Just found this cool script and well I ran it on default and WOW!
It's called Fire Animator, in the Animation menu and just WOW!

It's not perfect, but I am gonna play with the settings some to see if I can get rid of that light orange edge and some of the alliasing.

I found something interesting, in GIMP 2.7.3 I have all my layers in a layer group and now I can't playback through the animation menu.... It appears as though GIMP thinks I have only 1 layer...

Cool effect, thanks for the link.

For those who do not have the Fire Animator script, you can get it here.

http://gimpfx-foundry.sourceforge.net/browse26/release/madsen-fire-animator.scm
I don't understand why Fx-Foundry can't make the file download instead opening it. I've attached the file below.

If only it didn't leave that ring around whatever you flame!!!

Well you can do it but it's a bit of a bother. Write your text, center it and be sure to right click the layer and do Layer to Image size. Ctrl D to duplicate it. Minimize the duplicate image for now.

Do Alpha to Selection with your text, Select > Shrink > 1.

Run the script.

Bring up the duplicated text image. Copy it to the animation you just created and move it down to the bottom layer. Use Filters > Animation > Overlay Background. Delete the bottom layer.

Just a thought...

Is there a script that places an image over the top of your animation layers? Sort of like Saul's background script, but only make the text layer (with alpha channel) appear over the text in the animation to eclipse it?

I was hoping that would happen when I ran the script with it shrunk 1 pixel. I tried running the script with a path of the original sized layer and the path was still there when I finished - could fill it with black on a transparent layer at the bottom and overlay the bg.

Why not just do a path selection fill on each layer? How many layers, by the way?

You can choose the amount of layers. Mine has 15.

Late edit: I made a new transparent layer, moved it to the bottom. Did Path to Selection, filled it with black and did Overlay Background and that was a little easier and faster than duplicating the image and pasting it back later.

I did it the lazy way and chose the color and deleted it for each layer.

The aliasing is most likely occurring in the transition of the image from RGB mode to Indexed. It has been a few years since the script was resurrected from its original GIMP 1.2 form and I suspect that I did not do things as well as I should have (I didn't really understand Script-fu that well back then).

Here is an animation I made using the script back then...




This is pretty much as one should expect (else you would break animations of images with no groupings). If layer grouping is ever to have much significance to an animated image, they would probably be interpreted such that an entire group should be treated as one frame of the animation. Other interpretations might be useful, but should need to be converted to a "normal" animated image for playback.

Wow saul had no idea this was your creation!
It's a very cool effect, just has some inperfection as you said.
But for being new thats amazing! (I can't even make fire, let alone script it).

Are you thinking of going back and working on it at all?

I love your flaming GIMP animation thats very cool!

Oh, no. I merely updated the script from its original version written by Vidar Madsen. That was about five years ago -- the original script was from about ten years ago. Looking back, it seems like the changes I made were rather trivial but at the time I really struggled to understand what was going on (I think I spent about two weeks on it). I remember wasting an entire day just because I was trying to work on a white background and not seeing anything close to "flames" being produced.

I also recall contacting Mr Madsen and getting permission to modify the script. Though its GPL licensing permits doing so, I figured it was only polite to make sure he did not have plans for updating the script himself. Technically, I violated the terms of the GPL licensing because I did not add the information about my having changed the script; but I did not know any better at the time.


I am sort of waiting for version 2.8 before engaging in too much more scripting. If I get a chance, I want to spend some time creating some tutorials on Script-fu.


Thanks, I wish I had a bigger version of it but back then a lot of people were on dial-up and even a quarter-megabyte image file was bordering on being a breach of forum etiquette.

Thanks for a direct link to the script, O. I didn't realize that I had googled it and not followed a link, so I should have thanked for the tip!

I have this in my FX-Foundry installation, and if I understand correctly,it does just what you asked.
FX-Foundry > Animation > Overlay background.

You put the layer you want to overlay on the others, in the bottom position. Then just run the script and it places the bottom layer (with alpha) on each other layer.

But doesn't that place a layer under each new layer, I want the combined layer to go on top of each layer.

My combine animation script has the choice of putting the bottom layer under or on top of each layer. The one I used was Filters > Animation > Overlay Background

Ok, rechecking... and no, mine doesn't give me an option to place it under or over.

This is the path to the one I'm using.

http://flashingtwelve.brickfilms.com/GIMP/Scripts/combine-bg.scm