B/W only GIF

[Jkoseattle]

I've made a handful of animated GIFs all using the same source image and a few simple vectors. When rendering the final gif, the only setting I change is to check Transparency. All of them work except one, and with this one project, neither the colors or the opacity renders properly. Instead of fades, the layers pop on and off, and everything is black or white, no color at all. I can't figure out what's different about this one GIF project, when all the others are rendering just fine. Ideas?

[synthsin75]

Since I assume you've been sampling gif color from the render window to get good gifs, I might need to see an example file (with just enough to show the problem).

[danielandrus]

Yes! I've been having the same (I assume) problem! Some of my gifs come out looking fine, and then i get stuff like this:



at first i thought i might be because i was trying to do it with transparency, or because it had masks. so i took out the masks and rendered it without transparency:



and no, the fish is not supposed to be blue. Here's what hes supposed to look like:



Help?

[Greenlaw]

Just to be sure, follow these steps:

1. Scrub to a frame where you see all the elements, meaning the sky, water AND fish.
2. Press Ctrl-R.
3. Click on the Sample GIF Colors button.
4. Now render your GIF.

If it still doesn't work, do you have an actual background for the sky or is that an empty space. If it's the latter, put a white box there.

Good luck!

[Greenlaw]

You also want to make sure you have enough colors selected in the GIF settings. GIF is an archaic format and it supports only 256 colors maximum, which isn't a lot and it may need to include all the 'in-between' colors in the anti-aliasing. Also bear in mind that the higher your GIF color setting, the larger the file will be. You can use Dithering to create the perception of more colors but it does make the image look 'grainy.' The trick is finding the right balance for your animation but it's never going to look as good as your original unless you start out with a very limited color palette in your animation.

Hopefully, Moho will eventually support one of the newer formats like HEIF or APNG for GIF-like animations for the web. These formats do not have any of the 8-bit limitations of GIF. Of course, the developers are probably waiting to see if more browsers will pick up either of these formats first.

[danielandrus]

Just to be sure, follow these steps:

1. Scrub to a frame where you see all the elements, meaning the sky, water AND fish.
2. Press Ctrl-R.
3. Click on the Sample GIF Colors button.
4. Now render your GIF.

If it still doesn't work, do you have an actual background for the sky or is that an empty space. If it's the latter, put a white box there.

Good luck!

Thank you! this actually worked!