2D Animation Tool

[killarkai]

Does everyone here use their own custom 2D animation tool?

If no, what do you use?

I tried searching online for one(open source or not) but failed to locate any.
I'm looking for something that has considerable flexibility for the data format while exporting. The tool does not need to have drawing functionalities. Any recommendations?

If I can't find any I'll write one of course, I'm just curious if I can shave a few weeks off development and get a head-start.
(pampered by in-house tools in the past)

[drWatson]

How about this:

http://www.hoek.inkblue.net/slicer/slicer.html

And some people also recommend Pro Motion for making 2D sprites:

http://www.cosmigo.com/promotion/

[Sysiphus]

this one comes to be really handy, the both ways of converting.
http://www.bottomap.com/Software/A4B/A4B.html


another
http://sysimage.250free.com/

irfanview is way handy for batch oerations..
www.irfanview.com

More
As your request was strange (no painting?) I thought maybe this kind of tool is what you are after.
http://www.michisoft.com/programs/sprite/index.htm

This one serves for doing and painting sprites, has a load of export formats, specially good for coders.But also a very good allarround tool fo rbuilding tile maps, fo rpainting tiles, and exporting :
http://tilestudio.sourceforge.net/


the other big map editor...(though there are many) Mappy.
http://www.tilemap.co.uk/

[electronicStar]

Why can't you just use a good paint program such as paint-shop-pro or photoshop.
When I do animated sprites I generally draw the different animated parts(for example body parts), on different images, then I copy+paste them on each new image of the anim and use the tool to rotate and scale the pasted selection. Plus you have access to all the usual paint tools.
All you need is to learn a couple of tricks.
If you just want to align images in rows on a bigger composite image, then you just copy+paste using the magnetic grid.

[KNau]

If you're willing to shell out $100 bucks then you can't beat Moho.

http://www.lostmarble.com

Animates using 2D bones on your images. It also has a basic vector drawing toolkit and can even export to Flash.

[destron]

so are you talking GIFs and short animations or what? for longer stuff you should try synfig or plastic animation paper - the former is completely free and the latter is paid for; there is also a free version.

[exploreRPG]

I offer a sprite rendering WebService. This service uses Poser4 on the back end and can render in 3 different camera views in sizes of 64-400pixels. The current server has over 100 sprites, but I will be soon adding more sprites and clothing layers to allow you to customize sprites on your own.

There are currently over 30+ animations, and 20+ props supported. If you are looking for quality character sprites this may help.

Explorations (Official Home)
http://www.explore-rpg.com

InstaRender is at the bottom..

Tye

[kay.altos]

Probably you did't belive but I think the one of the best is 3D MAX.

[oldschool]

how about ktoonhttp://ktoon.toonka.com/ its for mac and linux. No windows port :(

caveat: Sorry my linux flash drive is maxed, I can't test it.
You can quickly with klikhttp://ktoon.klik.atekon.de/

from the .8 beta
The new KToon architecture is based on plugins, it means, independent components that can be added easily to the application. To add a new plugin to the project do not require changes in the base source code of KToon.

The new design offers the option to choose the drawing engine (i.e. OpenGL) and now, the persistence format holds all the components of a project in just one file (.ktn), easy to export to any place.

This are the new features included in this release (0.8 beta).
Tools:
* Selection of one or several graphical objects.
* Contour selection
* Pencil with smoothness support
* Geometric shapes: Rectangle, ellipse and line
* Bezier curves tracer
* Nodes eraser
* Gradients generator with random support
* Text tool with orthography support
* Customized brushes editor
* Fill
* Contour fill
* Fill eraser

Other new features:
* Scale, rotation and perspective transformations
* Graphical objects library
* Export support (i.e.: AVI, MPEG, SWF, ASF, RM, etc)
* Copy, cut and paste / undo and redo
* Group and Ungroup
* Color palettes and gradients
* Multi drawing engine support (i.e.: Qt, Images, OpenGL)
* Onion skin
* Integrated help system
* Interface theme/color support
* Gimp palettes support

[moxica]

While we're talking about 2D tools, have a look at this one -> http://tvpaint.com/index.php?lang=2

TVPAINT Animation is the version 8 of a technology that brought in the past drawing packages such as Tvpaint, Aura and Mirage.

Of course there's everything useful for drawing, but for animating too, Fx, particles Fx, and tons of features...

