Pencil2d v0.6.3 is here!

10 Best 2D Animation Software in 2020 [Free/Paid]

filmora.wondershare.com

Synfig — Open Source 2D Animation Software for Beginners. Price: Free. Compatibility: Windows, Linux, and OSX. Pro: It offers more than 50 layers to make simple or advanced animation, so you don’t need to worry about its limitation though it is free to use.
Opentoonz — Free-to-Use Effects for 2D Animation. Price: Free. Compatibility: Windows and OSX. Pro: You can use a plug in to make beautiful animation effects automatically without further editing.
Maefloresta — Easy-to-Use 2D Animation Software on Phone. Price: Free. Compatibility: iPhone and Android. Pro: It is free to use with easy to start the introduction, even for kids.
Pencil 2D — Cross-Platform Software with Intuitive Interface. Price: Free. Compatibility: Windows, Linux, and OSX. Pro: It offers English, Spanish, and Portuguese language tutorials to use.

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Pencil 2D — Cross-Platform Software with Intuitive Interface

Price: Free

Compatibility: Windows, Linux, and OSX

Pro: It offers English, Spanish, and Portuguese language tutorials to use.

Con: It doesn’t support the shapes tool. If you like to make shapes and draw something, you’d be disappointed.

Want an open-source and free 2D animation design software to help you create videos? Pencil2D animation is the type of program that can help beginners.

You can get to grips with how 2D animation works, and you can create some very fun and interesting videos along the way.

Features:

• Minimalist design to let you make animation easily
• Raster and vector workflow switching
• Cross-platform compatibility to free download

How can I help?

In case you missed our announcement on social media, now you can upload your Pencil2D project here to help Pencil2D development.

With a project library, our dev team will be able to test new features and detect bugs more effectively. We are still looking for more projects from our users so please consider sharing them with us if you have any. The projects are invaluable to us even if you just share them privately.

To those who have already shared your work with us, we are very grateful for your help. Some of the fixes in this very release would not have been possible without you.

Pencil2D is developed by passionate volunteers in their spare time. You can become one too, there are many ways to help other than programming! Please visit Contribute Page for further information.

CelAction2D — Low System Requirement for Professional 2D Animation

Price: If you go with the Studio Edition, it costs $1,300 to obtain a single license to use the product for a lifetime. Studio Edition is $1300 for one single license

Compatibility: Windows, Linux, and OSX

Pro: It is fast to use with low system requirements.

Con: You can draw animation in itself, so you need to import all words from third party software.

Want to create unique and complex 2D animations for your upcoming projects? CelAction2D is the type of product that is going to help you create wonderful and professional animations.

While getting a full license is a financial commitment, you are getting a product that has all the features that you could need.

You can create a palette using up to 16 million colors, and you will have a very easy time getting to grips with the way the software works.

It is designed for beginners and intermediate users, but still has all the advanced features that a pro would want.

Features:

• Easy and fast to use for professional users
• Features ergonomic controls
• Easily handles complex projects with thousands of layers
• Works with all modern Windows machines — 32 and 64-bit Also work with Macs through Boot Camp
• The multiplane camera features to let you have more controls

Known Issues

• Color Palette (Bitmap): First Swatch is unchangeable. Can’t use replace command. Use the other swatches to create your own colors or change it by editing the palette in a vector layer or via XML.
• Color Palette (Bitmap): Swatches will only update using the Replace command when having a vector layer active. (Note: Create your custom palettes with a vector layer selected)
• Selection Tool: Pressing / / , or changing application focus in your OS while having a selection active will ERASE the selection contents and in some rare instances will crash Pencil2D.
• Selection Tool (Rotation): Using the SELECT ALL command () and rotating a selection, will store the rotation transformation, if you press again and click with the MOVE TOOL on the selection, it will apply the stored value and rotate the selection again. Despite possible use cases this is a bug.
• Undo: Undoing a drawing modification made on an empty frame creates a keyframe on that frame.
• Undo: Undoing moving a keyframe to a new frame will create a blank keyframe on the place where it used to be.
• Undo, Smudge Tool (Bitmap): You cannot UNDO the smudge tool at the moment.
• Blur Tool (Bitmap): Pressing with smudge tool doesn’t work, do not use it. Use other drawing apps for smudge effects.
• Fill Tool (Vector): Filling a stroke requires the stroke to be selected.
• Fill Tool (Vector): “stroke thickness” option will reset pressure sensitive lines width.

Part 3: How to Make 2D Animation

Step 1: Put forward an idea

A story ides is priceless. It is always important to build an essential story frame. Sometimes it is in a blink to have come up with an idea.

