Affinity Photo - Create an animated gif

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, iconoclast said:

As I said, I suppose it is not that easy, because if it was also Krita would already have Animated GIF Export for years.

It looks like Krita 3.0 now has animation capabilities, but it also has support for timelines, without which I am not sure it could be done.

Something tells me adding something like that to AP would take a lot longer than "half a day" to implement! 

[dotails]

9 minutes ago, R C-R said:

It looks like Krita 3.0 now has animation capabilities, but it also has support for timelines, without which I am not sure it could be done.

Something tells me adding something like that to AP would take a lot longer than "half a day" to implement! 

Well with a macro you could automate exporting each layer as a frame and then use a thridparty webapp to convert the frames to a video format and impliment all this in half a day. We are considering this but we are hoping this next major version that's about to be announced, has animation 🤞  so that we don't have to do something so janky, plus this macro is not usable for most projects because it wouldn't support tweening, <the most important thing, nor bones... I've tried Krita and it would not import affinity files properly so it's a no fly zone if your scenes are complex with effects and other rich boolean features.

[iconoclast]

1 minute ago, R C-R said:

It looks like Krita 3.0 now has animation capabilities, but it also has support for timelines, without which I am not sure it could be done.

Something tells me adding something like that to AP would take a lot longer than "half a day" to implement! 

I have the new stable version of Krita installed on my desktop pc (will take a look tomorrow). But I have never really checked out its animation capabilities. Also because there is a feature called "Onion Skins" which I still don't know what it is and what it does. Krita has a timeline since some years ago, but to really create an animation out off what you tinkered, you needed an extern app like VirtualDub, because Krita didn't support GIF-Animation-Files. I don't know if this has changed in the meantime.

[iconoclast]

5 minutes ago, dotails said:

Well with a macro you could automate exporting each layer as a frame and then use a thridparty webapp to convert the frames to a video format and impliment all this in half a day. We are considering this but we are hoping this next major version that's about to be announced, has animation 🤞  so that we don't have to do something so janky, plus this macro is not usable for most projects because it wouldn't support tweening, <the most important thing, nor bones... I've tried Krita and it would not import affinity files properly so it's a no fly zone if your scenes are complex with effects and other rich boolean features.

Without warranty, because I haven't ever tested it myself, but you could take a look at Synfig Studio, which is a free vector based animation software. I don't know if it will import Affinity files, don't really think so, but maybe it somehow helps you. I have it installed on my Linux Laptop, but I never needed it. You can download it for Windows too. But I don't know if there are also versions for Mac.

[dotails]

3 minutes ago, iconoclast said:

I have the new stable version of Krita installed on my desktop pc (will take a look tomorrow). But I have never really checked out its animation capabilities. Also because there is a feature called "Onion Skins" which I still don't know what it is and what it does. Krita has a timeline since some years ago, but to really create an animation out off what you tinkered, you needed an extern app like VirtualDub, because Krita didn't support GIF-Animation-Files. I don't know if this has changed in the meantime.

Onion Skining is useful for hand drawn animations so you can see the previous and next frames overlapping like they used to with tracing paper.

I use EZgif.com to convert videos and frames to gifs every day, so it doesnt matter what format Affinity exports we can get it into a video, Its best to just at least get full quality PNGs, And tweaning is also minimum viable essential. If your scenes are simple enough before Krita, it may work for you.

[dotails]

1 minute ago, iconoclast said:

Without warranty, because I haven't ever tested it myself, but you could take a look at Synfig Studio, which is a free vector based animation software. I don't know if it will import Affinity files, don't really think so, but maybe it somehow helps you. I have it installed on my Linux Laptop, but I never needed it. You can download it for Windows too. But I don't know if there are also versions for Mac.

Yes that is a good option too, but keep in mind it does not import complex affinity files nor effects.

[R C-R]

11 minutes ago, dotails said:

Well with a macro you could automate exporting each layer as a frame and then use a thridparty webapp to convert the frames to a video format and impliment all this in half a day.

AP's macros do not support exporting anything, so that is yet another thing that would need to be added before even this workaround would be practical.

[dotails]

3 minutes ago, R C-R said:

AP's macros do not support exporting anything, so that is yet another thing that would need to be added before even this workaround would be practical.

It's definitly not practical compared with an official version update but if nothing else my macro can export with hotkeys and layer selection with mouse tracking.

[cloois]

People are very good at making things complicated. It is a simple two additional entries on an export panel. 1. Frame rate 2. Loop or no

Then you append frames to a stack and write a gif with the designated frame rate. 

People can figure out how to use the rest of the tool to make the gif they want. 

All you need to do is write a stack from the frames. I promise it is that easy.

 

sorry, but this thread does not give me hope for this project, or for humanity.

[dotails]

1 minute ago, cloois said:

People are very good at making things complicated. It is a simple two additional entries on an export panel. 1. Frame rate 2. Loop or no

Then you append frames to a stack and write a gif with the designated frame rate. 

People can figure out how to use the rest of the tool to make the gif they want. 

All you need to do is write a stack from the frames. I promise it is that easy.

 

sorry, but this thread does not give me hope for this project, or for humanity.

We were saying its easy to write an export feature, even if they don't do it we can macro that feature easily though janky...
But the expensive to develop part is the animation supporting features like a timeline, tweening, bones...

[R C-R]

6 minutes ago, dotails said:

It's definitly not practical compared with an official version update but if nothing else my macro can export with hotkeys and layer selection with mouse tracking.

