[TUTORIAL] LFS GIFs for dummies

[◄Chuck►]

I noticed there are many complicated ways to make gifs, so here's an easy one to make some videos from LFS (or any other game actually)


1. Get GifCam

Official site: http://blog.bahraniapps.com/gifcam/
Direct download: http://www.bahraniapps.com/apps/gifcam/gifcam.php

It's just one executable, no setup needed. Just save to a handy place, ie your desktop.

2. Start LFS

3. Load your replay

4. Use Shift-U to activate the free camera, locate the scene you want to capture

4. Go to windowed mode (shift+F4)
You don't need to capture the entire screen, that waste of space. Make it like 15x10cm in size.
We don't even want to capture the entire window, cause there is always some stuff like the chat and other things that nobody wants to see.

The green area here is what we're aiming for:


5. Start Gifcam
Gifcam is basically a window that only exists of a frame. Just put it over whatever you want to record.
Example:


6. Run the replay and start the record.
Ideally, you have the replay in pause mode, so you just need to press 'P' and hit the 'rec' button with your mouse.
You can even halt the recording and append another scene just by hitting the 'rec' button again.

7. Stop the replay for now (but leave it open, in case you wanna make corrections)

8. Click on 'save' button on Gifcam.
The down-arrow offers you various formats, "quantize" is usually the most size efficient but there is some color-bug but that occurs sometimes. In that case, saving with 256 colours usually helps.

9. Once it's saved, review it, ie by dragging the file into a webbrowser.

10. If everything is fine, upload it.
My choice is http://imgdumper.nl/ but there are others, i.e. http://gfycat.com/


Example result:


Tips:
-Make yourself familiar with the user-camera in LFS. Use the FOV-keys (4,5,6,7), hold left, right or both mouse-buttons to align the camera. You will get used to the functions very quickly.
-F2, F3 controls the replay speed in lfs
-Try out various options in GifCam, like the fps

Most important rules on gifs:
1. Keep the dimensions as small as possible. Think about where you gonna show it and choose the size accordingly.
2. Avoid moving backgrounds (ie like dashcams). Gif compression is utterly bad, the only way to save space is to keep the differences between frames at a minimum. Like a car moving across a static background.

[KooKoo]

I already use this, thanks for the guide, this will be helpful.

Thanks Chuck.

[[TC]►Ras◄]

Nice guide

[Olli]

Indeed, nice tutorial Chuck.

[Pipa]

Little easier than my guide. Good stuff.

[Adorable]

Finally found a easy way to make gifs.

Thanks Chuck!

[[TC]►BP◄]

Nice one

[[TC] Connor]

Very helpful for gif. nubs out there. Thanks Chuck!

[[TC]►Leon◄]

Did you ever figure out the green artifact issue?

[◄Chuck►]

Did a bit of research. Gifcam uses full green as default colour for transparency. So if that colour happens to be in your scene, you're screwed.

Workaround: Since some version, you can change that colour.

When you still have the frames captured, click on "edit", then right-click anywhere in the window that pops up.
In the menu, click on green screen, and pick a different colour, i.e. magenta.

Then just save again and see if the image is ok,

Examples:
with Green colour, saved with "quantize" mode, 3.94MB


with Magenta colour, saved with "quantize" mode, 3.94MB


with Magenta colour, saved with "nearest colour" mode, 3.82MB

[◄Chuck►]

Copied from the gif thread, should be useful for all gif creators.

Just found out something very important: Gif's frame delays have a resolution of 1/100 second. So if you choose 60 fps, the delay should be 1.6666 hundredths, but that's impossible, it either gets rounded up or down, which results in the wrong playback speed. SOLUTION: Pick a fps that you can divide 100 with. I.e.: 50, 40, 33 (very close), 25,20,10, etc.

[◄Chuck►]

Edit:

Deleted hint about green-screens as it was misleading
Do as shown in post #10 to sort green issues.