Whether you are a beginner or an expert in the field of
animation, a great animation software is what you need apart from the other
programs and tools. Making your own animated movies voiced by you and with
cartoon characters made by you is some fun, isn’t it? Okay, we understand that
you are an animation student and since you are looking to make a career out of
it, you may already have access to all the required tools in your institute,
however, what if you want to create a setup of your own? The first thing that
can be your road block is the steep pricing for a good animation software.
If you are an animator who is full of creativity, turn your
ideas into reality using these best free animation software for windows users.
Top 5 2D Animation
Software For Windows
Pencil
Pencil is a free open-source software that helps you create
2D animation effortlessly. It is easily the most versatile animation program in
the 2D category and offers some of the stunning features all for no charges
attached. It allows you to bring out your creativity with this simple yet
innovative tool through colorful 2D graphics.
Even though its interface looks extremely simple and
immaculate, it comes stuffed with all the important tools that are offered by
some of the paid programs in the category. While it aids both the bitmap and
vector images, it also supports multiple slabs and owns an inherent set of
illustration tools that helps you to bring in graphic pictures or draw them on
the spot prior to the animation part.
Some of the other features offered by Pencil includes
determining the frame rate, sound and image import, adding colors and more. As
an added bonus, this program also helps you to export your graphics too .FLV,
Flash Video (SWF), Movie and to many other formats.
Creatoon
Creatoon is an extremely user-friendly, straightforward and
instinctive software that allows you to create 2D animations in cut out fashion
and add several special effects to the same. The interface may look quite
simple and out-of-date, but the software can carry out some of the complex
tasks that can produce remarkable results.
It offers menus on each side of the working area in order
for you to have quick access to the main features. Even though the interface is
not customizable, but it is properly arranged for you to have a clear view of
the project in process. While it allows you to determine the frame rate per
second along with the height and the width, it also lets you select the format
of the project file.
Moreover, you can add special effects to your animation
using Creatoon, conveniently store your tasks manually or simply just let it
save your tasks automatically every 5 minutes. You even have the option to
personalize the drawing tool and make it act according to you. The program lets
you segregate your animation elements in slabs that enable you to make the
required changes swiftly. While you can tweak the preciseness of the sketch
tool, it also allows you to play with the progression of your brush movements.
Overall, Creatoon is a software that enables you to create
animation effortlessly with advanced features making it the perfect solution
even for the beginners.
Plastic Animation Paper
One of the best 2D animation software around, Plastic
Animation Paper offers you uncomplicated and powerful tools to convert your
ideas into beautiful cartoons and animation in 2D for no charge. This program
is created for those expert animators who need a quick and compelling solution,
apart from being instinctive and extremely easy to work with.
Plastic Animation Paper manages your swift sketching
movements, your process of rough sketches and space where you animate. It
provides you real-time suggestions and an easy process that helps you to
analyze your concepts for a particular movement quickly, a specific character
or your upcoming action sequence and helps you to easily create it with your
hand.
Among its key features is the sketching space, adding color
to the sketch, setting the frame speed, zooming in and out, insert music and
more. Once you are finished drawing you can save them in different formats,
viz. AVI, PNG, TGA, GIF and other formats. While this software is available for
Mac OS X and as an iPad app, it is also available for download for Windows PC
absolutely free of cost.
Synfig Studio
Synfig Studio is an open source and a multi-platform free
software that allows you to create animations in 2D and its design is quite
close to that of Pencil. However, the major difference among the two is the
fact that Synfig comes with a sharp learning curve due to its avant-garde
features and amazing results which you can definitely achieve once you have
mastered using its tools at a professional grade.
The interface of the program is segregated into four
separate windows that are, tools window, editing window, navigator window, and
parameters window. Once you attain the skills of using the features
efficiently, you can create superior quality cartoons, animations, and movies.
It is based on vector and bitmap technique.
Since most of its elements are based on vector and all slabs
are developed parametrically, only pixelation will appear in the imported
raster pictures and not the inherent items when modifying the target result of
the project. The keyframes of the animation are automatically appended by the
PC which leads to a steady motion.
The artwork will be able to comprehend a far wider variety
of pixel glow using the “High-Dynamic Range Imaging” or HDRI which uses the
mathematics of floating-point in the image computation, thereby leading to
improved lighting effects and color formation. The best part is that the
sketching tool already scans the pressure receptiveness route off your favored
tablets that helps in natural line weighting and more.
Synfig offers complete support for gradient routes that
enables the animator to insert soft shading to his drawing effortlessly without
the need of sketching the animation on each frame separately. It also offers a
host of layers that includes gradients, transformations, fractal, geometric,
etc. Apart from Linux and Mac OS X, Synfig Studio also works with Windows and
is available to download for free.
Stykz
Stykz is a completely free of cost software that enables the
animator to create compelling 2D animations. It supports mostly all chief
operating systems that include, Mac, Linux, and even Windows. The full version
is available to download completely free of charge and offers plenty of handy
tools that assists you to create great animations on a user-friendly interface.
It is a software that allows you to draft your animation
before you step into the painting and animation in full bloom. It is the first
cross-platform stick figure animation software across the globe that helps you
develop, edit and preview your creations. Stykz is strikingly similar to the
Pivot StickFigure Animator as it adapts some of its features along with some of
its own unqiue features.
It brings in the .stk files of Pivot 2 and Pivot 3 in order
for you to be able use the prevailing files that you developed or downloaded
from Droid.org or Darkdemon.org in .stk format. Stykz is based on frames, hence
you can work on each frame of your creation to finish it perfectly. The
Onionskin feature allows you to view what was in the earlier frame that helps
you to tweak your present frame conveniently.
There are no hidden charges or any license needed to use
Stykz in its complete potential.
No comments:
Post a Comment