Construct Animate provides an Image sequence export option that lets you export an animation frame-by-frame, with each frame in a separate image file. It can also export faster than real-time, so assuming you have a fast enough device, you won't have to wait 30 seconds to export a 30 second animation - it should export significantly quicker.
Transparency
Exporting an image sequence will generate PNG or WebP files with full support for alpha transparency. However by default Construct sets the bottom layer to an opaque color. If you want the background to be transparent, make sure all layers in the project are transparent.
Exporting an image sequence with transparency can also be used to get a video file with transparency, as well as animated image file formats like APNG, WebP or AVIF. See the guide Exporting videos with transparency in Construct Animate for more details.
Comparison to video
Exporting an image sequence has the following differences to exporting to video:
- The PNG and WebP files Construct exports are lossless and so preserve the art quality exactly, whereas videos will degrade the visual quality subject to the encoding settings.
- A sequence of image files usually has a much larger overall file size. Video codecs are able to efficiently handle changes across frames, whereas individual image files must always save the full data for each frame. Videos also take advantage of lossy encoding to achieve significantly better compression.
- PNG and WebP files support transparency, whereas Construct's video export does not currently support transparency.
- Videos can include audio. Image sequences do not support including an audio track.
- Videos can be played in media playback software. Usually image sequences cannot be played directly.
- Some tools allow for importing image sequences but not importing videos - such as Construct's own animation editor. Those tools can also include video or animated image encoders, providing an alternative way to encode from a lossless source (providing no audio is used).
General options
The general image sequence export options are:
- Duration: how long the exported sequence should be, in seconds. You may want this to match the duration of the longest timeline in your project, or adjust it to include or exclude some other animated content.
- Framerate: how many frames per second the exported image sequence should include.
- Format: choose the image format to use for the exported images. This defaults to PNG which is lossless and universally supported. You can also choose the more modern WebP format, which Construct exports in its lossless mode. This achieves about 30% better compression than PNG and is now widely supported, but is not yet quite as universally supported as PNG, so you may find it is not compatible with some specific tools or services.
- Recompress images: if enabled then after export every image in the sequence will be reprocessed to losslessly further reduce the file size. This can make the overall exported size smaller, which may be useful if you then need to upload the resulting files somewhere else. There is more information about recompressing images in the tutorial Construct 3's export optimisations, under Image recompression.
Exporting
When the export process starts, it opens a popup window to do the exporting. If you see a message about a popup being blocked, make sure you allow popups. You may also need to re-start the export.
The popup window will display the progress and show a thumbnail of the current frame being encoded. Depending on the performance of your system and the encoding parameters, it should be possible for the export to progress significantly faster than real-time speed, so it should take much less time than the duration.
When export finishes, the popup window automatically closes, and then image recompression will be done if enabled. After that the result is shown in a dialog. This includes a link that can be clicked to download your exported image sequence, which will consist of a list of numbered PNG or WebP files in a zip file.
Extract the zip file to a folder and you will be able to see all the individual image files in the sequence. These files are a good way to import animations in to some tools, such as Construct's animation editor, online GIF makers, video encoders and more.