AuthorTopic: Making a pixel art movie  (Read 10108 times)

Offline Probo

  • 0010
  • *
  • Posts: 317
  • Karma: +1/-0
    • View Profile

Making a pixel art movie

on: October 01, 2012, 07:23:28 pm
I made a 1000+ frame, 60fps pixel art animation in graphics gale a month ago, but i cant get a final movie file out of it. saving as an avi does weird horrible things with the colours, and im not sure avi is a great compression type for keeping the lineart clear anyway. saving as a gif doesnt seem to be an option as i cant get the frame rate high enough with gifs. I could export all the frames as an image sequence, put them into another program and make a film that way, but im not sure what program to use that would let me keep the 60fps and also uses a pixel-art friendly compression.

do any of you guys know what i could do?

Offline tim

  • 0010
  • *
  • Posts: 240
  • Karma: +2/-0
  • Founder of Odd Tales - Art Director
    • View Profile
    • Tim Soret - Showreel

Re: Making a pixel art movie

Reply #1 on: October 01, 2012, 11:02:15 pm
After Effects is perfectly suited for this. Just import your images as a sequence and export them in any format you'd like.
You can also zip them and send it to me. I'm an experienced motion designer so I guess I can spend a little time helping you.
Founder of Odd Tales
Art Director - Game Director - Game designer - Motion designer

Offline Kasumi

  • 0010
  • *
  • Posts: 275
  • Karma: +1/-0
    • View Profile

Re: Making a pixel art movie

Reply #2 on: October 02, 2012, 10:58:34 am
Not sure if you took tim up on his offer or not, but in case you're looking for a way to do this with free tools:

Try VirtualDub.

Download and run it. Drag the first image of the png sequence onto the program. It should load them all. (Scroll through the frames with left and right to verify they're all there, and that you don't get odd colors.)

Video, frame rate. Change frame rate to 60.

File, save as AVI. This should save an uncompressed AVI, so your pixel art should be totally unaffected. Now, you're (probably) done.

It failed on a 50x50 image sequence of mine (Played oddly on VLCmedia Player/Winamp, but looks fine in VirtualDub. An AVI limitation I don't know about?), but resizing the input frames to 200x200 made it work.

Also, I don't believe a gif can be 60 FPS without a "wobbly" frame rate. Each frame of a gif is timed to 100ths of a second. 1/60 is 0.016. So making every frame 1/100th of a second is too slow, and 2/100ths is too fast.

Anyway, I'm pretty curious about this animation. Would you mind posting it when you get it as a movie?
« Last Edit: October 02, 2012, 11:06:15 am by Kasumi »
I make actual NES games. Thus, I'm the unofficial forum dealer of too much information about the NES

Offline Probo

  • 0010
  • *
  • Posts: 317
  • Karma: +1/-0
    • View Profile

Re: Making a pixel art movie

Reply #3 on: October 03, 2012, 02:08:09 pm
thanks for the responses guys, and wow thanks for the offer to turn it into a movie for me tim, but i would like to do it myself so i have that knowledge. i dont have after effects but i think i have access to something similar by adobe at college ill check it out.

Ive tried vdub before kasumi, great program and it gave the framerate i needed. the avi compression makes it look blurry even when selecting the Full Frames (uncompressed) option though? particularly if you full screen it, which i want to be able to do. i posted on the vdub forums and the response i got was that the codecs supported by vdub arent good for lineart. A friend suggested using quicktime as he thinks movs would be good for it, ive tried the old adobe program imageready so i could output as mov but it wouldnt let me control framerate how i wanted to.

of course i would post it for you mate, i wouldnt get too excited though its not great, just a scrolling game mockup that loops every 1000 frames. it was my first attempt at pixel art so its not great but i had fun doing it!!

Offline Kasumi

  • 0010
  • *
  • Posts: 275
  • Karma: +1/-0
    • View Profile

Re: Making a pixel art movie

Reply #4 on: October 03, 2012, 06:25:52 pm
Hmm... that's odd. Where do you see "Full Frames (uncompressed)"? I've seen that exact option under other programs, but it's actually missing in my Virtual Dub 1.9.11 "Select video compression" menu. I selected (Uncompressed RGB/YCbCr), and got uncompressed video. No blurring, pixel perfect. Is that option available there for you?

I've tried it on my own original pixel animations, and emulator footage. (In... a really roundabout way for the emulator footage. First I recorded my own 60 FPS pixel perfect avi. Then, I extracted all the frames. Then I closed the program, reopened it, and loaded the resulting image sequence. Set the frame rate, and saved the video. It was still pixel perfect. I did this test today after seeing your post, but for my own pixel stuff earlier, I just imported the png sequence, set the frame rate, and saved and got the result.)

Blurry Full screen is a separate issue. Most video players don't upscale in a good way for pixel art. You can lessen this slightly by scaling your frames beforehand to %X00 percent of their normal size with nearest neighbor, and using these frames.

Last question. If you load the avi you get from virtualdub in virtualdub are the frames pixel perfect or still blurry? Another possibility is your video player isn't able to play the video at the right speed while decoding/displaying all the frames, so it's skipping some and blurring between them.

