1. GIF's by POV-Ray and GIAM a tiny crash course
How to make ...
GIF's by POV-Ray and GIAM
a tiny crash course
Florian Simon 10/17/2011

2. What is a “GIF”?
Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) is a bitmap image format that was introduced by CompuServe in 1987 and has since come into widespread usage on the World Wide Web due to its wide support and portability.
GIFs are suitable for sharp-edged line art (such as logos) with a limited number of colors.
GIFs can be used to store low-color sprite data for games.
GIFs can be used for small animations and low-resolution film clips.
Source:

3. Procedure
create the pictures, you want to combine to a small animation, with POV-Ray
put these pictures to a GIF (e.g. with GIAM)
For detailed explanations I highly recommend to use this tutorial (eng):

4. 1. POV-Ray
Basic POV-Ray-Window

5. to create a graphic in POV-Ray, we need a few basic things:
global settings and “include-packages”
scenery
source of light
camera
and of course the objects
the easiest way to create a working scene, is to use a pre-built text template (You can find a lot of these things on internet)
(!)

6. For example

7. Head (Information)
Global Settings
“Include”-Packages
Few Camera-Settings
Light-Source
Scenery
POV-Ray will not read text behind “//” or between “/*” and ”*/”
vectors define positions
<x,y,z> ( Cartesian or “left-handed” coordinate system)

8. This is a easy way to add some objects into the scenery (e. g
This is a easy way to add some objects into the scenery (e.g. a sphere):
Important: The cursor has to be at the end of the text!

9. This will be inserted automatically.
Description:
sphere{ <xM,yM,zM>, r
texture{ ... } }
In this case <xM,yM,zM> are the coordinates of the center and r is the radius.
We can do modifications of position, shape, consistence of the surface, etc. with the following commands:
scale< , , > - Scaling - changes of the scale
rotate< , , > - Rotations around the center (!) of the coordinate system
translate< , , > - Translations
texture-commands:
Pigment{ ... }: color and transparency
Normal { … }: roughness
Finish { ... }: brightness and brilliance of the surface
After saving your .POV-file, you can click “Run” to see the graphic.
Rendering-Settings can be made here.
*Of course, you can do a lot more with some extra commands. Unfortunately I can't explain all of them in this ppt.
(The picture will be saved in same folder as the .POV-file.)

10. Example for a simple Transformation
translate<0,0.5,0> → translate<0,0.5,4>
This moves the sphere from the origin 0.5 units in positive Y-direction and 4 units in positive Z-direction.
*Important: Transformations like “scale, rotate and translate” aren't commutative.

11. from a single picture to some more...
For an animation with POV-Ray we need a POV-Ray scene file (.POV), which uses the clock value and a POV-Ray .INI-file, which defines the clock-value.
In order to create a GIF, open a new register-card, and type in the text you can see on the picture. Important is, that you save it as an .INI-file.
In this example, the clock-value will run from 0 to 1 in 30 steps.
At each step, POV-Ray will do a rendering of the scene and save it to the same folder as the .POV- and .INI-file.
Description:
"Initial_Frame=1" and "Final_Frame=30" define, that there are 30 graphics about to be rendered.
"Initial_Clock=0" and "Final_Clock=1" show the start and end value of the clock-value.
"Cyclic_Animation=on" says, that the last picture is not to be rendered anymore.
(“;” replaces // )

12. Now, we need to set up the clock value in the .POV-file.
“clock” will run from 0 to 1.
Important: trigonometric functions needs radian measure! (rotate<...> needs value in degree)

13. After pressing “Run” in the .INI-file, POV-Ray will make 30 renderings.

14. 2. GIAM … or from pictures to the final GIF
Now we need to just open GIAM and drag all 30 pictures into this box.
Clicking the SAVE-Button will finally create the GIF-file.

15. In this example, we got a sinus-movement along the z-axis (camera is at <3.0 , 2.0 , 2.0>, looking at <0.0 , 1.0 , 0.0>):

16. Until today, I've created these 3 animations:
Right now, I'm working on a self-unfolding box. Thank you for reading!