mu online animated forums signature tutorial v.1.0.0

This tutorial will cover most of the details on how to create an animated forums signature, Mu Online style. To start off, we will need the following software. Grab a copy of these and install them before you proceed with this tutorial.

The Project files used in this tutorial are available at:http://tarrent.googlecode.com/files/AnimatedSig_01.rar (45.8MB)

1. FRAPS http://www.fraps.com

2. VIDEO AVATAR http://www.geovid.com/video_avatar/

3. EASY GIF ANIMATOR http://www.blumentals.net/egifan/

4. PHOTOSHOP CS3 http://www.adobe.com/

INTRODUCTION

Mu Online Animated Signature Tutorial v.1.0.0tarrent 30-Aug-2010

1. getting screenshotsPRINTSCREEN

Animated GIF files are made up of 2 or more sequential images. We would want our forums signature to have our in-game characters, so we will have to take their screenshots. The traditional way of getting them is by pressing the Prinscreen button at a very rapid rate (1millisecond interval is highly recommended). But pressing printscreen at that rate is tiring and most people could not seem to do it properly, which results to highly-paced screenshots frames. The resulting GIF file from improper printscreen would look slow.

Because of the troubles caused by printscreen (for inexperienced users), we will not use printscreen to get screenshots. Instead we will make use of Fraps, Video Avatar and Easy Gif Animator. This will make life easier for all of us. :)


1. getting screenshotsSET UP FRAPS

Fraps is a commercial software for capturing in-game videos. You can use any version, but we will be using version 2.9.4 througout this tutorial. The latest versions could be downloaded at http://www.fraps.com/download.php. If you don't have a registered version of Fraps, that's alright. The trial version's watermark won't be included in the signature when we crop out our mu character later.

Go to the Movies Tab, and set the video capture settings similar to the settings shown here.

SCREEN SIZEFull-Size

RECORD SOUNDUncheck (do not record sound)

FPSset to 60 fps

NOTE: Be sure to set FPS to 60. This will make Fraps capture 60 frames per second. The more frames the better because they will be reduced in number when we load the video in Video Avatar.


http://www.fraps.com/download.php

1. getting screenshotsSET UP FRAPS

A word of caution. Movies saved by Fraps are HUGE avi files. A 30 second video would be around 2GB or more, so take caution when capturing videos and do not leave Fraps movie capture running longer than it has to.

Time your video so that it takes only about 6 seconds or less. Do not make your character perform long, complex animation stunts. A single emoticon or two skills exhibition is enough, but its up to you.

FRAPS CONTROL

Fraps can also take screenshots, but we will only be using its video capture. The default general controls for Fraps video capture are as follows:

F9 – start/stop video capture The yellow no. on your screen will turn red. This indicates that the video is being recorded. F10 – screenshotF12 – toggle number's position on screen


1. getting screenshotsCROP CHARACTER IN VIDEO AVATAR

Video Avatar is a cool software that creates animated GIFs from movies. You can single out certain areas in a movie, supposing you do not want the whole screen to be part of your GIF. You can also specify the length of the GIF's animation.

This time we will be needing a fully registered (or cracked) version of Video Avatar. The following tutorial will discuss in detail how to save the movie you have taken earlier in Fraps into a cropped animated GIF file.

After this, you will surely be satisfied because you have created a GIF file of your mu character. But Video Avatar offers no image editing tools, so the output we will have is just a plain, unadorned animated GIF.

We will further edit this GIF inside Photoshop so you may add your own fancy titles, borders, decorations and anything else you might think of.



LOAD THE FRAPS VIDEO

Load the video you have saved in Fraps into Video Avatar and copy these settings except for GIF size.

For this tutorial, load video.aviinside the Project Files folder.

It is really important that you have set your Fraps FPS to 60. You will see a summary of your video's FPS in Video Avatar's Source Video details.



GIF SIZE

Go to the Preview panel and set your animated GIF's target height and width. This could be any size. Our forum rules and regulations says that it should not be larger than 400x144 pixels.

The right panel holds a large, static preview of your movie. You can type in your target size in the Preview or play with the cropping tool to obtain your size and crop out your character.

ANIMATION SPEED

Go to the Avatar panel and type a save filename for your GIF in the Output File. Important: Set Frames/Sec to 10. This dictates how fast or how slow your GIF will be. The output GIF will render 10 frames per sec, derived from your video which should be 60 fps from Fraps. If you forgot to make this 60, you will have a terrible 'laggy-looking' sig. More so, if you will forget to set Video Avatar's Frames/Sec to 10.

ANIMATION LENGTH

Adjust the Movie Navigator sliders to include only the portions of the video you want to turn into a GIF.



SAVE THE GIF FILE

After you have finished cropping your character and customizing Video Avatar's settings, press the Save Avatarbutton. This will save the the cropped portion of your video into an animated GIF file! ^_^

The rendered GIF file up to this point is bm_simple.gif, inside the Project Files folder.

Now, the fun part is about to begin. As stated before, what we needed are screenshots which we will edit in Photoshop. Let's turn the simple animated GIF we have created into screenshots or rather, separate jpeg images.


1. getting screenshotsEXTRACT SCREENSHOTS USING EASY GIF

Easy GIF Animator is another cool tool for creating animated GIFs. It also has image editing tools to add text, image effects and slide transitions to your GIF but we won't discuss them here. We will use Adobe Photoshop to create these effects, which looks more fine. We will only use Easy GIF to extract images from GIFs.

We will also need a fully registered (or cracked) version of Easy GIF Animator because we won't be able to extract the images from the GIF if only the trial version is used.

LOAD THE SIMPLE GIF

Load the GIF we have created in Video Avatar (bm_simple.gif) into Easy GIF by pressing File then Open.

