Feature Request: Convert to GIF?

Can you add the functionality to convert files to GIF as well? PNG is there, but I could not find GIF.
Reason is that I still sometimes use GIF instead of PNG when I need transparency. Or is this not a good idea (to use GIF instead of PNG8)?

Iā€™ll look into it as a save format. Itā€™s relatively easy to add, but thereā€™s no good control over the color palette to useā€¦

I seem to remember that Photoshop does it as a ā€˜web exportā€™

and you can adjust the layers as a continuous animation or once throughā€¦ as well as how fast to play each layer

Saving to gif, and saving to animated gif are two different things as far as RB is concerned. Animated gifs are on the todo list for sure.

The latest 1.1 beta build has support for writing gifs. You can grab it here:
http://flyingmeat.com/download/latest/#retrobatch

If you need transparency then .png is the answer.

If you need animation then (I gather) .gif is the answer.

Donā€™t forget about apng! :slight_smile:

1 Like

Hi @ccgus,

When will the animated GIF format be available?

TIA

ā€”
Cary

@carycrusiau Animated gifs are ready as of now. Itā€™s a beta feature in the latest 1.2 build, which you can grab from here: Latest Builds from Flying Meat

Thereā€™s no docs on it yet, and thereā€™s probably still bugs, and I want to add animated PNG support to it as well. But give it a whirl and then provide some feedback!

-gus

@ccgus Thanks for this! Looks promising. Unfortunately, I canā€™t get this to work.

I select a few JPGs images (900 x 636), create the Animated Image as GIF 1 FPS then Write Images as GIF. The resulting GIF is a 900 x 1 file without frames:

What am I doing wrong?

Well thatā€™s no good. I just made a new build with some changes (#686). Can you grab it and let me know how it works for you this time? Latest Builds from Flying Meat

Also, what version of MacOS are you running?

Actually, 688 is the latest version now. Looks like the gif wasnā€™t being made correctly on 10.12.

Hi @ccgus,

Still no luck! :disappointed_relieved:

I downloaded the last version (691).

If I use ā€œRead Folderā€ or ā€œRead Individual Filesā€, the resulting GIF is still 1 pixel high and without animation.

If I use ā€œPrompt for Filesā€, the image size is correct but the generated GIF still has only one frame.

FYI, Iā€™m running 10.14.1 (18B75)

Well Iā€™m stumped. Does anything print out in Console.app from Retrobatch when you run the workflow?

Sorry for my late reply. I was on vacation during the last few days. I tested again with the very last version (692). The generated GIF still has only one frame. I see nothing special in Console.app. Could you send me a .retrobatch file with a working ā€œAnimated Imageā€ workflow that I could test on my side?

Hereā€™s a link to a sample workflow, including images and the result I get when running it:
https://flyingmeat.com/retrobatch/stuff/sampleanimatedgif.zip

Apparently, the .retrobatch file I was working on from the beginning was corrupted. I just started from scratch. I created a new blank file and recreated the whole workflow. It seems to work now. Thanks again for your help!

Can you send me the problematic Retrobatch file? Iā€™d like to see if I can figure out whatā€™s going on with it, and if there are any changes to Retrobatch to make it handle it better.

animated_gif.retrobatch (4.8 KB)

I found the problem! The Retrobatch file wasnā€™t corrupt, rather there is a bug in the 1.2 betas where if you use the animated gif node, combined with setting the Convert to: option in the Write node, will remove the animation from the GIF. Iā€™ll get that fixed in the next update.