For a game, create all the gfx datas from A to Z and its 'trailer' using just 1 software, what about that? :)

[EyeballKid]

how about ktoonhttp://ktoon.toonka.com/ its for mac and linux. No windows port :(

Oooh - thanks for pointing out that one, I'd not heard of it!
I just had a play around with it and it looks very fun indeed! I got a simple anim up and running no problem, and it looks like it's got some power under the hood too...

[oldschool]

could you tell me about your setup(linux I hope). I'm running grafpup linux http://grafpup.com/
with a flash drive. did you use http://ktoon.klik.atekon.de/
or did you install it on yourt harddrive

[Bunkai]

Above was mentioned 2D Sprites making tool called ProMotion. Could I kindly ask, if ProMotion has some functionality for creating ASCII 2D Maps?

http://www.cosmigo.com/promotion/

An example:ProMotion would contain a tile set, and would allow building a 2D tile map by placing tiles one by one. Each tile would have a number associated to it. When the map is completed, an Ascii map would be exported allowing a game to read it, and to reconstruct the game level in real time.

I know there are tools that allow exporting ascii level maps, however, none of them supports alpha channels. Therefore, if I want to create antialiased tilesets, and game levels, its not possible.

Thank you,

With regards,
Rene.

[Jamie W]

Above was mentioned 2D Sprites making tool called ProMotion. Could I kindly ask, if ProMotion has some functionality for creating ASCII 2D Maps?

http://www.cosmigo.com/promotion/

An example:ProMotion would contain a tile set, and would allow building a 2D tile map by placing tiles one by one. Each tile would have a number associated to it. When the map is completed, an Ascii map would be exported allowing a game to read it, and to reconstruct the game level in real time.

I know there are tools that allow exporting ascii level maps, however, none of them supports alpha channels. Therefore, if I want to create antialiased tilesets, and game levels, its not possible.

Thank you,

With regards,
Rene.

Hi Rene,

Pro Motion will only output 256 (or lower) colour bitmaps. So there's no 'true colour with alpha channel' type thing.

It sounds like you're after something that will take a bitmap as input, and convert it into 2 components, a map, and a tileset.

I've got something that can do this, but only for 256 (or 16) colour tiles, and it also forces 8*8 pixel tile size (although it allows 'meta-tiles' so you can have 16*16 or 24*24 etc, but with another layer of abstraction).

Let me know if that sounds of interest to you and I'll post a link.

If you want to "create antialiased tilesets, and game levels" you don't want to use Pro Motion; Photoshop would be a better bet.

[Bunkai]

Hi Rene,

Pro Motion will only output 256 (or lower) colour bitmaps. So there's no 'true colour with alpha channel' type thing.

It sounds like you're after something that will take a bitmap as input, and convert it into 2 components, a map, and a tileset.

I've got something that can do this, but only for 256 (or 16) colour tiles, and it also forces 8*8 pixel tile size (although it allows 'meta-tiles' so you can have 16*16 or 24*24 etc, but with another layer of abstraction).

Let me know if that sounds of interest to you and I'll post a link.

If you want to "create antialiased tilesets, and game levels" you don't want to use Pro Motion; Photoshop would be a better bet.

Hello Jamie,

Thank you very much for your nice offer. Well, I already started developing plug-in for Photoshop that could let me process antialiased tiles of any size, to build a level map and to export a tileset as 32 bit picture and an ASCII map.

However, I realize it will be quite a lot of work, so I was curious, if there is any easier and faster way.

If the plug-in is finished, I might post it somewhere for public use, as this coudl be handy tool, because I spent two days searching on the net, and haven't find anything like what I need.

The output of my plug-in can then be 16-bit 565 file format + alpha channel.

Thanks, and with regards...

[EyeballKid]

could you tell me about your setup(linux I hope). I'm running grafpup linux http://grafpup.com/
with a flash drive. did you use http://ktoon.klik.atekon.de/
or did you install it on yourt harddrive

I'm running Debian, and I compiled ktoon from source. From memory, all I had to do was type 'make'.

[killarkai]

Thank you for all your replies!

[Mike D Smith]

This one is free for the student version, and the full professional version is only $55. The focus is vector based animation, but it does auotmatic inbetweening and exports to a bunch of raster formats.

www.tweenmaker.com

[staigerman]

Not sure if I missed it or anyone else already mentioned it: Project Dogwaffle, and the latest PD Pro , is far more than a paint program, it's also a heavy-duty animation tool, with filters across timelines and more.

www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle

specifically of interest to gamedev and concept artist should be the samples by Avishek, Burt Abreu and others in the Dogwaffler of the Moment gallery: www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/dotm

[Sega]

I don't think it's what you want, but I had a blast using GraphicsGale for pixel-art animation.