It will help if you decide the gist of your 2D animation because the whole process of making animation is evolving. You may need to add or cut some scenes, but the overall concept and story ideas are always the same.

Step 2: Make a storyboard

After all the ideas are fixed, you need to make a storyboard for animation. You don’t need to produce every scene, but it is suggested to make a storyboard in some crucial scenes. Storyboarding is probably the best way to show 2D animation to other people and get feedback.

Thus, it is a step that you should not neglect during the preliminary.

Step 3: Produce materials

At this stage, you need to prepare all the 2D animation materials, including characters, background, and props. One thing you need to know is all the preparations in steps 2 and 3 should be ready before proceeding step 3.

Step 4: Animation

After all, materials are ready, and you need to make animation alive. In this step, you need to make sure all the movements are natural. Stiff moves are not liked by the audience, so you need to think about how to design gestures, movements, and facial expressions.

Step 5: Animation editing

In this step, the software is the key to relive the 2D animation. Background audio is essential and needs to be added to the video. Color correction and grading are also necessary. Besides, scene transition, voiceover, and even text credit need to be added.

Above are the five 2D animation steps. If you think there are extra steps, you are free to add according to your needs.

Edit the shortcuts

All these shortcuts are editable, so you can customize it your needs.

Here are the shortcuts for the tools:

If you want to change the shortcut for the Select tool, which is ‘V’, you can do it directly, by selecting the ToolSelect in the shortcuts window and then placing the cursor in the shortcut text box, and enter the new shortcut, or you can delete it first by pressing ‘Clear’ and then enter the new shortcut in the text box.

Here we have cleared the shortcut for ToolSelect, and want to enter the new shortcut. We place the cursor in the textbox and press ‘E’. Unfortunately, the ‘E’ is taken by the Eraser tool, so you are given the choice of overwrite the shortcut or cancelling.

What are the Best 2D Animation Software for 2020?

www.matellio.com

Synfig. Also known as the game changer software of the animation industry, is an open-source 2D vector graphics and timeline-based software, operated on Linux, Mac OS X, windows.
Opentoonz. As the name suggests, the software is based on toonz and can be modified freely. The major benefit the software has provided is that it can be used commercially and non-commercially.
Pencil 2D. The pencil 2D is again an open-source, simple 2D animation drawing and painting application. It’s basically a lightweight and easy to use software and has its complete focus on animation.
Toon Boom Harmony. The toon boom harmony software is a world-wide recognized software for efficiency and creativity and is also known as an industry-leading production animation software.

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The user interface

Before we go to animation, let’s have a quick glance at the user interface.

In the top you have the menu bar. Here you can load and save files, import images, add layers and much more.

In the bottom you’ll find the time-line, that keeps track of your key-frames.

To the left and right you’ll find dockable windows, where you can select tools, colors, choose settings and more.

In the middle you have the canvas. The canvas is unlimited in size. The white rectangle in the middle of the canvas, is the camera field. When you open Pencil2D the first time, this size will be 800×600 pixels, but you can change it by double-clicking on the camera layer. Remember that the bigger camera field you choose, the more RAM and computer power you use and need.

I hear about “Nightly Builds” so what is it?

Nightly Builds are the most up-to-date, experimental versions that reflects the current state of the pencil2D application development. In Nightly builds you will have the latest features and bug fixes if you like to try something new. But you have to understand the nightly builds are not final versions and sometimes they can break more easily.

However, we encourage you to try the latest Nightly Builds whenever you encounter an issue with current pencil2d version, to see if the problem has already been fixed. That can help our dev team to avoid unnecessary or duplicate bug reports.

Nightly Builds

Рисунок

Bitmap рисунок

Инструментов для себя более или менее можно было ожидать. Размер, цвет и т.д., и каждый инструмент может быть определен в палитре Опции. Если таблетки стилет использовать (что рекомендуется), используется давление влияет на ширину и / или непрозрачность выбранного инструмента. Если у вас нет стилет (но только мышь), было бы легче рисовать полилинии инструментом, чем карандаш или ручка инструмента. Просто нажмите различных точек на холсте, и плавной кривой, проходящие через эти точки создана. Когда вы закончите, дважды щелкните на последнем этапе (или нажмите ввод). Если вы просто хотите, чтобы нарисовать прямую линию, нажмите кнопку, чтобы определить отправную точку и дважды щелкните для определения конечной точки.

