[fencepost]

In this tutorial I will show you how to create an animation similar to this:



The tutorial will require the following scripts to expedite the process....

Animated Fire
Animated Polar Coordinates
Gaussian Blur All Layers
Plastic Wrap All Layers
Edge Detect All Layers

After downloading the scripts, place them in your GIMP Scripts folder (ie...C:\Program Files\GIMP-2.0\share\gimp\2.0\scripts). Refresh your scripts and you're ready to go. I will point to the appropriate menu location at the right time.

The settings I'm providing are only examples. As always, I encourage you to experiment.

Let's begin!

Step 1

On a new image, go to Filters > Animation > Animated Fire... and choose the following settings.

[img width=544 height=480]http://img40.imagesh...iresettings.jpg[/img]

I'm going with the Mexican Flag Smooth gradient.



Click OK and you should have an animation that resembles this (mine's not animated, just showing the top layer)



Step 2

Let's blur the fire animation to smooth things out a little bit. Go to Filters > Blur > Gaussian Blur All Layers... and apply these settings:



Click OK and your image will now resemble this:



Step 3

Next, we're going to give additional motion to the flames by running the Animated Polar Scripts filter, which is found here: Filters > Animation > Animated Polar Coordinates... Use the following settings:



Click OK and you should have an image that resembles this:



Step 4

I discovered that we need to add some shiny spots to the animation to give the final result the effect of "flying bits". To add the shine, we'll use the Animated Plastic Wrap script. It's found under Filters > Light and Shadow > Plastic Wrap All Layers... I'm using the following settings:



This script works differently with each gradient type. I recommend that you use higher numbers at first (adds less shine) and run the script a second or third time to get the desired effect. Too much shine may result in a "busy" result. Again, experiment.

Click OK and here's the result:



Notice there's just a little shine.

Step 5

Now, to finish the animation, we'll use the Edge Detect All Layers script (Filters > Edge-Detect > Edge Detect All Layers...) using the following settings:



Click OK

Your animation is now finished and should look something like this:



I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. Let me know if you need clarification.

Happy GIMPing!!

Art

[BernieW]

Here is my try, I used the French Flag smooth gradient.

Thank you for the new scripts.

[molly]

Very nice Bernie

[Silvertayl]

Hey Art thanks for another intersting and fun animation tut, here's my first try:



I'm not mad on the pale flecks is there some way to avoid getting those? Then again they almost look like a fireworks display could be a variation? (hint, hint)

I'll try it out again with varying settings and post some results.

I noticed the fire script has been updated with more options I will have to download the newest version.

Thanks again

Silvertayl

[fencepost]

Thanks for trying it out BernieW and Silvertayl! I like the outcome and I'm working on the fireworks concept!

To minimize or eliminate the flying bits, skip Step 4 (Plastic Wrap). The Plastic Wrap is what adds the shine to the image which is what gets enhanced by the edge detect step.

[Silvertayl]

Here's one I played with.

[Oregonian]

Silvertayl said:

Here's one I played with.

That's gorgeous Silvertayl! I love it.

A few items here.

I was thinking fireworks with the center chunks.

I found that it was very cranky about the gradient. The gradient had to have white in the center or the plastiwrap filled the layers almost solid with white no matter how large I made the setting. 100 was the limit and I had a lot of white even at that setting.

A question about image size. That setting ... does that affect the size of what is in the image? Like my image is 200x200, if the settings were 400x400 would it change anything?

This one, I applied Threshold (default settings) to each layer and pretty much wiped out any of the waving fronds. I used the resulting black and white layers as masks, copied each mask to the layer it was on, applied them to the layers, locked the transparency on the layers (I have scripts for those), and used the bucket tool to fill each layer with a colorful pattern.

After it was finished I thought blurring it by about 1 would have improved it. It's not what I had pictured but I had fun playing with it anyway. :mrgreen:

[molly]

Very nice silvertayl and "O"......

Here is mine using "tropical colors" gradient

[Silvertayl]

This one is using the default fire gradient.



Sorry this one is so big I used the default size and Ribbon colours, minus plastic wrap.