You will notice that bm_simple.gif has 23 animation frames. We need to extract these into separate jpeg images.


1. getting screenshotsEXTRACT SCREENSHOTS USING EASY GIF

EXTRACT JPEG FRAMES

Press File, then Export All Frames. The frames will be sequentially named as 000...maxFrames-1.jpg. Type 0 for prefix in the file name and choose the Jpeg Image File (*.jpeg)in the Save As type, then Save.

(23) jpeg frames from bg_simple.gif will be extracted.See jpeg.zip inside the Project Files folder.

RECAP

Capture in-game video using Fraps, set at 60 fps. Crop video and create simple GIF in Video Avatar. Extract image frames using Easy GIF.

This concludes our Screenshots gathering tutorial. This is less tiring than pressing the Print screen button simultaneously and it guarantees a very smooth, seamless and continuous animated GIF file at evenly-spaced millisecond intervals.

Next, we move on to adding the fancy effects on Photoshop. But first, we will need to place the GIF in a Photoshop workspace.


We will edit our simple GIF in Photoshop because Photoshop offers finer and a wider variety of image and text effects, and a lot of GIF file size optimization schemes

ANIMATION IN PHOTOSHOP

Animation will be used throughout our GIF editing in Photoshop. If the Animation Frames isn't visible yet in your workspace, toggle it on by clicking Window then Animation.

2. GIF IN PHOTOSHOPLOAD FIRST FRAME

Load the first image frame from the extracted jpeg images. (000.jpg)

After loading, you will see that it has only one (1) frame in its Animation Frame.

Go to the upper right arrow button of the Animation Frame, and turn off/uncheck New Layers Visible in All Frames if it is turned on.


OPEN THE OTHER JPEGS

Load the other jpegs into your workspace in a sequential, organized manner. Press File, Open, then browse to where the remaining jpegs are. Start selection at 001.jpg, then highlight and select all the way to the last jpeg, then Open.

2. GIF IN PHOTOSHOP

CREATE FRAMES ON 1ST FRAME

Our goal is to place all 22 jpegs on top of the 1st jpeg (000.jpg). Create 22 new frames on 000.jpg'sAnimation Frames. Its total should be 23, including itself.

NOTE: Make sure New Layers Visible in All Frames had been turned off before creating new frames.


OPEN THE OTHER JPEGS

COPY+PASTE ALL JPEGS TO 1ST FRAME

Copy and Paste 001.jpg up to 022.jpg to their corresponding slots in 000.jpg's Animation Frame. For example 022.jpg goes to the #23 Animation Frame, 021.jpg to #22, 020.jpg to #21 and so on. Save your work as a .psd file.

NOTE: Make sure New Layers Visible in All Frames had been turned off before pasting, else all your efforts will go to waste. ^_^

ANIMATION RATE

You can control your GIF's speed by toggling the Animation Frame's frame rate. For general purposes, just set it to 0. (No Delay)

2. GIF IN PHOTOSHOPPREVIEW ANIMATION

You can toggle the Play/Pause buttonson the Animation Frame's lower left panel.

Refer to the saved bm_simple.psd in our Project Files folder for this part.


SAVING YOUR GIF IN PHOTOSHOP

With your saved .psd file open, Press File, then Save for Web & Devices. Play with the various options in Color, Dither, Original, Optimize, 2-Up and 4-Up to produce the best

2. GIF IN PHOTOSHOP

optimized file size for your GIF. If yourGIF takes the size of 3MB or more, delete some frames then Save for Web & Devices again. Animated GIF signatures should only be small in size (more or less 1.0MB) to save bandiwdth.

Also, do not forget to set the Looping Options to Forever so that the GIF will repeat its frames forever.

We really do not need to save the .psd into an animated GIF, yet. We could put on some designs, texts and other things on it before saving.

You could refer to this page later on after we have tackled: adding simple designs for our GIF in Photoshop.


3. DESIGNS FOR YOUR SIGCREATE A .PSD DESIGN TEMPLATE

THE DESIGN

Open any of the extracted jpegs in Photoshop and save it as a .psd file. Get some stock images; edit and add them to the template. You could also type in some text, and add Text Effects on it. I'll leave the rest of creating a more suitable template to you.

A sample template, template.psd. Is available in the Project Files folder.

APPLYING THE TEMPLATE TO THE GIF

Open your saved animated GIF psd file. (bm_simple.psd). Remember the New Layers Visible in New Frames we have unchecked earlier? Turn it back on, and select any Frame from bm_simple.psd's Animation Frame.

Go back to template.psd. and select all its layers which you want to be visible on your animated GIF. Right click on them and Duplicate to bm_simple.psd.The template designs will then be duplicated on each and every animation frame of bm_simple.psd.

Save your animated GIF again, this time with its elaborate designs. Refer to the previous page for saving GIFs.

The final output of our animated GIF tutorial is bm_final.gif, inside the Project Files folder.


ENDING REMARKSTHE MU ONLINE ANIMATED SIG TUTORIAL

was brought to you bytarrent30-Aug-2010

There are advantages and disadvantages in using Fraps, Video Avatar and Easy GIF for getting screenshots. First of all, the images captured by the manual Printscreen have more detail and color. If you are paying attention to realistic, actual pixel & color detail in creating sigs, it will be better to press the Printscreen button instead.

But then again, the differences are very small, unless you will look at it too closely. I prefer to use the methods described here because it is much faster, and the gaps per printscreen are (automatically set to 1 millisecond!) and evenly spaced.

I hope you learned something from this simple tutorial. Go on and start creating your own Mu Online animated forums signature right now! ^_^

-tarrent [email protected]


mu online animated forums signature tutorial v.1.0.0

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