GIF always gray

[Jkoseattle]

I'm trying to save a project as an animated GIF, but my colors always turn out shades of gray. My vectors all have solid colors chosen from the BasicColors.png palette. I have a couple imported png images as well as simple vectors. I've tried a bunch of the settings in the Animated GIF dropdown, but I'm not sure what i'm doing when it comes to color selection, dithering, transparency and frame differencing, whatever those are. Help!

[synthsin75]

Ctrl+R when all elements/colors are showing and hit the "Sample Gif Colors" button before you render.

[Xork]

I don't know about GIFF's but your youtube animation is very cute.

[Greenlaw]

...I'm not sure what I'm doing when it comes to color selection, dithering, transparency and frame differencing, whatever those are. Help!

To add to Wes' comment (which is the KEY for getting accurate GIF colors in Moho,) the options you asked about are for quality and intent.

GIF's color palette is limited to only 256 colors...max! But if you can use fewer, the file size of your GIF can be considerably smaller. Dithering is a trick for simulating more colors and preventing 'banding' by using a pattern of dots. The result can look 'grainy' though. Transparency is for when you want a transparent background. Be aware that you have only one color for transparency so it will not be anti-aliased. Frame-differencing is a way to compress the file size by re-using pixels in the image that don't change from fame to frame.

Also, be aware that GIF is an ancient image format and you can't expect it to accurately preserve the colors and quality of your Moho renders Unless you designed your animation for it, don't expect the GIF to be perfect. If image quality is critical, you might consider rendering out the animation as normal and compiling the frames in a more modern web-animation format.

That said, even after decades, GIF is still popular because of its simplicity, universal compatibility, and general cheesiness.