Found a nice animated gif - how to use as an SVG ?

[JezUK]

I've nearly completed my Pano for my client, but I'm not happy with the included Hotspots which come with Pano2VR - man, they are very, very basic !

So I've looked around online and found one which is quite nice but it's a .gif.

When I go to my Skin editor, hoping to simply be able to replace the not nice Hotspot with my newly found one, I can't.

In the Skin Editor it is only allowing me to put in another svg - yet as already mentioned, I've downloaded an animated gif.

How do I overcome this issue ?

Use a third party piece of software ? If so which ?

PS - where can I find a really good set of animated svg sets for Pano2VR (v5) ? I'm a bit surprised that it comes with so little in this respect.

Many thanks.

[360Texas]

Two different file type formats.

Gif's are bit map graphics. Meaning contents 200 x 200 pixel square image contains (200x200=) different colored 40,000 pixels that when looked at form a pattern shapes.

SVG's are scaled vector graphics. Meaning the file contents text written rows of instructions about point to point drawn lines, line thicknesses, color, lengths that when looked at form scaleable shapes.


For bit maps like .jpg, .tif or .bmp I use Photoshop CS6.
For .svg creation I use a free public domain program called "Inkscape". Google it.

Hope this helps

[Hopki]

Hi,
If you have an animated gif then what you will need to do is replace the SVG element with an external loader.
I say external loader because at the moment to see a gif animate it has to be externally loaded.
So for a step by step example to replace the Simplex skin hotspot graphic with an animated gif do the following:
1) Click on the hsimage SVG and look at its position and size. Also note it is a child of the hotspot template hotspot.
2) Add an external loader and set the same position and size. Using your mouse drag the external loader in the file tree to the same location as the hsimage.SVG.
3) Delete the hsimage SVG
4) Add a copy of your animated GIF in the images folder.
5) In the external loader properties set the URL to the animated GIF, example, images/hotspot.gif.

This is assuming that the animated GIF is the same size as the hsimage SVG.
Regards,
Hopki

[JezUK]

Thanks Hopki,

Your steps sound easy enough for me to follow, unfortunately though I don't know what an external loader is !

Please can you enlighten me so that I can carry out the steps you say to do ?

Many thanks.

Kindest regards,

Jez

[JezUK]

Actually, I've just noticed that the animated gif I want to use is on a white background, which has reminded me that gif's don' support transparency.

So I guess I'll have to learn how to create an animated SVG !

Many thanks.

[Hopki]

Hi Jez,
Open the skin editor and it is one of the tools, see:
version 4.x
version 5.x
Regards,
Hopki

[Roy Reed]

Actually, I've just noticed that the animated gif I want to use is on a white background, which has reminded me that gif's don' support transparency.

GIFs do support transparency. You can specify one of the (max) 256 colours to be transparent.

And here's a how to animate SVGs link: http://tutorials.jenkov.com/svg/svg-animation.html