In any case, I extend the same offer as tim. I also can make a video of myself making the video, but I can't imagine we're doing different things.
I make actual NES games. Thus, I'm the unofficial forum dealer of too much information about the NES

Offline Probo

  • 0010
  • *
  • Posts: 317
  • Karma: +1/-0
    • View Profile

Re: Making a pixel art movie

Reply #5 on: October 03, 2012, 08:04:34 pm
hmm i cant see Full Frames (uncompressed) now, i was on a different machine running a different OS though, maybe using an older version of vdub as well? I just downloaded vdub on this machine, It is Uncompressed RGB/YCbCr for me too.

I just made a video with it again, it looks passable when its at its native resolution 320 x 180 on my 1920 x 1080 screen, it looks terrible when you full screen it or even just 200% the video in windows media player. i tried it on vlc player on my last attempt at this and the same problem though maybe i should try it again.

to answer your other question if i load this video i just made back into virtual dub it looks fine, but its so tiny its hard to tell if there is any problems with the video at its native resolution. as soon as you resize the window in vdub that blurriness becomes apparent but could just be the program.

as a side note i just downloaded a free batch image converter to convert all the frames to a higher resolution (1280 x 720 for a laugh!) and they all came out blurry too. could just be the program though, what do you use?

Offline Kasumi

  • 0010
  • *
  • Posts: 275
  • Karma: +1/-0
    • View Profile

Re: Making a pixel art movie

Reply #6 on: October 04, 2012, 12:15:54 am
I use irfanview to resize images. Download/install it. Open it. Press b to open the batch convert window. Use the browser that pops up to navigate to the folder with all your frames. Click add all. Browse to where you want to store the resized images. Click "Use current ('look in') directory"

Under "work as", click "batch conversion". Output format, png. Options, compression level 9. Uncheck Save Transparent color unless you want to select one for EVERY frame.  ;)

Check Use advanced options. Click advanced. Check resize.

Now, 1920/320=5.053, and 1080/180 = 6. This means you'll never get true full screen on your resolution with perfectly square pixels. If you really, really want full screen to the exclusion of others who may view your video:
If you want perfectly square pixels, resize by %500 for both height and width. You'll either have some slight blurring if you play it full screen, or a border if you play it windowed.

If you want full screen, resize by size, width: 1920 height:  1080.

I would recommend resizing by 200% for height and width if you plan to distribute it, though. This will fight random guy's video player upscaling at least a little better if he wants full screen, while also keeping it likely he'll avoid the same sort of thing affecting him if he wants  to make it smaller for his screen. (300% might make it too big for someone who wants to play it windowed, and 201-299 would result in not square pixels.)

Uncheck Use Resample function so it doesn't blur when it upscales. Everything else should be unchecked. (If your images come out with an odd palette, check CHANGE COLOR DEPTH:, select 24 BPP and convert again)

Click okay, start batch. It will create all the resized pngs in the folder you selected with "Use current ('look in') directory". Drag those into Virtual Dub, and make the AVI. (Just for the record if you do make a true-fullscreen-for-your-res-AVI, it will likely be huge. With 200%, it will still be huge, so have at least a few gig on your hard drive free just in case)

The fact is that if you let the video player resize it, whether it makes it bigger or smaller it may always look a bit odd.

Let me know if this goes any better. If not, I'll see if I can think of anything else that may be going on.
« Last Edit: October 04, 2012, 12:30:01 am by Kasumi »
I make actual NES games. Thus, I'm the unofficial forum dealer of too much information about the NES

Offline Probo

  • 0010
  • *
  • Posts: 317
  • Karma: +1/-0
    • View Profile

Re: Making a pixel art movie

Reply #7 on: October 04, 2012, 05:38:31 pm
doesnt 1920/320 = 6? My intention was a 16:9 aspect ratio when i started it.

well irfanview did the trick nicely thanks very much!! the vdub result is much better too. its a big file though, 684 MB! was going to upload it to youtube for you, which is something of a first for me!

edit> heres the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXVrtN7vsNc

I dont know what the filesize limitations are on youtube but maybe i could do a 1920 x 1080 one :D
« Last Edit: October 04, 2012, 06:47:09 pm by Probo »

Offline Kasumi

  • 0010
  • *
  • Posts: 275
  • Karma: +1/-0
    • View Profile

Re: Making a pixel art movie

Reply #8 on: October 04, 2012, 09:43:20 pm
Yeah. It is 6. I must have mistyped something.  :-[ But I'm glad you got it working!

The parralax scrolling is excellent, and it's a pretty clever idea for a looping animation. Is doing parralax scrolling as tedious to animate this way as I think it is?
I make actual NES games. Thus, I'm the unofficial forum dealer of too much information about the NES

Offline Probo

  • 0010
  • *
  • Posts: 317
  • Karma: +1/-0
    • View Profile

Re: Making a pixel art movie

Reply #9 on: October 04, 2012, 10:10:07 pm
hey thanks man! and thanks a lot for the help, great stuff.

oh god yes, that was most of the work, moving layers across a certain amount of pixels every frame. i listened to hours of podcasts and audiobooks just doing that!

I might do another, with the loop starting when the character enters a room and ending when he exits. something a bit more sinister..