• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

Root Your New Guide For Creating Your Own Boot Animations

myshkin

Android Enthusiast
Ok y'all, I'm really sorry this isn't the video guide like I promised, you can read the why's in the other thread about boot animations. I think we can get this done with step by step instructions though and of course I will be around to answer any questions and help in any way I can. So let's get started.

First there is some programs you will need. One of them will install toolbars and search engines and junk on your computer. However, it has so many programs it's not funny. If after you have downloaded what you want, you want to uninstall the extra stuff it added and take off the tool bars and stuff, this isn't one of those programs that will suddenly stop working once you do that.
So the list of programs you need:

Notepad++ found at notepad-plus-plus.org free

7zip found at 7-zip.org free

FastStone Photo Resizer found at faststone.org free (I honestly don't remember if this one installs extras or not)

Boot Animation Previewer found at forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.ph?.+=1133703 Now let me say something about this. A few things actually. It's not really needed, it's just nice to be able to view your animation before putting it on your phone. The guy who made this, also did boot animation creator and boot animation factory. I have never been able to get factory to work. On creator and this one you will see where it says the programs are obosolete and no updates will be done on them. That's ok. Don't try to put your animation together with this, we will do that with Notepad++, this is just extra to be able to look at it before putting it on your phone. Now, I used to have Nortons antivirus and I downloaded boot animation creator with no problems. Then I was trying to put everything together for this and I went back and Nortons did away with it. I can't remember what the threat was, it's written down at home, burned up. It was a specfic threat to Nortons though. However, during a scan it never picked up any problems with the program I already had installed and it's the exact same version. So that expired and I went with Microsoft Security Essentials and had not problems downloading the previewer and I even checked the creator and had no problems. You can use the creator if you want, I'm not going over it in this tutorial, we are learning to use Notepad++. Like I said, I just like to be able to view the animation.

So all the downloads are self explantory except FreeStudios. There are only 2 programs off there you need for this, but trust me, there are tons on there that you might want. Let me just say real quick anytime programs it has for cellphones or for LG to be exact, don't bother. It list the phones, and we aren't on it nor is anything close to us. You will need the Free Video to JPG Downloader and the Free YouTube Downloader. The video to jpg is kind of a teal color.

So we are going to be talking about using a video to make your boot animaiton, but you don't have to use a video, actually we will cover other boot animations also. You can use any pictures you want. You can make a gif animation, the program Blender is great for that. That however is a different tutorial.

Okay, let's say I want to make a Calvin and Hobbes dancing boot animation. I have the YouTube downloader installed and I just go searching youtube for a video, hmm, there isn't just one with everything I want, but there are several, I will have to combine. Ok, that is fine. Find the video you want. Highlight the address bar (not the area with the address where you share a video) copy it and go to your Free YouTube Downloader, paste it in there. Now on your Desktop you need to make a new folder and name it Bootanimation. After you paste your address in, click DOWNLOAD. It will let you know when it is through. Just because I am OCD, I do this next part. I go to close it out, sometimes it actually closes and I have to open it back up, but then in the bottom right you see a tab that says, "show files" click that, it will take you where your video is, I always cut it out of there and go to MY Videos in my library and paste it there. I just like all my videos there.

Step one down and that was not hard. Right??

Now open up your Free Video to Jpg Convertor. First we have to set it up. Where it says, Save to: make sure you have it saving to the bootanimation folder you created on your desktop. Then the first two boxes that say 10 and 1, leave them like that. The third one, you can change, depending on how long your video is and how many pictures you expect to get out of it. If it's short, put it at 100 or 200. If it's really long, put it at 400. Click add files, search where you have your videos & then click "convert". Now if your video is exactly how you want it to appear in your animation then you will be ready to move on. However, I have yet to find one that didn't need some editing first. Now is the time to do that if you need to. Open up your bootanimation file & you will have a folder in there with all your pics. Now I have made a Calvin & Hobbes one out of three videos, I just had to go in there & cut & paste the pics I wanted. When doing this instead of making my parts folders, I just make a new folder & put them all in there until I see how many I have. I have done a different of Doctor Who ones & always take out the pics with credits on them. After you have all the pics you're going to use it's time to go to FastStone Photo Resizer. We aren't actually using this to resize our photos but to batch rename them. Okay y'all, I'm working on memory now. Open up the program, in the top left corner there are two options, click the one on the right, I believe it says batch rename. Then you see your little green arrow for "folder up"? Click that & it should take you where you can select your bootanimation folder. Click that & then the folder with your pics. You will see them line up like, Calvin and Hobbes Mystical Sunday 00001.jpg So if you get a group of pics together yourself they need to be 5 digit numbers. 00001 all the way to 00453 if you want. Okay so you have your pics, now do you see there in the middle where it says," move all "? Yes, we want to do that, so click that & then your pics should be on the right side. Now, right under that you see where it says something (can't remember exactly & I can't see it now) it has some ### on it, leave that like it is. Beside it, just check & make sure it has the number 1, although it always does. Below this you can see a little magnifying glass, like search, if you want you can click this just to double check. What you should see is what the name used to be & then what it will be once you change it. It will always change to image 00001.jpg 00002.jpg etc. If this looks okay to you, just close that window & you see where it says Rename. Click that, it asks if you're sure, yes & you will see it renaming your pics. When it's through, you can just close out of that program. Now it's time to make your parts folders. So open up your bootanimation folder again. Now, you might ask how I know how to do any of this stuff. Because I decided I wanted sound on my bootanimation & I searched hi & low to figure out how to do it. I read what I could & I downloaded & tore into so many bootanimations it isn't funny. After a few weeks of this I finally broke down & asked PG & found out we are missing a binary. Oh well, I learned something in the process. Now when it comes to making your folders you really don't want to put more than 150 in a folder. If you don't the first part be a special theme, like for example, I made one that had the logos of all 50 yrs worth of Doctor Who, which went in my part0 folder & then part1 was the TARDIS flying through the time vortex. If you don't have something like that, where it's two separate ideas that then tie together & you have less than 150 pics, you really only need one folder. On the other hand there is really no limit to how many folders you can have. The most I have used is three, I will explain that in a moment. You always start your folders with part0 whether you are going to only have 1 or several. I just open up where my pics are click select all & look down in the bottom left corner & it tells me how many pics I have & I can decide how many folders I need. So I get my pics put into their folders & the folder they were in should be empty & can be deleted.

