Nutcracker, new effect, animated gif's

[smeighan]

Well, i have been busy. New Effect Class: gif




New effect will load an animated gif and project it onto your rgb device.


You each have a gif library space. Load up some animate gifs and see what they look like. Here is a suggestion, find very small gifs (like 32x32) that look good. Big gifs wont look so good .




So, since i knew i wanted as big a canvas as possible. These are going to be shown on a 16 string by 128 pixel matrix.
Each string is folded three times. This will make 49 strands of 42 pixels each.


So lets see what they look like.


First we will see the gif

array_to_save
username f
user_target AA22
effect_class gif
effect_name GIF1
file1 usaCa.gif
frame_delay 111
seq_duration 5
submit Submit Form to create your effect
OBJECT_NAME gif

Not all gifs seem to work as nicely.

So enjoy. There are number of things i will probably add to the class. Black out backgrounds, look at fixing some transparency issues , .etc.


It is enough for you to get started.


thanks

 

[Timon]

Damn Sean, way to go, you da man.

 

[pixeldigger]

Sean,
I am at work right now with no photoshop .
I am sure the gif problems with the bells is probably the transparency and replacement method in the GIF.
When I get home, I'll edit them real quick, and we can try them.

 

[smeighan]

New option to allow a brightness increase. There is a new prompt in the effect class, BRIGHTNESS.


If you answer yes then
for every pixel who has a brightness > 10%
increase its brightness by 50%


Here is what it does
Original

(Note for Apr12) With new BRIGHTNESS option set to Y

Another thread posted in LOR

Does the size of the gif have to match the number of pixels in the target? So if I was trying to do a matrix, to do a 32 x 32 gif I would need a 32 x 32 matrix at least?

Right now yes. I am writing auto sizing code now.


suppose you have 16 CCR's. I would fold them into


32x25 matrix.


Now when i map the wreath (which is 50x50) you will only see 32x25.


The autoscale is going to do this
change the 50x50 256 color into a 50x50 16 million true color image


Scale 50x50 down to say 25x25. It will average the colors together .


Now change the 25x25 true color image and select up to 256 colors for the new gif. Create a new resized gif.


There are many tools that manipulate gif files so i am not sure how much of photoshop i will recreate into Nutcracker.
I would never finish if i let myself become a photoshop lite. I will put in a few simpler image manipulations. O just added a simple brightness increase.


To make these look good , you need more pixels. The secret is finding someone who made a cool gif animation with very little pixel count. There are 100,000's of gif's out there. Maybe people could share the better sites.


My rule of thumb: if it looks good as a 32x32 gif, it will probably work in Nutcracker.


thanks

 

[AussiePhil]

i'll have to make some 32x32 ones to play with.... smallest i have is 100x100 for my avatar at the moment.


Nice work as always Sean

 

[smeighan]

I have populated into everyones account a copy of the animated gifs i have been using. Your gif library is now pre-seeded with a dozen or so gif's.




I also forgot to mention , that all the animated gifs work on any target, not just the Matrix targets..


Here is an animated firework on a 16x100 megatree that has been folded into 32x50

thanks

 

[WayneKremer]

Sean, I looked for the animated gifs that you populated into our library space and can't find any. I found some good gifs, but they aren't 32x32 and Nutcracker isn't resizing them...well...at least it appears it isn't. Thx!

 

[smeighan]

Sean, I looked for the animated gifs that you populated into our library space and can't find any. I found some good gifs, but they aren't 32x32 and Nutcracker isn't resizing them...well...at least it appears it isn't. Thx!

tell me your loginname and i will populate your gif library for you.


and yes, currently i dont resize them. that is a future enhancement. use a tool to resize them before uploading them to nutcracker.