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Griatch

In the Gimp Help section, user 2-ton requested some ideas about an animation for opening a card without using GAP. Although I don't do many non-GAP animation tutorials, I've decided to make a tutorial of it. Those of you familiar with GAP will likely be able to see how much more easily the repetitive parts of this tutorial could be eliminated using GAP.

Please note : this particular tutorial is probably not best for new users of Gimp. Although I have included screenshots and some explanations here and there, a lot of the material assumes that you have a good familiarity with Gimp already. Now on to the tutorial.



This is an example of what one can create via using this guide:



Page Turn Animation Tutorial (Without GAP)

Creating the Card Cover

First begin with a 400x400 new image with a transparent background.



From the left side of your image window ruler, drag a vertical guide line to the center of the screen (position 200). Then from your left side ruler, drag another vertical guide to position 380. From the top ruler, drag a horizontal guide to position 100 and then another horizontal guide to position 300.

You can also add guides by selecting:

Image | Guides | New Guide (for each guide you need to create)


Then in the dialog box that opens select whether you will be making a Vertical or Horizontal guide line and the position to place the guide. Vertical guides are to be placed at position 200 and 380. Place horizontal guides at positions 100 and 300.



Add a New Transparent Layer to the image either from the New Layer button on the Layers Dialog window or by selecting:

Layer | New Layer

Accept the default settings for the New Layer and click OK.

Select the Rectangle Select Tool and then starting at the intersection of the vertical guide at 200 and the top horizontal guide at 100, click and drag your selection tool down and the the right until you reach the bottom right corner, which is the intersection of vertical guide at 380 and horizontal guide at 300. The selection should snap to the bounding guidelines. Fill that selection with the color that you will be using for your top page. In my example it will be a bluish green color:



Leaving the rectangular selection active, select the Text Tool, adjust the settings for the tool according to your preferences and make some text. I made the text : For Someone Special

You can align the text by hand if you like.

To get a nice centered text, select the Align Tool and click on the Text Layer inside of the Image window. In the align tool settings window for Align Relative To, click on the drop down box and set that to Selection:



Then to center align the text over the selected area, click the two buttons highlighted in red.

Then do a Select None, followed by merging the Text layer down on to the New Layer.

Visualizing The Animation

The animation will be 30 frames (I just arbitrarily made that value up, you can use however many frames you wish). I mentally divide the animation into four separate animations, although they will all be created from within the image.

The first animated part is the card opening from flat to a 90 degree angle with the surface of the page. In 3d view, the page would be standing straight up so that all one could see if staring straight down on it would be it's edge.

The second animated part will consist of the card opening fully from the 90 degree position. But the inside of the card will be a different color from the outside (white in the case of this example), so that additional 90 degree turn needs to be a separate layer from the first.

The third part of the animation is the card going from fully open back to the top of the card again being at a 90 degree angle from the flat part of the card. This will still use the white color.

Finally, the from the 90 degree mark to closing back up, we need to reuse the layer for the front part of the card.


First, we set up the layers

With the New Layer selected, first rename it to Cover, then duplicate that layer 8 times, to give a total of 9 equivalent copies of that layer.

The top layer should be called Cover copy #7. Rename that layer to: Left Inside. Then in the Layers Dialog window, set the Alpha Channel Lock for the “Left Inside” layer



and then fill the Layer with color white. Then unset the Alpha Channel Lock and make 14 additional copies of that layer. The last one will be named Left Inside copy #13.

Go back and select layer Cover copy #6. Duplicate it once and then drag Cover copy #7 to the top of the group of layers in the Layers Dialog window. Then duplicate it an additional 6 times. The very top layer will be named Cover copy #13 if all went well.

If you count the various layers, we have essentially 15 Cover layers and 15 Left Inside layers. It's just that we had to position them as we did to make the animation work properly.

This then gives us the 30 layers for our animation plus one Transparent Background Layer.

Setting Up The Animated Layers with Map Object

All of your layers are set up, now go down and select the layer named Cover. With the Cover Layer selected, open the Map Object Filter.



In the Options tab, make sure you have activated the Transparent background setting as shown above. You will not need to change anything else in the Options, Lighting (you may wish to experiment with No Lighting rather than using default lighting), or Materials tabs for the remainder of the time for this animation.

Then go to the Orientation Tab:



The value that you will be changing for each and every layer to create the animation will be the Y Rotation value. In the first instance you will leave the Y value at 0. This is equivalent to not doing a Map Object at all on the layer, but this gets you used to doing this. You will have to change the value of Y for every one of the 30 layers by an increment of -12 degrees for the first 16 frames, going from zero to -180.0 degrees, and then by increments of +12 degrees for the remaining 14 frames.

