Another exporting question...

Installing Pencil2D / How to
1

System and version information:

I’ve tried the latest official build (pencil 0.4.4b) as well as an unofficial build (pencil beta 5.0) that I found from the Pencil-animation forums. I don’t remember who made that build. I’ve also tried the latest build from this site, pencil2D 0.5.4. I’m running Windows 7 here but I also have an Ubuntu 14.?? system with pencil2D 0.5.4 and pencil 0.4.4b (from apt-get install pencil).

So, I’m working on this project using Pencil. So far I have 280 frames total, including the empty spaces between frames (where one frame lasts longer than .1 second). I’m having trouble with exporting, just like the the majority of Pencil users on Windows.

I know many users have had this issue, so could someone please explain to me how they faced this problem and what they did to work around it?

Thanks,

Numailia

 

P.S. I believe that ffmpeg.exe was included in one of the downloads so a command-line solution using ffmpeg would be greatly appreciated. Also, I’ve been getting a lot of viruses from downloads recently so I would like to install as little untrustworthy software as possible.

2

I only use Linux, and know almost nothing about windows, but what I do is use another drawing,graphics program, Image Magic, I think there is a version for windows, anyway there is a command called convert, it has a lot of variables, or options, I use it in a simple way to compile the frames in the pencil data file, into a working gif, there isn’t really any exporting going on.

Another software, that worked well with the original Pencil and I am sure the same with the new “pencil2”, called “artoonix”, they offer a demo for free, or you can pay a little and get “full features”, the actual drawing,painting editor, is not very good, and even worse if you only use the demo, but it has a excellent export feature , that worked well even in the demo, similar to the way I do it with Image Magic , I import, or insert the frames from the pencil data files, artoonix also exports/saves in various video or “movie” formats, and is only for windows, no linux version, however I was able to use it using “wine”.

on this :""“Also, I’ve been getting a lot of viruses from downloads recently so I would like to install as little untrustworthy software as possible.”" There are some ways to check them ahead of time, before you download, mywot.com

you can check the site, for it’s reputation, and more, also https://www.virustotal.com/ you can actually upload the file,(before you unzip or execute it on your computer) and they check it. If you are using windows you really need to have “mawlware bytes” installed,and also a good antivirus, constantly updated, and even then it is a very vulnerable , unstable, broken OS, but many people use it, all though I can not understand why, but that would be a entirely different forum and topic,… anyway malware bytes is very useful to have.

 

3
Just one more comment,

'“”““I would like to install as little untrustworthy software as possible. “”””"

You should NOT install any "untrustworthy" software, or download anything from unreliable, untrustworthy sources, if you are not 100% sure it is trustworthy, and clean, all it takes is a few "bytes", of malicious or bad code, and it can takeover your system, or worse destroy it.
4

Is there a way I can use ImageMagick to export the frames as a movie? I will need to edit in sound later and I can’t do that with a gif.

5

To be honest, I am not sure on that, but I think there is, but I wouldn’t be able to tell you how, I did a google search using your exact words “Is there a way I can use ImageMagick to export the frames as a movie?” Image Magick is very complex, and best used as a “command line” program, 1 of many, commands, is called “convert”, there are literally 100s of ways to use that 1 command, What would be best , I think on that is to use google, there are forums for “image magick”, where you can get detailed info on specific commands, also there are some good tutorials.

Being that this forum is about pencil2d, and developement, of pencil2d I don’t think it would be appropriate to start posting tutorials on how to use image magick, I just mentioned it, because that is what I am using for now, as a alternative,…

When I did the google search, I did see some mention of “a command-line solution using ffmpeg would be greatly appreciated.”, using ffmpeg, as a solution for windows users,

As a windows user, I think your best option would be to look at the “artoonix” I mentioned, it is pretty simple to use,

With image magick, there is no “exporting” involed, you would first save the Pencil2d file, to a folder, anyname you choose, in that folder you should see some file, and also a folder, (directory) yourfilename.pcl.data, (note, I use the filename “penciltest”,or penciltest1 and so on, for testing.)

