CGTips 02 — Export GIF From houdini Mplay

Manual for windows

1. Prepearing

From Houdini 17 was aded ffmpeg export menu from Mplay.

If you don’t have this, you need install and add ffmpeg as a windows environment variable.

Download ffmpeg: https://ffmpeg.org/download.html and unzip in С:\ffmpeg

Then add an environment variable for your destination.

2. Edit houdini files for Gif export

You can try export Gif from ffmpeg menu with video settings, but you get low quality result.

For best quality you need edit 2 files.

1. Add new menu item «ffmpeg Gif» with presets.
   For that open $HFS/houdini/MVexport and add this code:

  <exporter platform="linux windows">
    <label>ffmpeg gif</label>
    <inputImageFormats>jpg png</inputImageFormats>
    <outputFormat id="gif" default="Y">
	<label>Gif Container</label>
	<ext>gif</ext>

	<videoPreset id="low">
	    <label>Low quality</label>
	</videoPreset>
    <videoPreset id="hight">
	    <label>High quality</label>
	</videoPreset>
    </outputFormat>
    <pythonScript>$HFS/houdini/scripts/mvexport/ffmpeg_gif.py</pythonScript>
  </exporter>

And now you can see new menu item.

Get ffmpeg_gif.py and copy in $HFS/houdini/scripts/ffmpeg.py

Replace «CACHE_PALLETE» with your path.
After that you can try export GIF with different presets.

if you have any ideas or suggestions how to improve it you can write to me. Thanks.