Now it's time to write our desc.txt file to tell the animation to play & how we want it to play. You must do this on Notepad++ if you try to do it on Microsoft Word or any other program, your animation will not play correctly, if at all. So open up Notepad + +, there are a few things you need to change real quick. Under I believe Edit where it says, EOL Conversion, change that to Windows Format & under Encoding, change that to the first one ANSI. Now we are ready to go.
Line 1 480 800 (self explantory) now it comes time to set your fps. I read where one guy said anything under 25 made it too choppy. I read a bunch of bunk, this simply isn't true. You just have to figure out what is best for the animation you have. Like Calvin and Hobbes I want going slower so it's not just flash flash, seizure seizure. The TARDIS going through the time vortex can go faster. So for those I want to go slower I set at 15 & faster at 20. I have never set at 25. So line 1 could say 480 800 15
Now in all the animations I tore apart the second line was skipped. I did run across a couple of mentions of this with people saying, we don't know why, we just do it. So I have been playing monkey see monkey do. If you decide not to skip & report back that everything is hunkydory then that will be great & I will start doing the same. For right now we are going to line 3.
p now y'all p= play, it doesn't = part & I even read one guy say," it doesn't really mean anything, I don't even know why it's there ". It does mean something. So we start with our part0 folder first. So line 3 is p 1 0 part0
Cont
 
Continuation.
Okay we left off on line 3 of the desc. txt
p 1 0 part0
p= play. 1 is the number of times the pics in the folder will loop & 0 is how long it will pause before going on to the next folder. I actually wish there was a way to not have the first folder loop on some of my animations, but you can't put 0 if you have more than 1 animation. 0 basically means infinity or until your phone is through with it's boot process. So line 4
p 0 0 part1
Play part1 folder over & over with no pauses until the phone is finished booting is what this is saying.
Line 5 leave blank and hit enter to go to line 6
It doesn't matter how many folders you have, you have to the last line blank. Just go to & hit enter & you have a blank last line. Them's da rules. So if you have more than 2 folders, you need to make the first number be a 1 in all except the last. If you only have one folder it can read, on the 3rd line. p 0 0 part0
Okay, now go to save as and choose to save it in your bootanimation folder & type in desc.txt. Whew, making progress! Okay now open up your bootanimation folder & you should have your parts folders & your desc.txt file in there & we are almost finished. Go up & choose select all & then right click on these. Choose 7zip & click the top one where it says "add to archives". Very very important here. We do not ever compress this, we STORE it. So after choosing to add it to the archives sometimes it will just say zip & others it will say bootanimation.zip if it says that go ahead and take the dot zip off or when it's done it will say bootanimation.zip.zip & you will have to change it anyway. Now it should already be set on store, if not, change to store & hit ok & you have your bootanimation. Now if you want to you can open up bootanimation previewer, you have the choice of choosing from folders or a zip, choose the zip, choose the file where it is & it will show you how your animation looks. This is not at normal speed, it's really slow, but you can tell if everything is put together well.
What I then do because when 7zip makes your final zip, it leaves copies in your bootanimation folder of your parts folders & your desc.txt file, so I have been making a new folder for each one labeling them with what bootanimation is inside & then on my desktop I have a folder my bootanimations, that I have been putting them in.

The last thing I wanted to say was, you can get any bootanimation & rewrite the desc.txt file to fit your phone & suit your needs. If you have paid for ROM toolbox pro, there are some sweet bootanimations in there. I know one of the things that sent me learning to make my own is that he has a really great TARDIS flying through the time vortex, but it didn't fit our phone & seemed to pause several times. I downloaded it, but chose to have it download to my sd card, took it off, opened it up & oh my. I forget what the screen resolution was... small, but there were 450 pics in 1 folder. I put them in 3 rewrote the desc.txt & now it is a perfect bootanimation. The Web is full of downloadable animations, or with photo shop, gimp, blender, even ms paint, you can make your own. Since I was mainly going by memory, I hope I didn't leave anything out, like I said, feel free to ask questions. I can't believe it just now dawned on me to say, this is for windows, I have never & will never have a Mac, but I can learn the process if someone needs me too.

Anna
 
Back
Top Bottom