Getting Good GIFs

This one's public, since it's handy info for everyone. If any of my Patrons wants specific questions answered on how to do this or more specifics, hey, just message me. Y'all get extra service :D (you've all got special colors on our Discord and everything)

 Casual Social GIFs 

First, use ScreenToGIF: https://www.screentogif.com/ 

Then, you want to set up a custom render mode in Unity editor. Just refer to the above image, or, here again:

It's that little plus at the button of the display modes drop-down. Name the display mode based on what window size you feed into ScreenToGIF (in this case, "GIF 800x450") and set the actual resolution a few pixels wider. That gives you some wiggle room when aligning the capture window over the render window.

That then saves out as mp4 or GIF. Good quality for both, perfect for casual social sharing.

High Quality Marketing GIFs

Don't use the above for your presskit though. For that, here's my flow:

First, you want to capture video via FRAPS: http://www.fraps.com/. This produces incredibly high-res, effectively uncompressed video. You need FRAPS installed to work with its output, btw, in case you hand this off to someone else. It uses a custom codec.

BTW, in general terms, I beg you. Don't use OBS or Shadowplay. Those both produce compressed video. I know, it looks ok to you, etc, but you're still double-compressing your footage. You want that crisp 60fps trailer? You need to work with as raw source video as you can muster.

Assuming you're working from FRAPS, next, you run that through a video encoder. I use Sony Vegas. I set it to output 1080p. I tend to use AVI containers for Photoshop, but it seems to ingest MP4s fine now too. So here's the export settings I use for both AVI and MP4, take your pick. (you really don't want to do this if you're working from Shadowplay or OBS footage, though - just skip this step)

AVI container export settings

MP4 container export

I use the AVI for YouTube uploading and the MP4 for social sharing. Uploaded AVIs with the above settings seem to crunch less. In the context of GIF making though, I don't know if it matters which you use. I use the AVIs for it.

Once you've got your video, just open it in Photoshop. I use Photoshop CC, whatever the current version is. Just open the video file like you would any usual PNG or whatever, it'll work. (sorry, I can't help GIMP users, I can barely make that program draw a circle)

Now you want to select the Timeline for the video, likely already selected, and resize it to whatever size you want the GIF to be. You used to have to Windows -> Views -> Motion, and then shift-click select ALL the frames, before resizing (and then also change the per-frame timing the same way), but current CC is less jank.

You'll see this. It's cool, press Convert.

Now go File -> Export -> Save For Web (Legacy). Now we're looking at this. Always remember to set the looping value to Infinity. God knows why it defaults to Once.

Now twiddle the settings accordingly, and there ya go. You can in fact re-size the video in that GIF saving window. However. That resize won't be as smart as the resize you do outside this legacy window, and it'll look like junk (and take forever). So probably don't do it. If the size looks too big in here, close the window, undo your resize, and redo it to the size you want.

I usually just end up using default settings for the palette, but if you play a bit in there, you can make it look a ton better.

Anyways, there ya go! GIFs for everyone!