Векторной графики

Когда слой векторное изображение, выделение, вы можете использовать те же инструменты, чтобы сделать на этом слое. Основное различие заключается в том, что все ваши чертежи и инсультов преобразуются в геометрические фигуры. В результате, вы можете увеличить или расширить свой рисунок без получения какого-либо «пиксель» (сглаживание) эффект. При изменении цвета в палитре цвета, цвет меняется автоматически в векторные изображения. Точек векторных кривых можно регулировать при помощи пальцев инструмент. Это делает векторные изображения идеально подходит для готовой «четкой» рисунки (как правило, характер в анимации), тогда вы можете предпочесть растровые изображения для быстрого проекты или более сложные / нечетких изображений (как правило, опыт работы в анимации). Примечание 1 — карандаш инструмент предназначен для кривых, которые не будут отображаться в финальный розыгрыш. Таким образом, эти невидимые кривые отображаются только как пунктирные кривые, которые вы можете скрывать и показывать с помощью кнопки. Чтобы сделать видимым кривых, использовать перо или полилинии инструмент.
Примечание 2 — для векторных изображений, инструмент Paint Bucket (используется для заполнения контур) не является 100% надежным, потому что эта операция не является тривиальной для векторных фигур (поверьте мне на это!). Таким образом, вы, возможно, потребуется нажать несколько раз в разных местах до того, желаемый контур заполнен. Если он не работает, убедитесь, что контур закрыт (увеличение и / или использовать кнопку план дисплей — или нажмите F1). Если вы обнаружили разрыв, закройте ее ручку, карандаш или полилинии. Если он все еще не работает, перекроить по некоторым переходов, чтобы убедиться, все кривые связаны между собой.

Масштабирование и поворот

Использование ручной инструмент, вы можете переместить холст во всех направлениях. Вы также можете увеличивать и уменьшать масштаб, удерживая командную клавишу (Apple на Mac) и перетащите руку. Кроме того, можно перетащить правой кнопкой мыши. Вы можете также вращать холст, удерживая ALT ключ, но учтите, что некоторые инструменты, такие как художник ведро еще не работает, когда изображение поворачивается. Чтобы вернуться к первоначальному виду, просто дважды щелкните ручной инструмент, либо дважды щелкните на кнопке ручного инструмента.

Vector Engine Improvement

Difficulty: Hard

Project Core Objective: Fix or replace our buggy vector engine.

Description:

The vector layer in Pencil2D is practically unusable at the moment due to
many bugs, particularly with drawing, rendering, and manipulating. One solution
to this is obviously to fix the bugs in some cases this is the only solution.

It is probably best in the long term if we replace the current implementation
with a third-party vector library to improve performance, stability, and
maintainability. We have not settled one specific library yet, the only strict
requirements we would have is that it must be: easy to connect with our code
(ie. C/C++), open source, and cross-platform. Support for hardware acceleration,
Qt, and SVGs are all nice to have. Cairo is a very popular library, and
to explore as well. If you are submitting a
proposal for this feature, please say which library you would use and explain
why.

• Proposal Tag:
• Skills required: C++, vector library (not strictly required)
• Co-Mentors: Matt Chang (chchwy), Connor Deptuck (scribblemaniac)

Known issues & Gotchas

Here is a non-exhaustive list of bugs that we are already aware of, but were unable to fix in this release. Rest assured, we will do our best to fix all of them eventually.

• #1417 Panels spilling their content or timeline getting pushed outside the scree when the vertical screen size is too narrow, usually on 1366×768 laptops (this was partially addressed by #1369 already)
• #1426 Onion skins, layers & documents show “ghosted” (buffered) images after creating a selection
• #1427 Crash when importing the same layer multiple times with the new Pencil2D project layer import feature
• #1428 Crash when creating new file after using peg-bar alignment
• #1429 Undoing a stroke made in an empty frame, relative to an existing keyframe will create a new keyframe instead and mess up the undo order.

• #1433 & #1435 Polyline tool drawing not updating properly while drawing on vector & bitmap layers respectively.

• Zooming out the camera layer to less than 25% will increase the chance of Crashing Pencil2D
• #748, #1004, #1098 Misc undo/redo issues. New Undo / Redo system under development will be reviewed for v0.7.0
• #1117 The CLI (Command-Line Interface) export operation consumes more memory than using the editor
• #1120 Undoing Selection Flip X / Y will delete the drawing instead. A possible fix will be available for the new undo system.
• #1133 Lag and buggy strokes with Huion tablets. Workaround: disabling the “linear optimizer” in your tablet driver may help if that option is available, see this post
• #1179 Currently there’s an audio delay of 1-2 frames for in-editor playback & exported files. However on some systems the opposite happens where the audio delay on playback might be longer by 12-16 or more frames, but on export it works ok.
• #1189 Zoom shortcut on drawing tools not working properly with the Middle Mouse Button (Win) and mouse input in general (All Operating Systems)
• #1193 The feather slider widget (Brush Tool) has a higher max value than the input value, and any value above 96 pixels will not allow you to paint.
• #1196 A unerasable stroke appears when drawing if you turn off the pressure sensitivity checkbox with drawing tools.
• #943 Color Palette (Bitmap): Some issues when replacing the first swatch remain. Only thumbnail changes color, but the actual color doesn’t. It is recommended you make a new item rather than changing it.

