GIF’s are constantly gaining in popularity and now they can be easily integrated and embedded into Facebook posts, blogs and websites.
The technology behind the animated GIF has really been around forever.
There are sites like Giphy (library of animated gufs), Imgur has their own GIF maker, and there are services that will easily turn YouTube clips into animated GIFs as well.
When motion designers wants to showcase their work, sites like dribble and Behance help them to share small bits of content as animated GIF’s.
Even though GIF’s are so popular and important for many designers to be able to share their work, there hasn’t been an easy way to create them.
Commonly, an artist will have to render out an image sequence from After Effects, then open up those images into Photoshop and save an animated GIF.
Also, there are other ways available to create animated GIF’s, including online tools and sites, but nothing perhaps as simple for an After Effects user than the GifGun plug-in for After Effects.
This plugin allows animated GIF creation super simple right out of After Effects.
GifGun Animated GIF creator for After Effects
GifGun is available as a .zip with MAC and Windows versions. On the MAC, you can simply click the installer to set up the plug-in.
On Windows, you need to first move the files to the proper After Effects subfolder before installing.
Additionally, on either Operating Systems, it’s important to first open After Effects and within the Edit > Preferences > General, turn on “Allow Scripts to Write Files and Access Network” if not already enabled.
Once you have the script installed, restart After Effects, click on the Window tab and open the script.
Note that GifGun plug-in is compatible with After Effects CC 2015, CC 2014, and CC.
Developers claim that it also works with CS6 and CS5, but that they didn’t do much testing on those platforms.
How To Make A GIF With GifGun
GifGun interface is quite simple. There is basically one button that says “Make Gif”.
Set your in and out points and Push that button.
Your comp will render a gif around those in and out points.
You do have a few control options as well.
Such as you can set up a folder for your GIF’s to render to.
You can set the GIF width, and the height will adjust to match.
And You can set frame rate, and also save a video file.
Pricing And Download
GifGun doesn’t do anything that you can’t already do with a combination of other tools and websites.
But if you make a lot of animated GIF’s, it can certainly save you some time. You can get the plug-in for $29.99.
You can also download a free trial to test it out. Though you will be limited to only 350 px wide GIF’s with the trial.
Visit GifGun product page for more information on GifGun plug-in for After Effects.
