What is the easiest way to make an animated texture?

Hi
What is the easiest way to make an animated texture, like a sign?

One idia is to have running lights, like one would see bordering a theater sign.

I don't know scripting, fairly good at CS3 (But no pro)

I can make fairly good looking flash and GIF animations but not sure if SL supports those formats.

Any ideas?

This question comes around every once in a while, so you can find good answers by searching the forum archives. Here's a very nice thread from last Spring...../109/88/255269/1.html.

Animated textures in SL work like filmstrips. You put all the frames on a single texture, and then you use a script to flip through them. I believe there's an example script in the library. Basically, you just plug in how many frames you've got vertically and horizontally, along with the rate (FPS) at which you want them to play, and then there are some other variables for the method of transition between them (smooth movement, instant flipping, etc.). See http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LlSetTextureAnim for more information on the script.

For easy conversion of pre-existing animagted GIF's, there's a free tool at http://www.peregrinesalon.com/anim/ . As you probably know, you should only use it for your own stuff. Grabbing someone else's GIF off the Web wouldn't be right.

Thank U all so much! I'll check that out tonight.

there is also a gif converter that does it all for you
http://www.peregrinesalon.com/anim/