My Kingdom for a... (Shaeram Discussion).

[Journeywoman]

Thanks. I have no idea why I can't see it but this isn't the first time on this board either. Wonder why

[tigger]

Ok, How's this one look. It's closer to the description in chapter 10. There are two pictures one without the back and one with. If anyone would like the soildworks model I can zip it up and post it.

[Lochar]

Interesting. The one with the backing reminds me of stained glass. Very cool.

[Fiferguy]

I like it...

Fifer

[Hallmist]

lookie lookie! it moves!

Solidworks only allows me to output into .avi
If anyone knows how to convert .avi into .gif I would be really grateful.

[Lochar]

Interesting, but it needs to stop for just a moment and hang there at the end.

Would make for an interesting avatar.

[Shadowhawk]

lookie lookie! it moves!

Solidworks only allows me to output into .avi
If anyone knows how to convert .avi into .gif I would be really grateful.

I used <tt>`mplayer -vo png "Shaeram movie.avi"'</tt> to split the movie into files 00000001.png to 00000061.png with frames from the movie (PNG because MPlayer I have installed have no support for writing GIFs directly), then <tt>`convert -delay 1 *.png Shaeram_animated.gif'</tt> to create animation (with 1ms delay between frames). The convert command comes from ImageMagick utilities.

The codec used by MPlayer was FFmpeg's libavcodec codec 'ffdivx'.

[Shadowhawk]

And here is animation from the same split frames, but put together by GIMP, supposedly optimized for GIF (it is surely smaller). The method is somewhat described on How to make an animated gif image using GIMP tutorial. I used the help of Paste to new layer Script-Fu GIMP Plug-In. With properly configured system (newer MPlayer, newer GIMP, newer GAP plugin) you probably could convert directly from AVI file using GIMP Animation Plug-In (GAP) - the link is to the tutorial.

Attachement mod enlarges the image if it is small, so you better click on image and view it in natural size. Somehow the enlarged (thumbnail) version of this optimized animated GIF behaves badly. And why it is enlarged for, I have no idea.

[Spec8472]

And here is animation from the same split frames, but put together by GIMP, supposedly optimized for GIF (it is surely smaller).

Uhh... next time, could you please zip that?
1.5MB images are, not fun.


I've fixed the quota too, btw.

[Lochar]

I still say it needs to hold for a second or two at the end of the clip. Maybe repeat the last frame 3 or so times? Otherwise, it looks like everytime it completes itself, it blows up and tries again.

[Shadowhawk]

Uhh... next time, could you please zip that?
1.5MB images are, not fun.

I've fixed the quota too, btw.

Well, it doesn't seem to compress well. Zipped ImageMagick-joined animated GIF (the one attached) reduced the size from 1,32MB to 1,04MB. Not much improvement. GIMP created (joined) animated GIF (the one I could not attach) is "only" 0.51MB (0.50MB after compression).

And I still cannot attach the image in later post. Perhaps the quota is per thread?

<hr>Aaaargh... that quota thingy is stupid I cannot even replace the attached 1.4 MB image by 1 MB zip archive of it, because of "quota exceeded"

[Spec8472]

Well, it doesn't seem to compress well.

No, but .zip's wont display inline... the forum attachment code doesn't use filesize as a rule when to display images inline.

As for the quota... oops, fixed now.

[Hallmist]

huh. thats really too bad that the animated GIF is turning out 1MB+

the original avi was 80KB, over 10x smaller! So I guess using an animated GIF as an avatar is kinda out of the question.

the .avi format's gotta have some great compression algorithms for if one frame is very close to the next one, while GIF must enumerate every pixel of every frame or something. Thanks for trying guys!

Lochar, you're right about the pausing at the end, I didnt think of that last night. I'll fix it sometime.

[Spec8472]

the original avi was 80KB, over 10x smaller! So I guess using an animated GIF as an avatar is kinda out of the question..

The original aniGIF was way larger than the 80x80 limit on avatars, and certainly wasnt optimised at all.

[Lochar]

Spec, how about letting us use remote images for avatars then? I'd love to use the spinning Shaeram for an avatar, but it is 500k in size.