Question about Animated Gif Files and Max

[Karkadann]

I had an idea for some old style torches as a light source and was wondering if their is a way to use an animated gif file in the Plazma engine.
so basically what I would see is a torch that is not animated and a gif file of flame that is animated animated.

Any ideas?

[dendwaler]

I am not familiar in Max, but i have made exactly what you asked in Blender for my next age.

It does contain torches on the wall and several animated fireplaces.

I have used looping layerswitching.
every layer contains one "gif" of a fire animation.
The fire itself is an animated sprite.
The effect is quite good.
To get a good lightning from the fire is another story.

[Deledrius]

This again...

This obsession with using GIFs in Uru is exceptionally disturbing to me.

Not all animations are GIFs. Not all GIFs are animated.

I strongly suspect what you are asking to do has nothing to do whatsoever with GIFs, not least because there's no such support in Plasma (and no need for it either).

You want to look at creating animated textures. Insisting on GIFs is a red herring.

[dendwaler]

Ok , i used the wrong words.
Sorry my english is not the best.
In fact i did use the technic you refer to.
But i extracted the picture frames from an excisting animated gif from a fire.
Then loaded each picture into a layer, and switched it using an ipo as described.

[Deledrius]

I wasn't responding to you specifically, dendwaler. This topic has come up before and it was equally nonsensical then. Sorry, I didn't mean to come across so harshly; it's just a frustrating topic.


(Edit: spelling)

[dendwaler]

Sorry, I didn't mean to come across so harsly

Ok forgotten already.

I hope Karkadann got the answer in how to solve texture animation.
Its not strange that many builder comes with the same questions and ideas from time to time.
We all find the same obstacles on our way and want to know what others did.
To dig around in the wiki is not easy either, especialy not when you do not know where and when you can use the described technics.
But with the hard work done on the wiki in the last few month, answers can be found more easy from day to day.

[Christopher]

I think a good way to make more complicated animated textures is using bik files. A simple fire animation is not larger then 1MB. The only problem is that this will spam the avi folder...

Christopher

[GPNMilano]

I think a good way to make more complicated animated textures is using bik files. A simple fire animation is not larger then 1MB. The only problem is that this will spam the avi folder...

Christopher

Another issue with using Bik files is that, most explorer run shards won't have bik support either. This isn't the case for all shards, but some simply can't afford the licensing cost for the bink sdk, so it and the 3ds max plugin are not needed anymore to compile the engine. However this means that the engine no longer supports them either. The best route in this case is for the developers to add support for movie codecs that are open source compatible and free to use. This is one of those things that is on the back burner but still on the stove for developers to work on. However...then it raises the question of how we get it back to Cyan as they will then need to be able to export all new prps for the ages if the prp format has to change. So, whatever changes are made have to then be compatible with Cyan's own build system.

[Deledrius]

So, whatever changes are made have to then be compatible with Cyan's own build system.

Which is a black box, unfortunately, making that an unsolvable problem.

[GPNMilano]

Karkadann, as others pointed out above, your best bet would probably to use an animated texture. Start with a simple flare like we have for lamps to simulate your torches fire. Obviously it would have to be one that resembled a flame of sorts. Preferably something white for the flame and the rest being transparent. Then set the preshade and runtime to black in your layers and animate the opacity and the ambient color to simulate flickering and the flame's brightness. Make sure also that in the advanced properties section of your layer, you set the shading to be emissive (this ensures that the layer only uses the ambient color otherwise your texture will appear black). The animation won't need to be long, but make sure it's set on loop.

The previous instructions are for use in Max of course. Blender instructions would be different, so if anyone wants to try this in blender I'd be happy to provide instructions for that too.

EDIT: Also since the texture has transparency in it, you'll want to set your blending to use alpha.