searching a program for creating multiframe-animations (timeline)

[Cyangmou]

I am searching a program which is capable of composing/animating various different static frames of pixel art and save them together as a flatted gif.
I mean basically a program in which you can load all your single frames and build them together and move them around without being restricted by layers.

besically this program should be capable of:
-animating parallax background animations consisting out of several layers - that you have a preview for the speed and don't have to place every single frame by hand and that ity's possible to create a gif which would have about 600 frames if done by hand quite fast and automatical

-animating complex mockup scenes consisting out of various animated elements which have different appearing & disappering times and also can move independendly from each other. Means that you have a timeline overview for sprites and can manipulate them quite easily.

Does anyone know of a program capable of this?
The program must be compatible for pixel art (means pixel-exact placement, png, gif, bmp support) and a plus would be if it's quite intuitive to learn.

[Helm]

I'd be interested as well, but sadly I think what you're looking for is Flash, in the bare level. Or game maker with some basic coding.

[ptoing]

You can partly kinda do this in PS as well I think, not sure tho.

[Ai]

As far as I know, GIMP-GAP does all of that, except for having a visible timeline. Here's a little test anim I put together in 5min to confirm this:



(NPA bg, FWIW; just indexized to 6colors so you can see it's moving at pixel increments rather than subpixel.)

Both of the movements here (the 'test' and the BG) were done using 'move path' GIMP-GAP command.

You can use an animation as source for the move-path, but I haven't bothered to demo that here.

Synfig with AA turned off may also work for this (and it has a keyframe/timeline display). But I haven't tested it.

[PixelPiledriver]

Flash and After Effects are both object based and have really good timelines.
Flash being bit simpler to learn than AE I'd say.
You can fill objects with frames of animation and then let them loop independently from their internal timeline or choose the frame you want to show.
I used to get paid to make Flash animations for Facebook games and other stuff.
But haven't used it in years.
And I've never tried it with pixel art.

[Mr. Fahrenheit]

And I've never tried it with pixel art.

Yeah I was going to ask if it worked with pixel art, I've never seen it used that way, but I have no knowledge of flash. That would be cool though.

[PixelPiledriver]

I'm running some tests on it now.
Seems to work fine so far, but not done yet.

Here's a stupid example.
Pixels and colors are intact.
300 frames, 1 layer, 2 animation objects, shared tweened position animation.


Flash uses a nesting structure.
Putting this together went something like this.


This was actually pretty easy to put together.
Took me some time to remember the interface.
Flash is pretty terrible without proper hotkeys for manipulating the timeline, the default keys are not very friendly.
Once you get those setup it is pretty smooth.
Swapping objects and frames is useful.

The only thing that really bothered me is the the position tween measured out the spacing with 3 frames forward and 1 frame stopped to meet the destination at the correct time.
But that is to be expected with a timeline and 1 pixel bumps.
You can always break down tweens into frames and then adjust them by hand if it really matters.

Here's another with the Scene object layered over itself at different times.


Was fun and seems to work fine.
I might try to put together something more complex.
Also I could put together a guide at some point if you guys are interested but will take some time.

and move them around without being restricted by layers.

What exactly do you mean by this?

[yrizoud]

Pixeditor may evolve to do this. At the moment you need to manually shift frames one by one, I hope z-uo will implement a menu where you can select "Move by x+120/y+0 over 30 frames" and it performs the change.
https://github.com/z-uo/pixeditor

[Mathias]

I'd definitely go with Flash. It's more than capable for the task. And you'd only be using its most basic functions.
Flash has had the functionality you need well before Adobe even bought it.

[Cyangmou]

Hmm Yeah, seems like I have to give Flash a go.