How would that work?

3 minutes ago, cloois said:

It is a simple two additional entries on an export panel. 1. Frame rate 2. Loop or no

What would define a frame? A layer, a group, a slice, something else?

[cloois]

1 minute ago, dotails said:

We were saying its easy to write an export feature, even if they don't do it we can macro that feature easily though janky...
But the expensive to develop part is the animation supporting features like a timeline, tweening, bones...

👍🏽 I hear you. I can’t stand janky tho… I’m too old

[R C-R]

2 minutes ago, dotails said:

But the expensive to develop part is the animation supporting features like a timeline, tweening, bones...

Isn't some sort of timeline function required to define frame rate? 

[dotails]

3 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Isn't some sort of timeline function required to define frame rate? 

Well if I could at least export each frame I can define the framerate later with thrid part software to generate the video from a folder of frames.
Are you concerned with motion blur?

[dotails]

25 minutes ago, R C-R said:

How would that work?

What would define a frame? A layer, a group, a slice, something else?

Slices and Pages are already useful for massive frame exports, though I think pages have some features that let you propigate changes on earlier pages if you set them up as templates. It's janky for this use case lol.

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, dotails said:

Well if I could at least export each frame I can define the framerate later with thrid part software to generate the video from a folder of frames.

Assuming you can set up slices so each slice represents a specific frame, you could use the AP Export Persona for that, but it still is far from a built-in 'native' feature & it could be problematic for animations with a lot of frames because each one needs to be exported as a separate file so the aggregate could require a lot of disk storage space.

1 hour ago, dotails said:

Are you concerned with motion blur?

Not particularly, just with the idea that it would be trivial to add animation to AP when it is clear that it lacks much of the framework to implement it. 

1 hour ago, dotails said:

Slices and Pages are already useful for massive frame exports, though I think pages have some features that let you propigate changes on earlier pages if you set them up as templates.

Keep in mind that AP supports but does not allow the creation of pages (or artboards), so again, pages would not be suitable for a completely AP based solution.

[None2321]

There are a lot of tools out there for gif creation and simple image animation, but it is advantageous to be able to perform all our tasks within the one app, and as an alternative to Photoshop, which is the main reason many people took up Affinity Photo, one would expect Affinity to have the same functionality. Disappointing that it doesn’t, and will seek alternative options when it is time to upgrade to a new version.

[iconoclast]

8 hours ago, None2321 said:

There are a lot of tools out there for gif creation and simple image animation, but it is advantageous to be able to perform all our tasks within the one app, and as an alternative to Photoshop, which is the main reason many people took up Affinity Photo, one would expect Affinity to have the same functionality. Disappointing that it doesn’t, and will seek alternative options when it is time to upgrade to a new version.

It would of course be nice if that could be done in AfPhoto too, but I don't think that it has a bigger priority to the majority of users. Serif is not such a big company as Adobe, which built it's market position over decades. So they have to make clever economic decisions to stay alive. Even because GIF-animations are a bit outdated since there are other animation formats like PNG-, SVG- and WebP-Animations that have a better quality (e.g. more than 256 colours).

I think the most users will be interested in to be able to edit photos and paintings in a high quality, and Serif should focus on this first. All those special interest things would of course be nice, but not that important. Even because there are in fact many apps out there for tasks like that. You can e.g. create very good GIF-animations with GIMP and Krita, for free.

[Child of Olympus]

Is there a reason that 2.1.1 just came out and the programs still don't support gifs?

[oscarlosan]

On 22/7/2022 at 15:23, R C-R said:

¿Cómo manejaría, por ejemplo, un documento con muchos grupos o sectores diferentes, algunos representando un fondo fijo y otros la parte que debe ser animada?

Photoshop makes it perfectly simple. Draw plus even simpler (but does not export to gif but to a format not supported by current browsers)

[R C-R]

1 minute ago, oscarlosan said:

Photoshop makes it perfectly simple.

But unlike PS, Affinity has no built-in timeline or other similar time-based features, so that would have to be added before any kind of animation would be possible.

[oscarlosan]

15 hours ago, R C-R said:

Pero a diferencia de PS, Affinity no tiene una línea de tiempo incorporada u otras funciones similares basadas en el tiempo, por lo que tendría que agregarse antes de que sea posible cualquier tipo de animación.

You already have it done in Draw plus, you just need to refactor the code to incorporate it in Designer. Draw plus continues to be even more advanced. They are gradually incorporating these tools. If you look closely, it's the same application, but they made it multi-device and with a more pleasant and up-to-date interface.
 

[walt.farrell]

8 minutes ago, oscarlosan said:

If you look closely, it's the same application,

It has, basically, none of the same code. So it's not really the same application, at all.

And it's probably not as simple as refactoring code.

[oscarlosan]

9 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

It has, basically, none of the same code. So it's not really the same application, at all.

And it's probably not as simple as refactoring code.

I know, changing algorithms and code to different languages is tedious and takes a lot of work. But nothing happens, we are patient.

[R C-R]

58 minutes ago, oscarlosan said:

You already have it done in Draw plus, you just need to refactor the code to incorporate it in Designer.

There is much more to it than just 'refactoring the code.' Serif's older software ran only on Windows; the Affinity software has to run on 3 different platforms (Windows, macOS, & iPadOS), using a single native file format for all 3 apps on all of them, & so on. Affinity doesn't even use the same rendering method as any of the Plus apps or the same kind of memory management.

In fact, they share little in common besides coming from the same company.