If you wonder why I am using 12 degree increments, just take the total rotation of the front cover, which goes from 0 to -180 and back to zero, which is a total 360 degree rotation, and divide by the number of frames that we are using, which is 30. That gives 12 degrees per frame.

So go ahead and click OK.

Then go up to the next layer, which is named Cover copy. Again open the Map Object filter (Shift+Ctrl+F for reopening the most recent filter used), go to the Orientation tab and change the Y Rotation value to -12.0 (that's minus 12.0). Then click OK.

Select the next layer up, Cover copy #1, open Map Object, and set the Y rotation value to -24.0

Continue this process with the Map Object filter, incrementing each layer by -12.0 degrees (-36.0, -48.0, -60.0, -72.0, -84.0, -96.0, -108.0, -120.0, -132.0, -144.0, -156.0, -168.0, and -180.0 for the rest of the first 16 layers) all the way through Inside Left copy #6, which will be a Y rotation value of -180.0.

Then reverse the process for the remaining layers. So Inside Left copy #7 will be a Y rotation value of -168.0

The remaining Y rotation values for each successive layer would be -156.0, -144.0, -132.0, -120.0, -108.0, -96.0, -84.0, -72.0, -60.0, -48.0, -36.0, -24.0, and finally -12.0.

For those wondering why we don't end up back at zero, it's because we do when we go from frame 30 back to frame 1 again to start the whole animation over again.
Get Some Animation Scripts

First, go to get these two scripts by saulgoode:

http://www.flashingtwelve.brickfilms.com/GIMP/Scripts/combine-bg.scm

http://www.flashingtwelve.brickfilms.com/GIMP/Scripts/Script-fu-2/anim-settings.scm

Place these scripts in your Gimp scripts folder and refresh your scripts

Filters | Script-Fu | Refresh scripts

These scripts will add new selections to the Animations section under Filters heading in Gimp.

Once the background is set up, I will refer to these scripts.

Setting Up The Background

From your Layers dialog window, select the transparent Background layer. Now, Shift+Click on the eyeball icon beside the Background Layer in the Layers Dialog window to turn off the visibility of all except the Background Layer.

First , I will fill my background layer with a solid blue color.

Then again, using the Rectangular Select Tool, make the same selection as was done previously along the indicated guidelines mentioned above. I will fill that selection with plain white color to create the bottom page of the card. Feel free to add designs or text of your choosing for the inside of the card. That part of the card doesn't move in the animation, which is why we can make it be part of the background layer. Make sure that you merge down the text and any other graphics layers that you want included in the Background Layer.



Be careful when adding graphics to images that are intended to become GIF animations. You only have 256 total colors to work with. Any more than that and you start seeing your animations looking sub-optimal.

Finalize The Animation

Then Shift+Click on the eyeball icon for the Background Layer in your Layers Dialog window to make all layers visible again. Then select:

Filters | Animation | Combine with background (that comes from the newly installed animation scripts)

Explanation:This script allows you to avoid the work of manually creating a copy of the Background Layer for each of the animation layers. Normally, if doing this manually, you would place each copy of the Background layer below each of the animation layers and then merge each animation layer on to one of the background layer copies. The script does this for you.

Then delete the Background Layer.

Finally, try out your animation by selecting:

Filters | Animation | Playback

The animation should play well, but we need to have it delayed when the card is completely closed and when it is fully opened. To do this, let's first set the delay settings for each frame. Select:

Filters | Animation | Settings

You can try using the default delay value of 100ms per frame and leave the Mode value at Keep.



Once the script adds the timing delay value to each frame, you can go back and manually edit the timing value for the first frame and the 16th frame. I set those two frames each to 1500ms from the default 100ms setting. The first frame is when the card is completely closed and the 16th frame is when it is completely open. That is the reason the delay for those two frames is adjusted. It makes it easier for the person viewing the animation to read the card. Plus a delay is a bit easier on the eyes for this animation, vs it constantly opening and closing with no delay.

Go back and play your animation again. It now has a nice delay.

I usually like to apply the optimize function:

Filters | Animation | Optimize (for Gif)

Not everyone likes using that function/filter. It is intended to help the resulting file size be as small as possible, but it doesn't always work out that way. And sometimes the appearance of your animation is less than optimal after applying that filter. So that is something you will have to decide on.

Finally save your file as an animated gif file (some_file.gif). Remember to select Save As Animation from the Export dialog window that opens, otherwise Gimp will just Flatten all your layers into one layer and save it as a static Gif image rather than as a multilayered Gif animation.

Thank you for checking out this tutorial.