Cheap Vector 2D Animation Software?

[Faust]

Remember Adobe Flash?

I never had much chance to play around with it, I wasn't much good at art when it was popular anyway, and now it's gone.

I've played around with systems like DragonBones, which is good for the purpose it was intended, but it's actually a pseudo-2.5D system. You can't animate individual lines, only cut-out segments of each character. That's fine for optimising video game animation, but I'd like to play with something more adaptable.

Does anybody know of any similar animation systems, preferably that use 2D vector graphics rather than bitmap or 3D?

 

[Jack Foxtrot]

Sticknodes maybe?

 

[Faust]

Sticknodes maybe?

Looks pretty much the same as DragonBones, to be honest.

 

[Jack Foxtrot]

I haven't really tried using it, but I've seen many others do some insane shit with it. There's one a friend of mine used in high school called FireAlpaca, I believe. Could be something there maybe.

 

[Faust]

I haven't really tried using it, but I've seen many others do some insane shit with it. There's one a friend of mine used in high school called FireAlpaca, I believe. Could be something there maybe.

It's all interesting, whether it turns out to be useful or not :) Thanks

 

[Jack Foxtrot]

I wonder what people use for that old DSi FlipNote style, unless people literally just still use DSi FlipNote.

 

[Faust]

I wonder what people use for that old DSi FlipNote style, unless people literally just still use DSi FlipNote.

That's the kind of stuff you could easily do with almost any bitmap-based art package that supports transparency in layers, and a simple animated GIF tool. Just put each frame on a different layer with a different transparency to create an onion skin, then export them as images and compile them into an animation. What I really want is something that has some degree of automatic tweening.

 

[Pomorek]

I'm obviously biased, but Blender, traditionally the free 3D software, has already impressive and still growing 2D animation capabilities.

 

[Faust]

I'm obviously biased, but Blender, traditionally the free 3D software, has already impressive and still growing 2D animation capabilities.

I don't think it does vectors, though. Or at least, not in the sense I mean.

But if you know of any good tutorials specifically about its 2D options (I'm already familiar with the 3D) I'd be interested to look them over. I'm assuming that this isn't just a post-process filter to make 3D models look hand-drawn, right? Probably it's a similar thing to DragonBones, where a 3D textured mesh is rendered using an orthogonal camera?

 

[Pomorek]

I don't think it does vectors, though. Or at least, not in the sense I mean.

But if you know of any good tutorials specifically about its 2D options (I'm already familiar with the 3D) I'd be interested to look them over. I'm assuming that this isn't just a post-process filter to make 3D models look hand-drawn, right? Probably it's a similar thing to DragonBones, where a 3D textured mesh is rendered using an orthogonal camera?

Well, I'm actually not versed with this part of the program directly, I've just seen the results. So I can't give better tutorials than what Google suggests. But for what I've seen, there are more ways than one. There is orthogonal rendering, there are toon/cel shaders for objects, and there is pretty traditional-looking hand-drawn animating even. With the possibility to mix all of those at will, also with "normal" 3D content if desired.

 

[Katara the Sergal]

Here's a 2D animated Vector...on paper, in two page flipbook style. It's an animation, sort of.