Gaius Baltar's Images of the Malestrom of Battle - UPDATED 9/14/2023

[Gaius Baltar]

The Crusades - Oasis of Death x10

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[Antissa]

Intriguing gallery, Gaius Baltar : )

[D.B. Cooper]

Awesome! I love the action ones, and the halo of heat enveloping the two guys before they burst into flame.

[Gaius Baltar]

The Crusades - Valley of Death, Pt I x4

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[blekaut]

Ah I love the first one, nice job

[Gaius Baltar]

The Valley of Death, Part II x5

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Thanks for the comments

[D.B. Cooper]

Keep 'em coming my man!

[blekaut]

I love the pics you make with cinedit

[Gaius Baltar]

The Valley of Death, Pt. III x4

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The Cavalry Battle Continues x4

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[Gaius Baltar]

Spanish Conquest of Texcoco x5

The battle begins....

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[Gaius Baltar]

Animated GIFs created from a Kingdoms Norwegian campaign.

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[Giovi]

wow the last ones are awesome+rep

[Aldgarkalaughskel]

Ripping animations, well done.

[Desperado †]

Brilliant animation. Very good.

[Gaius Baltar]

Two more animated GIFs, These were constructed from a Byzantium Kingdoms campaign (H/H), currently in progress.

The first animation was taken from a battle near Ankara. Mostly a skrimish between horsearchers, the infantry were able to get into the action very late in the batle.

The Greek Firethrowers have flanked the Turkish generals bodyguard.

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A Byzantium column under Marcos was ambushed by a much smaller Turkish force just outside the city while traversing the hills nearby. The march towards Adana has caught the Turks by surprise, but appears to be bogging down here.

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[D.B. Cooper]

Gaius Baltar is the MAN.

[Giovi]

great job but the second one is just abit to dark btw awesome can u explain how do make that?

[Gaius Baltar]

great job but the second one is just abit to dark btw awesome can u explain how do make that?

Producing an animated GIF requires several elements;

1. A represenative sequence of a battle scene you would like to portray. A good sequence would have a before, during and after sequence of frames. For instance, a cavalry charge, a cannon firing, musket volley, or sword swing, etc.

Ill start with my first sequence here, as it was the simplest to put together. Heres the three screens I used, though I got them out of order in the final GIF.





I would just like to add I am using Photobucket at the moment as it is far superior to Imageshack for the purpose.

2. Photoediting software. I use AdobePhotoshop for basic photo editing. I open the TGAs and crop the image, then save as a JPEG.

I then switch to Macromedia Fireworks to construct the animated GIF.

I would first open the first image above, I named this one FL1.jpg. Next, I want to "animate" the first pic in the sequence, in this case FL1.jpg.

Open the "Modify" menu, and choose animation;


In the "animation" drop-down menu, I choose 5 frames with no movement. Opacity to 100%.


I repeated this procedure for the other two frames in my sequence. I set all at 5 frames, no movement, 100% opacity.

Next I choose the first frame in my sequence, FL1.jpg, and moved the animation to the last frame (frame 5).


Next, select the next image in the sequence, in this case FL2.jpg, and "copy" from the main "edit" menu. Select the first animation frames, FL1.jpg, and then "paste" from the main edit menu. What this does is copy the next animation sequence into the first, starting at the last frame (5) of the first sequence.

Repeat above procedure, move FL1.jpg to last frame, (now 9 frames), then select FL3.jpg and copy from main edit menu, then paste into FL1.jpg from main edit menu.

Your FL1.jpg should now have 13 frames. Next we are going to export the frames into an animated GIF.

Select "Animated GIF websnap"" from the sidebar "Optimization" menu.


Go to the main file menu and choose "Export"


Choose a suitable filename for your animated GIF, here I went with FLEX.gif.


Your finished product should look something like this;


The second animation in my previous post was somewhat more complicated, and Ill work on the tutorial for it this weekend.

[Giovi]

wow nice tutorial i will try to make something like it+rep when i can

[Gaius Baltar]

Animated GIF tutorial Pt.2

In this tutorial we are going to use an overlay technique to get a shadow or ghosting effect (not sure if the term) in our animated GIFs.

Refer to the first tutorial for info on opening the tgas, converting to JPGs, and opening in Fireworks (or whatever animation program you are using). The techniques I describe here with be identical to those in the first tutorial, so I can save on the screen images.

1. Capture a movement sequence you want to portray, I chose a flamethrower attack on a infantry unit located on a hillside.

2. Crop the images, if desired. Here are the four screens after cropping in Photoshop.

388


389


390


391


We will use these for this tutorial.

3. Now open your animation program, in my case, Fireworks.

4. Open image 388.jpg. Animate the selection, choosing 5 frames, no movement, 100% Opacity. Move animation to the last frame (frame 5).

5. Now save the work at this point, I named my creation flh.png (a fireworks file). This will be are working image, saving the originals.

6. Chose 388.jpg again, and modify the animation, set Opacity to go from 100% to 0% (fades out). Copy from the main edit menu.

7. Paste into flh.png using the main edit menu, this attaches are "fadeout" sequence to the last frame (5) of the main animation sequence. Move flh.png animation back to frame 5.

8. Close 388.jpg.

9. Open 399.jpg. Animate selection, 5 frames, no movement, 100% opacity. Copy from main edit menu.

10. Paste into flh.png at frame 5. This overlays are main animation sequences with the "fadeout" sequence. Move flh.png to last frame, #9.

11. Chose 399.jpg, again, modify animation, Opacity from 100 to 0%. Copy from main edit menu.

12. Paste into flh.png at last frame, #9. Move flh.png to last frame, now #13.

13. Close 389.jpg

14. Repeat sequences with 390.jpg and 391.jpg. As you can see, we are overlaying the main animation sequences with the "fadeouts" from the previous frames.

15. Export to animated GIF as described in previous tutorial.

If all goes well, you should end up with something looking like this;



Ill capture some screens to elaborate on this process.