So anyway, in the folder that is the pcl.data , there will be all the images, that are the frames, of your animation, they are numbered,. 001.png, 002.png and so on, I think .png is the pencil default, I don’t know if that can be changed, either,… but anyway, using image magic, from the command line, first I make sure I am in the right directory, (folder), then the command is typed in,

First, simple: convert *.png .gif

that converts all the .png images, to .gif images,

then with the same command “convert”

convert -dispose previous -delay 60 -loop 0 1.png 2.png 3.png 4.png 5.png 6.png 7.png 8.png 9.png 10.png 11.png 12.png 13.png 14.png 15.png 16.png 17.png 18.png 19.png 20.png animation3.gif

That converts all the gif images into a single file, with all the images in it,

that is just for a simple gif, the command syntaxes for a swf,or dpx, or whatever may be some what different, after all said and done, it can get extremely complicated, I am just “scratching” the surface, there are additional syntaxes like append, that allows appending addition file formats, these could be the sound files, you might find this helpful, it is the “tutorial” I used, http://www.imagemagick.org/Usage/anim_basics/

I hope there is no problem with the forum admin, in sharing this,…even though it is not “pencil2d”, on the other hand, after studying on this, and and from what little I have learned, I can see how difficult it must be, to write the scripts and code needed to include exporting, and saving in various formats, and this is comlplicated more so because some users want SWF, others, DPX, and so on, I don’t really know what all the formats are for video /movie files, Sorry I couldn’t be more help,…

6

I did some more searching with google, this may help, and it does appear you can convert to a movie format with image magick,

http://robotics.usc.edu/~ampereir/wordpress/?p=702

Part of what it says:

Assuming you have a set of images in a folder “pngs”. To convert these into a mp4 using ImageMagick we could do:

 

convert -antialias -delay 1x2 pngs/*.png mymovie.mp4

A better option is to use ffmpeg which is “a complete, cross-platform solution to record, convert and stream audio and video.

 

Best to read, the entire article, also use google, you should find more complete answers with some searches.

7

This is the notification email that was sent to me regarding your response… (Is someone going to fix these notifications?)

Thanks for your replies. I will look into these programs.

8

Boy, that is weird , the notification, they sure “mangled” the text,…and it looks more like e-mail spam, then a legit notice, this would be a different subject, maybe I will start another topic,…

Any way, in a nutshell it does appear you can convert the animations you do with Pencil2d, into movies or videos with image magick, I really like the drawing, and painting part of pencil, and the way I can test the animation, this is why I use it, for all my artwork, drawings, not only animations, …When I found out about image magick, it has turned out to be the most use full,and versatile method, (program) for manipulating,editing and compiling images, however it is also very complex, and as I said, I have just barely “scratched” the surface of what one can do with it, a friend of mine, uses it to analyze images that are on websites and forums, to check for embedded viruses, or malicious code.

9

Oh, on the e-mail reply notice, I just now realized, yea, that is what the post looked like ,when I first posted, so I had to edit it, it was a mess, I don’t know why Word Press does that, so anyway, you got the reply notice, before I edited it, sorry,…I don’t know how to avoid that, maybe they could but a delay , so the reply notice does not get sent “instantly”, giving people a chance to edit or even delete the post. I love “Pencil2D”, but am finding I do not like WordPress at all,…and I know they have it on FaceBook, but that is almost worse then WordPress. sorry to drift of topic

10

I’ve been trying to use ImageMagick to make a video from my saved images from Pencil, but all my lines are black and the background is transparent, which shows up as black in the video when I save it, making a completely black video. Is there a way I can make the background of all 280 images white without having to individually edit each one?

11

I don’t know how or if loops work in Windows, but you could do this on your ubuntu machine:

for i in *.png; do convert "$i" -background "#ffffff" -alpha remove "converted-$i"; done

It will iterate through each *.png file in the current directory, creating a new png file with the prefix “converted-” added to the file name. The alpha channel is removed, and the color #ffffff (white) is used to replace it.

NOTE: When copying the command, keep in mind how Wordpress handles line wrapping. There might be an unwanted linebreak and/or hyphen inserted.

12

Thanks, Milkshaw!

That probably took a lot of effort and research but I fixed the problem by making a new layer in the animation and coloring its one frame white.

13

Cool, that works too =o)

The convert command i posted is something i’ve had in my reference files for years, since it’s useful but not something i use often enough to learn by heart.