Animation frame problem

[simsmj]

On several occasions now I have come across a problem in XaraX in the animation mode. In the current example I have created four animated gifs in Xara3D, just simple rotations of four extruded characters (M, I, K, E) and imported these into XaraX for rearranging the frame order, and cropping. At first all was well, but after I had re-ordered the frames, and was starting to delete extraneous ones, I noticed that some of the frames were now displaying as 2-colour bitmaps, as shown below. I had saved the .xar file before starting to remove frames, so I reloaded it, and found that I still had the problem, but it didn't affect the same frames as before. I have repeated the reload several times, and it is always a different selection of frames that is affected. Is this a known bug?

Mike

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Mike Sims

[simsmj]

On several occasions now I have come across a problem in XaraX in the animation mode. In the current example I have created four animated gifs in Xara3D, just simple rotations of four extruded characters (M, I, K, E) and imported these into XaraX for rearranging the frame order, and cropping. At first all was well, but after I had re-ordered the frames, and was starting to delete extraneous ones, I noticed that some of the frames were now displaying as 2-colour bitmaps, as shown below. I had saved the .xar file before starting to remove frames, so I reloaded it, and found that I still had the problem, but it didn't affect the same frames as before. I have repeated the reload several times, and it is always a different selection of frames that is affected. Is this a known bug?

Mike

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Mike Sims

[simsmj]

It is as if the frame has "inverted" the transparency, so what was transparent in the original image is now black, and everything else is now transparent! I didn't realise this until I posted the exanple, which shows a grey shape in the centre, which is the colour of the background box. It was white before I made the background box.

Mike

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Mike Sims

[Egg Bramhill]

I've never come across this problem. It's very strange. What colour depth did you export the animated gif at? There is a bug in XaraX which cocks up the background i.e. If you create a blue background for an animation in XaraX, on preview or export it reverts to white. It could possibly be a part of this bug. Try the export from Xara3D without a transparency and see if you get the same result in XaraX.
Hope this helps
Egg

[simsmj]

I tried your suggestion, and had no problems this time. The animated gifs from Xara3D were 256 colour transparent, the original background being a light grey. I just unticked the transparent option and re-exported.

But it does mean that the cropped and re-exported animated gifs have a non-transparent background, even if I tick the transparent option in XaraX. Is there a straightforward way to re-tag a colour as transparent in XaraX?

Mike

http://www.simsmj.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/weesig.gif
Just chugging away...
Mike Sims