The Complexities of GIF/PNG Animations...

[Mantis]

Hello, I'm currently making a program that will sort of be like an editor; people can create their own content. I'm finding the animation side a bit frustrating. I know I can achieve it by using GIFs, but to be honest, I find GIFs completely rubbish. I'd rather people use PNGs. Is there any way for me to export every frame of a GIF file into a numbered PNG file, and then have MMF2 play an animation from the PNGs, with the durations and other properties stored in an array?

Sadly, it seems the Image Manipulator can't do such things with GIFs. Is there not a command line program that's free to use (my program will be free) that can split GIFs' frames into PNG files? This is all quite hard to explain, so if need be I can go into more detail. I'm just not sure where to start with this. I COULD do it just by using GIFs, but, well, I really hate them.

Thank you.

[Nifflas]

The solution would have been to store the different animation frames next to each other next to each other in a single .png file (similar to how a tileset works), then open the .png with the Active Picture object, display only a part of it, and change the "offset" to displays different part of the picture, to make it animate.

Unfortunately, this is not possible yet, the Active Picture object can not display part of an image (either it resizes the object to the image size, or resize the image to the object size). We're basically so close to the feature we're after, and I would do anything to have it too.

[Mantis]

Hmm, that would be so complex for the user though. I don't want it to be like a sprite sheet. I want it to read from separate files. Can no extensions do this?

[Nifflas]

I guess you can import the separate images into active object frames (that's new since build 244). Personally I think it gets messy having so many separate files, but it's all about what you prefer.

I'll see if I can find some tool which splits an animated file into several images...

[Mantis]

Really? I'll go check that out. Is it possible to define a hotspot if it keeps updating the frames? And will using external images speed up active objects? (I often find active objects consume a lot more memory than say, an extension that reads external images.)

And thanks a lot Nifflas.

[Nifflas]

I have no idea about the other questions. I know you can set the hotspot position, but you'll have to find the rest out yourself

[Mantis]

Ah, it's asking me for hotspot data actually when I try and load an external image. That's all good then. But does anybody know any command line-based program that can convert all GIF frames to PNG files? (I'm assuming Nifflas had no luck, but thanks. )

[Nifflas]

I just have the feeling that I have made that conversion reticently... I just can't remember what tool I used... I'll reply if I remember again.

edit: Oh wait... Can't Graphics Gale do that conversion?

[Mantis]

GraphicsGale cannot be run by command line and included with my program. I use GraphicsGale myself. Plus, only the shareware version supports GIF.

[Nifflas]

Ah, sorry, I misunderstood that. I thought you only wanted to convert gifs you had, not to add that functionality to your software too. I should have read your post better.