol

Joe Smith,

I have written a few GAP tutorials which are in the wiki at http://www.brickfilms.com/wiki/index.php?title=GIMP_Tutorials

None of them specifically address your concerns but perhaps by going through them, you will gain a better understanding of the overall process (the "Layer Masks - Clockwipe Transition" is probably the closest to your actual application and the "GIMP-GAP Overview" might prove helpful if you are an absolute beginner).

Hi Joe,

Joe Smith wrote:

David Neary wrote:

You need GAP, the GIMP Animation Package.

I'll have another look, but--not to put too fine a point on it--without any computer animation background (vocabulary and some idea of the process), I couldn't understand either GAP or the tutorial well enough to get started.

Like I said, I'm no expert. But if all you're using is movepath, then here's a short summary:

Could you (or someone) describe in a few clear steps how to make a simple animation with GAP? Or point me to something like that?

1. You create a directory for your animation. 2. Your animation will be defined by a number of XCF files (one per frame) with the frame order defined by a number added on to a common root (frame-0001.xcf is the first frame, frame-0002.xcf is the second and so on)
3. The easiest thing to do is to start with a blank frame, and use Video->Duplicate Frames to create the number of frames you'd like 4. The movepath tool (in Video->Movepath) allows you to specify bezier curves which get interpolated - you define a layer to use, and its position, set a start point and an end point, let movepath loose, and it will make the object move smoothly along the path for the frames specified. 5. Movement isn't the only thing you can interpolate - you can also apply affine transforms (shear, scaling) and change opacity - you just define, for each point on your curve, the object's scale factor, transform matrix or opacity, and the interpolation gets dome on its own. The object gets copied, scaled, and placed on a separate layer for each layer that you declare.

That should be enough info to start understanding the tutorials at least. But perhaps what you want to use is OO Present or something similar - fade effects and things like this are probably easier, and more appropriate for a presentation. GAP is good for animated GIFs (few frames) or MPEG videos (many frames, needs lots of memory).

Cheers, Dave.

On Fri, Jun 02, 2006 at 09:27:22AM +0200, Dave Neary wrote:

Cheers,
Dave.

what is wrong with hof's how-to?

carol

Hi,

Carol Spears wrote:

what is wrong with hof's how-to?

Nothing - except it seems to assume a couple of things which might not be obvious to a newcomer - explaining (in simple terms) how the tool works can't do any harm.

By the way, those grickfilm GAP tutorials *rock* - thank you to the person who did them. Although I'm not sure what movepath stuff you use to get the muzzle flash... (or is it a film already?)

Cheers, Dave.