• #1055 Color Palette (Bitmap): Swatches will not update using the Replace command. It only works when having a vector layer active. (Note: Create your custom palettes with a vector layer selected or import them from GIMP or Krita using *.gpl files)

• Undo: Undoing moving a keyframe to a new frame will create a blank keyframe on the place where it used to be.
• Undo, Smudge Tool (Bitmap): You cannot UNDO the smudge tool at the moment.
• Blur Tool (Bitmap): Pressing ALT with smudge tool doesn’t work, do NOT use it. Use other drawing apps for smudge or blur effects for now.
• Fill Tool (Vector): Filling a stroke requires the stroke to be selected.
• Fill Tool (Vector): “Stroke thickness” option will reset pressure sensitive lines width.
• Vector Engine is a WIP and does not work as intended. Much more work will be required, please avoid using it for production.

Fixes

• #926, #1148 Scrubber should move to start of range on playback, if outside the range.
• #1059, #1168 Improved stroke accuracy by using Qt tablet events.
• #1089 Fixed Copy & Paste function (Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V) not working.
• #1090, #1123 Fix image export issues (by Philippe Rzetelski).
• #1092 Application icon disappeared after loading a file.
• #1093, #1161 Fixed: the recent opened file list got reversed every time when loading a project. (by Matthew McGonagle)
• #1094, #1104 Fixed *.gpl (Gimp Palette) file import algorithm. (by Andrey Nevdokimof)
• #1095 Fix move tool crash on camera layer.
• #1096 Fix crash and related issues on layer delete.
• #1101,#1103 Disable range spinboxes at startup (by David Lamhauge).
• #1107 Fixed miscelaneous g++ compiler warnings.
• #1111 Fix rename optimization during file save.
• #1134 Remove “Show Tab Bar” from the View menu on newer versions of macOS (e.g Mojave).
• #1135 Fix Error on digit count for numbered sequence file import
• #1137 Improve darkmode QDockWidget titlebar for macOS (Mojave)
• #1139 Fix audio volume in movie export if the project contains multiple audio clips.
• #1141, #1132 Resolved miscelanous warnings (NULL and C-style Casts) (by David Lamhauge)
• #1142 Force light theme on newer versions of macOS (e.g Mojave)
• #1144 Renable dark mode on newer versions of macOS (e.g Mojave)
• #1154,#1155 Fix pressure artifacts at end of brush stroke
• #1157 Fixed audio synchronization issue.
• #1166 Fix XML fields corrupting because of locale decimal types.
• #1175 Color wheel sometimes went greyscale.
• #1181 Fix canvas bugs
• #1188 Miscellaneous fixes: Fixes regression for #677. Fixes duplicate selection box.
• 4f7b4bb Improved the sound key length accuracy.
• b1064ab Fix auto-crop being disabled in duplicate frames.
• aafd048 Fix: mistakingly empty the filename of source keyframe when duplicating a frame

Timeline Rewrite

Difficulty: Hard

Project Core Objective: Rewrite the timeline for better optimization and extensibility

Description:

The timeline we are currently using is a very old remnant of the Pencil program
from which Pencil2D was forked nearly 6 years ago. Problems with it include its
non-native display, poor speed performance, and it was coded in a way that is
very difficult to add new features to. While few users will notice a significant
difference after these changes, it is very important to us moving forward so
that we continue to provide a responsive program and add many new requested
features which are waiting for the timeline to be more flexible (for example,
layer effects and groups are two important things that would require much less
work to implement with a refactored timeline).

Work on this project has already started. There is a barely-started
abandoned implementation
that was done by scribblemaniac, who will be one of the main mentors should this
project be chosen. He, along with the other developers, will help guide the
design, but it will be up to you to implement the structure and current
features. If you manage to implement all of the features from the old timeline,
you may look into implementing some new timeline/layer features which pique your
interest. A strong background in Qt will be needed for this project.

