Animated GIF's and Lazarus IDE

[Aruna]

Hello everyone, I’m trying to display an animated GIF on a form in the Lazarus IDE. What would be the best approach to achieve this? Do we have a component that I could load with the separate images of the gif animation and then run it through code? OR a component that supports animated gifs natively?

[dsiders]

Hello everyone, I’m trying to display an animated GIF on a form in the Lazarus IDE. What would be the best approach to achieve this? Do we have a component that I could load with the separate images of the gif animation and then run it through code? OR a component that supports animated gifs natively?

Use the Forum search option. Plenty of discussions and suggestions there.

[Khrys]

BGRAControls has  TBGRASpriteAnimation, and together with BGRABitmap's  TBGRAAnimatedGif  it is possible to load and display animated GIFs.

Example copied verbatim from a project where I display an animated logo on a loading screen (comments give important context):

Code: Pascal  [Select][+][-]

1. procedure TFormMain.FormCreate(__Sender: TObject);
2. var
3.   AnimFrames: TBGRAAnimatedGif;
4. begin
5.   AnimFrames := TBGRAAnimatedGif.Create(); // Lazarus doesn't allow direct embedding of .gif files and will instead...
6.   AnimFrames.LoadFromResource('LOGO_LOADING'); // ...decompress all frames at design-time, which is suboptimal
7.   SpriteAnimationLoading.GifImageToSprite(AnimFrames); // (+0.7 s startup time vs. +25 MiB file size)
8.   SpriteAnimationLoading.AnimSpeed := AnimFrames.FrameDelayMs[0]; // Without this line the frame rate is too low (why?)
9.   AnimFrames.Free();
10. end;

[Aruna]

Hello everyone, I’m trying to display an animated GIF on a form in the Lazarus IDE. What would be the best approach to achieve this? Do we have a component that I could load with the separate images of the gif animation and then run it through code? OR a component that supports animated gifs natively?

Use the Forum search option. Plenty of discussions and suggestions there.

Thank you I already did before asking sadly could not find anything that meets my requirements.

[Aruna]

BGRAControls has  TBGRASpriteAnimation, and together with BGRABitmap's  TBGRAAnimatedGif  it is possible to load and display animated GIFs.

Example copied verbatim from a project where I display an animated logo on a loading screen (comments give important context):

Code: Pascal  [Select][+][-]

1. procedure TFormMain.FormCreate(__Sender: TObject);
2. var
3.   AnimFrames: TBGRAAnimatedGif;
4. begin
5.   AnimFrames := TBGRAAnimatedGif.Create(); // Lazarus doesn't allow direct embedding of .gif files and will instead...
6.   AnimFrames.LoadFromResource('LOGO_LOADING'); // ...decompress all frames at design-time, which is suboptimal
7.   SpriteAnimationLoading.GifImageToSprite(AnimFrames); // (+0.7 s startup time vs. +25 MiB file size)
8.   SpriteAnimationLoading.AnimSpeed := AnimFrames.FrameDelayMs[0]; // Without this line the frame rate is too low (why?)
9.   AnimFrames.Free();
10. end;

Thank you for this code snippet but after reading the comments I feel the delay will make what I want to do nearly impossible. Here is a link to a a zip file that has the source of a demo game I am putting together using Lazarus IDE and FPC. The request for an animated gif-supported component was to try and simulate an explosion when a bullet collides with an enemy. I will try your code and see though... any suggestions after having a look at the attached zip would be very welcome.

[cdbc]

Hi
Just a thought...
Why don't you ask how they'd do it, in the 'Castle-Game-Engine' forum, just give them the last explanation from reply #4 in this thread...
They're friends of our forum and Michalis is himself a member here 
Regards Benny

[mav]

I'm using a component made by someone called Escafandra...it works pretty well for me.
I've made an example of how it's used:

[lainz]

with bgrabitmao you can draw the gif according to your own timer... just load into memory the gif first so it's loading time is not a problem.

or use a game dedicated tool better...

[Aruna]

Hi
Just a thought...
Why don't you ask how they'd do it, in the 'Castle-Game-Engine' forum, just give them the last explanation from reply #4 in this thread...
They're friends of our forum and Michalis is himself a member here 
Regards Benny

Hi Benny, I did think about asking in the 'Castle-Game-Engine' forum but then I thought since I am not using their engine they may wonder why I am asking a question that has nothing to do with 'Castle-Game-Engine' ? I will ask them and see what they say. Thank you.

[Aruna]

I'm using a component made by someone called Escafandra...it works pretty well for me.
I've made an example of how it's used:

Thank you very much @mav I will test your example when I wake up in the morning it has been a rather long tiring day I am too tired to test right away.

[Aruna]

with bgrabitmao you can draw the gif according to your own timer... just load into memory the gif first so it's loading time is not a problem.

or use a game dedicated tool better...

Thank you @lainz I will look into bgrabitmao and I want to do this without using a game-engine.

[lainz]

A typo: is bgrabitmap not bgrabitmao  :[ sorry

[Aruna]

I'm using a component made by someone called Escafandra...it works pretty well for me.
I've made an example of how it's used:

It seems the component was designed for Windows and I am running Linux Debian. Please see attached screenshot.

[Aruna]

A typo: is bgrabitmap not bgrabitmao  :[ sorry

I figured no worries it is all good

[szlbz]

I'm using a component made by someone called Escafandra...it works pretty well for me.
I've made an example of how it's used:

It seems the component was designed for Windows and I am running Linux Debian. Please see attached screenshot.

I have modified it to Linux/Windows version