Manual v 1.0.5 – December 2015 © Nik Ska & Mike Mehanig
Summary Introduction Supported AE versions Contacts Changelog Installing MacOS Windows IMPORTANT NOTE: Windows 7 Usage Settings Gif Folder Width FPS Save video file Good to know Lossless preset Known Issues GifGun freezes on “Rendering” or “Here it comes” phase Universal solution Windowsspecific solution If really nothing helps:
Introduction GifGun is the new tool for making GIF animations right within Adobe After Effects. This feature has been deprecated since CS4 and users were forced to use Photoshop or other software. We are bringing the freedom of creativity back with oneclick solution. As simple as it gets, but the realisation took us a loot of effort and testing and will demand even more. But that is nothing compared to the joy of simple yet powerful solutions. We hope you like GifGun. Important note: Since GifGun is a oneclick solution, we are still experimenting with GIF compression algorithms. We know there is no “one size fits all” solution, so we are looking forward your feedback and use cases on our facebook page. This will improve user experience in the upcoming updates. Yes, our tool is inherently designed to evolve, and that’s when we need you, our users.
Supported AE versions We have tested GifGun 1.0 to work on After Effects CC and up. CS5 and CS6 also work, but we did not put much effort into testing those versions. If you experience any troubles launching or working with the script, let us know.
Contacts Write Nik on Twitter: http://twitter/nik_ska Or you may use our studio email address:
[email protected]
Changelog 1.1 Completely redesigned "Settings" interface. Now even more clear. "Maximum colors" dropdown list. GifGun v1.0 made 256 color GIFs by default and we found that most GIFs look great even with 128 colors and on average 15% lighter. Experiment with low color value for some artsy effects. You may choose not to loop GIF. We have completely redesigned the way GifGun works with paths, so you may work in any language environment. Minor bugs fixes and engine improvements.
1.0.5 Fixed Unicode paths issue. Now truly international. 1.0.4 “Lossless” preset check 1.0.3 MacOS installer added 1.0 initial release
Installing Before installing make sure you have allowed scripts to write files. Check this in Preferences: MacOS : After Effects>Preferences>General>Allow Scripts to Write Files and Access Network Windows : Edit>Preferences>General>Allow Scripts to Write Files and Access Network
Quit After Effects.
MacOS Installation for Mac is pretty easy – there is a pkg installation file in the OSX folder. Dobule click it and follow installation instructions.
Launch After Effects, go to Window and select g ifGun.jsxbin You may then dock the panel and start making awesome gifs right away!
Windows Copy files from WIN subfolder into C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe After Effects CС[x]\Support Files\Scripts\ScriptUI Panels
Doubleclick install_gifGun.bat provided with the script.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Windows 7 On some Windows 7 builds you may get the following error while installing the .bat file: GifBaby.exe Entry Point Not Found The procedure entry point ucrtbase.terminate could not be located in the dynamic link library apimswincrtruntimel110.dll. OK
Fix : install the following update to C runtime library. The issue appears on the systems that were not updated on a regular basis. Well, install it anyway if you are on Windows 7. After you copy the necessary files, launch After Effects, go to Window and select gifGun.jsxbin You may then dock the panel and start making awesome gifs right away!
Usage The usage is pretty straightforward: just save your project and click “Make Gif” button. Voila.
Click the gear icon to access Settings window. Yeah, not really Oneclick. But hey, someone needs to set those settings!
Settings We believe a properly engineered tool does not need a big manual, so we will just list the features.
OUTPUT TO Choose a custom folder for your GIFs. Otherwise, GifGun will create a “renders” subfolder in a project folder.
Resize to width GifGun resizes proportionally, so you have to input only width.
Maximum colors Tweak color palette. 256 for best result. 128 is still great. 64 and 32 are great for some web GIFs. 8 and 16 are purely for fun.
FPS Pretty selfexplanatory. You can set it to “as comp”, and GifGun will render with composition FPS settings.
Save Video Copy By default the temporary file is removed. You may keep it of course.
Loop Uncheck and you will get a boring nonlooped GIF.
Good to know Lossless preset GifGun first renders a video file with “Lossless” preset. If you don’t have the “Lossless” preset, create one. Without it GifGun will fail to start. Set it to Quicktime – Animation Compression codec on Mac and to Avi – None codec on Windows. You should also have a render queue clean of other Queued elements. If there are some queued elements, GifGun will offer to clean them for you. If you refuse, you get no gif this time. Trial version is limited to render gifs at 15fps and only 350px wide.
Known Issues For now we are aware of only one major issue. If you find more, contact us!
GifGun freezes on “Rendering” or “Here it comes” phase You wanna wait for a little. Weak machines may render big gifs really slow. If nothing happens, quit After Effects. If it doesn’t help, see below.
Universal solution Try and launch install script provided with GifGun again. It’s possibly the trouble with permissions.
Windowsspecific solution Go to (gifGun) folder and doubleclick GifBaby.exe , then go to “s tatic_libs ” subfolder and doubleclick ffmpeg.exe file. You may get a screen asking you for permission. Click “OK” and proceed.
You may also want to lower your firewall protection, or include the said .exe files into exceptions.
If really nothing helps: 1. 2. 3. 4.
Go to “My orders” page at aescripts.com Find GifGun entry and click “View Order” Choose “Open Support Ticket” in the lower right part of the screen. Describe your problem as specific as possible. Please include your AE and operating system versions. If you use a nonenglish version of AE, please specify this as well. We will be immediately notified and solve the problem.
