Convert animations to .png-strips for use in Kontakt

[Maximilian Kisbiro]

Hey Pb´ers!

currently I am working on an instrument with a custon GUI and hired
a graphics designer for this purpose. As I know Kontakt accepts
animations only as a horizontal or vertical oriented png where all single
frames are stitched togehter?
She made the animated objects with Adobe Aftereffects but isn´t able to
export it this way. So she could give me the animation or an export with the
requested number of pictures.
Do you know any free software or tool where I can convert these two formats
into this png-strip Kontakt wants?

Max

[LochStoch]

What’s the file format of the animation? It’s usually not too hard to achieve these kinds of tasks with a shell script. I could have a go at doing writing one for you if you’re comfortable sharing the file?

Edit: Just saw you said you had all the individual frames as images. I think I already have a script I wrote to join these. Let me dig it out for you.

[LochStoch]

Actually, you don’t need a script for this task. You can do this quite easily with Image Magick which is a set of command-line tools for processing images in limitless ways. You can download it from here (https://imagemagick.org/script/download.php).

Then if you have a folder with all your animation frames inside it you can stitch them together using this command (this example assumes your images are pngs):

convert -append *.png output.png

This will create a PNG file called output.png which will be a vertically stacked image. The *.png line tells image magick to look for all png files in the folder you are in. The png frames will need to named in a way that means they will be in the correct order if you were to sort by name. For example you could have something like:

file_001.png
file_002.png
file_003.png … etc.

If you’re using numbers in the filenames it’s important to zero pad them (i.e. 1 would e 001, not 1) because computers sort alphabetically so file_2 would be sorted. after file_112.

[Maximilian Kisbiro]

Hey,

thanks! I will try this this afternoon and will let you know, how it worked.
Yes, I alreday have he first animation as single png´s.

Max

[Maximilian Kisbiro]

Uhm, how exactly do I use/access this command-oriented processing?

[LochStoch]

Yeah, it can be a steep learning curve if you haven’t used the command line much before but it’s pretty straightforward once you’ve done it once.

Open your Terminal app (Mac, Linux Shell on Linux or Command Line on Windows). Then the first thing you do is change the directory to your folder with the animation frames. You do this using the “change directory” command (cd) This will look like something like…

cd path/to/your/folder

Then just run the image magick command.

convert -append *.png output.png

[Maximilian Kisbiro]

I had some trouble getting it to work at all, but dang, that works!

Thanks Mate!

[LochStoch]

No worries! So it did work for you in the end?

[Maximilian Kisbiro]

Yeah, last time I worked with the console was 10 years ago in the computer science class
during my bachelors.

At the beginning it did not work at all. So I installed the library via vc++red as mentioned on their website.
But this still didn´t work. I found a tutorial on properly isntalling it and to use the convert-function
a checkbox for legacy-content had to be activated during installation, which was not activated per default.
And in the console there needs to “magick” to be written before other commands…
If anyone is intereset in this.

After this troubleshooting everything worked fine, tahnks.

I would love to give a sneak-peak on the UI but I don´t want to spoiler 😉
And I bet I need some more weeks or even months KSP´ing.

[Paul Bell]

I’ve tried several times to download the Orchestral Sample Pack with Northern Film Orchestra but all that happens when I click on the Download Now button is it goes to the next page which is the details about the process and the orchestra, a youtube video and some Soundcloud tracks?? I’ve tried in Chrome and Safari. I’m on a 2019 iMac running Big Sur. Any thoughts?

[Maximilian Kisbiro]

Hey,

on this page on the right side is a small section titled DOWNLOADS.
Directly under this caption is the download-link titled “Kontakt 5, DecentSampler”
Click this one and you should be fine.

[Paul Bell]

Thanks. Do I have to do this even though I already have Kontakt 5 and 6?

[Paul Bell]

I downloaded form that link as you suggested.Any idea how I get it into Logic? I have all my other Sample Libraries including Spitfire stuff there no problem.

[Maximilian Kisbiro]

This is only the library. As the name of the donload-link suggested you need
the full (paid) version of Kontakt (at least 5) and/or DecentSampler, which is free:

Decent Sampler Plugin [FREE]

Then you can use Kontakt or DS in your DAW and load the presets of NFO within these plugins.

These bibs are not listed in Kontakts library-tab on the left. For Kontakt you have to drag the
.nki´s directly into kontakt.. Or use the the browser within Kontakt.

[Maximilian Kisbiro]

Did it work out for you?

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