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Efficient 2D Animation Software?
jack hunter asks: "I just found out about MOHO, a software that minimizes frame-by-frame tweening in 2D animation via the usage of a 3D concept --- bones (among other things).
Believe it or not, prior to this, I thought Macradobe Flash was the only affordable animation software, and I was prepared to do frame-by-frame grit-work for my budget-wise animations. Anyway, I've learned my lesson: there are more powerful pieces software out there, and there are those who know of them. What do you use to animate? If you use Flash, do you use any add-ons/components or special techniques to make things more efficient?"
My server has gone down! Bastards! They must be rebooting it or something, because I can take a Slashdot comment PNG link like it was nothing.
Try Toon Boom Studio. Cheap, free trial available.
I haven't used it, but Synfig's capabilities look similar to Moho. Synfig is Free software.
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It's difficult to get a copy these days but if you can you won't be disappointed. Adobe buying Macromedia is, IMHO, one of the best things that could have happened to Macromedia and their software. Flash will improve by the merging of LiveMotion. LM is like AfterEffects for .swf files and is a much better tool for animators because it animates property attributes seperate from one another where as Flash animates object properties all at once when you set a keyframe.
Most of my 2D animation has been done either with Flash or Adobe After Effects.
After Effects is an industry standard package, and it costs about the same as Flash, last I checked. One of it's most powerful features is the scripting language. It helps to create procedural animations which can be difficult to do by hand.
You also might want to consider doing 2D animation with a 3D package. Most of my time 3D time was spent learning Maya. The strength that 3D animation packages have, is that they get used more often for character animation than the 2D packages, therefore they have a lot more tools forcharacter animators such as bone structures and deformations. A lot of them have physics packages that can help automate certain types of animation. Most 3D packages also come with built in scripting languages for procedural animation.
The down side to 3D packages is the intense learning curve. At last count, I heard that Maya had over 80,000 commands. These are huge and complex software packages. The proprietary ones also tend to cost quite a bit, although Blender is free as well as open source.
A lot of what software to use depends on what kind of animation you want to do. Are you doing short character animations? Are you doing experimental stuff? Are you Rotoscoping? If you tell us a bit more about the type of animation you want to do, we could be a bit more specific in recommending specific packages.
Other thoughts:
--I know that Photoshop and ImageReady can be used to animate between layers ( but involves a bit of hackery to get it to work well).
--The integration between Photoshop and After Effects is really nice. It's one of the reasons AFX is used so much in television.
--FilmGimp/Cinepaint has been used for wire removal and image clean up for a while in the FX industry, I have no experience with it.
--I know that there are also some animation plugins for the Gimp that have been written. Again, I have no experience with these.
Regardless of the tools, there is always a steep learning curve, and there's always seems to be a lot of work coaxing the software program to do what you want it to do. If it's not coming easily, it's because we still have a lot of work to do in developing great animation software.
Good luck, and have fun.
- runs on linux
- scriptable with lua
- great forum
- particles
- bones (inverse kinematics) as you noticed
- batch rendering
- 2.5d (move camera and 2d objects around in 3d space)
- import 3d objects
It's a great program, I use it every day for animation, for creating DVD menus, for creating swf files, just about everything.
After Effects, hands down. It's worth every penny.
I could ramble on about how I've been an professional animator for years and how AE has ever feature an animator could ask for, but the bottom line is this: if you're outputting to video, read up on After Effects.
I know a guy who made similar software. Not sure how it stacks up to some of the other products mentioned in the thread, although it does have some fairly sophisticated shape blending which minimizes bending energy to produce the morphs. Has bones, cross-platform, etc. It's called TweenMaker.
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Not only do Synfig [synfig.com]'s capabilities match Moho's, but in some areas I actually prefer it over the latter. Plus, Synfig is absolutely free.
Time to pimp MY favorite 2D package..... Being interested in traditionl animation, I found PlasticAnimationPaper http://www.plasticanimationpaper.dk/ to be very good. Their product(an advanced virtual lighttable) is available on Linux and they recently reviewed their pricing policy making the entry package very affordable. Of course, you don't get Moho's tweening, but then again, it is a traditional 2D cel animation package... Worth having a look if you are into traditional animation
South Park uses Maya, described as "building a sandcastle with a bulldozer." Just thought I'd throw that out there.
Designed for animators, by animators.
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I'll second that! Quick link for the lazy
I have a friend who swears by ToonBoom, but I haven't done much with it myself.
I'm just finishing up some cutout animation (Monty Python-style) for a science museum. I considered Flash, but ultimately went with Animation:Master. A:M is actually a full-featured 3D character animation package, with a price closer to Flash. The advantages on this project were an excellent animation interface, forward and inverse kinematics with bones, rigging, smooth interpolation with many options, motion blur, and glow effects. On the flip side, building a character by applying texture maps to a bunch of parallel planes tends to take a while (about an hour per character, plus the time to cut them into pieces with Photoshop), A:M can be unstable, and animating with line art would be a whole different process -- although I'd be curious to see what someone could do using the .ai importer. Since I'm basically rendering a bunch of planes, with no lights or shadows, the final render took only a few second per frame.
If you're comfortable with a 3D package that's geared toward character animation, there are advantages to using it for 2D animation. If not, the learning curve is probably not worth climbing unless you're looking to branch out into 3D.