• Proposal Tag:
• Skills required: C++, Qt, UI design (useful, not strictly necessary)
• Mentor: Connor Deptuck (scribblemaniac)
• Backup Mentor: Matt Chang (chchwy)

Opentoonz — Free-to-Use Effects for 2D Animation

Price: Free

Compatibility: Windows and OSX

Pro: You can use a plug in to make beautiful animation effects automatically without further editing.

Con: The UI design it outdated compared with other animation software, but it won’t affect user experience.

Based on the Toonz software, Opentoonz is the best free alternative that will help you create 2D animated content. Anyone can use the software, free of charge, and download.

And users can modify the source code to add specific features to this simple animation software.

Features:

• GTS scanning tool
• Ability to change picture styles
• Add distortion and light effects
• Compatible with black and white and colored scans

Fixes

• #907: Default project file leaked.
• #908: Stabilizer was reset to default level after restarting Pencil2D.
• #920: Bitmap layer doesn’t refresh after deleting a layer.
• #948: Remove format support since it always failed.
• #949: The selection rectangle disappeared in some scenarios.
• #950: Pencil2D crashes when attempting to modify a non-existing first (key)frame.
• #955: Line stabilizer and anti-alias settings were reset to default values after reopening Pencil2D.
• #958: Renaming a color in palette was not working.
• #960: Cameras didn’t move in exported videos.
• #970: Color Wheel should always use full value and saturation.
• #999: Update camera bound immediately after changing camera resolutions.
• #1028: Showing the proper icon color in palette when the color is selected.
• #1038: Reduced the excessive memory usage when exporting a long project.
• #1043: Error occurred if opening a project twice in a row.
• #1058: Vector eraser tool calculated the distance incorrectly.
• #1060: The sound of movie always start from the first frame even if specifying an export range.

Synfig — Open Source 2D Animation Software for Beginners

Price: Free

Compatibility: Windows, Linux, and OSX

Pro: It offers more than 50 layers to make simple or advanced animation, so you don’t need to worry about its limitation though it is free to use.

Con: Few tutorials are available in the market to start making an animation for beginners.

Synfig Studio is an open-source, free 2D animation software that is the perfect place for beginners to learn about 2D animation. There are two versions available for free download — stable and testing.

The testing version has some experimental features if users want to try those ahead of their introduction into the stable release.

Features:

• Supports multiple layers of content
• The bone system allows for the creation of cutout animations from bitmap images
• Has sound support to allow for the addition and syncing of narration and/or music to the video

Enhancements

• #744: Restore UI panel’s positions after restarting Pencil2D.
• #881: Increased the corner area of Selection Tool for dragging.
• #938: Keep a backup file if failing to save the current project.
• #942: Brought the “Remove Colour” button back to Palette.
• #954: Disable onion skins while playing a animation.
• #971: Brought button back to the palette and context menu.
• #975: Timeline will auto-extend the length when reaching the 70% of the current length.
• #979: Optimize bucket fill algorithm with cache.
• #997: Can export image sequence with a given range.
• #1028: Improved color palette selection behaviours.
• #1039: Added command line completion for bash and zsh.
• #1051: Auto-crop bitmap images if there is extra white space.

How to increase the timeline frame length? I can only see 240 frames.

Pencil2D can currently display up to 10,000 thousand frames.

But don’t worry the timeline will auto extend when you place a keyframe towards the end of timeline panel display space.

To enable more frames manually please go to:
EDIT > PREFERENCES > TIMELINE > Timeline size in Frames

However we advice that you DON’T force Pencil2D to work with more than 1500+ frames per file, unless you are prepared for possible issues during work in the editor and during export that can arise from high memory use. We understand this might seem like a rather strict limitation, but it’s a safe boundary limit before things can start to go out of control.

We will be working to optimize and improve the amount of frames you can work with and export at any given time, but we ask you to work smart. Remember the more frames and layers you have, the more memory Pencil2D WILL use, and the chance of crashing WILL increase particularly on low-end computers.

New Features

• #1068 Added support for TIFF format (by Andrey Nevdokimof).
• #1074, #1121 Added a slider for changing frame size at timeline (by David Lamhauge).
• #1109 Import images as new layers on specific frames based on filename and numbering postfix e.g., Joe0001.png’, ‘Joe0002.png’, etc (by David Lamhauge).
• #1115 Added support for transparency in exporting WebM and APNG.
• #1126 Check for Pencil2D updates. (+ Added forum/discord links in Help menu.)
• #1136 Added an option to export key frames only when exporting image sequence.
• #1145 Added zoom shortcuts from 25% up to 400% as 1, 2, 3, 4 and Shift+2, 3, 4. (by David Lamhauge)