next »

[Greender]

Hello,

I'm familiar with making graphics and animations using flash (I used to make flash games).
I was wondering if there is a good free alternative that can export the animations as sprite sheets and behaves similar to flash, I've read a little bit about Synfig Studio and Pencil2D but before trying alternatives I was wondering if any of you know of an alternative suited for a video game asset making orientation.

[ActiveUnique]

I can describe Synfig a bit. Version 0.65 (development version) is a steep improvement over 0.64 so skip right to it. It's nothing like using flash, Inkscape is still more feature-full by comparison, and there are very few built in macro optimizations. For instance, I can't edit more than one waypoint at a time in the timeline.

Also I began Ubuntu emulation to just to run 0.64 without crashing, and the new version required me to upgrade to ubuntu 14 for the Cairo package.

I think it'll be a good go-to for organic animations, and if you use the bones you could do some sprite animations, but it doesn't have games in mind, and I'm not aware of any plug-ins that would ease the load.

If you try it, mind telling us what you find?

[Greender]

I will wait a little bit for info here then test some applications and post my conclusions here :D

[SelfTitled]

Havn't really used it much and it is not free ($25) but Spriter seems pretty good for animations, and for creating the vector graphics theirs Inkscape.

[Polly]

Why not stick with Flash? You can export your frames / animations as PNG sequence and generate a spritesheet with for instance TexturePacker.

[Bilharzia]

Not free and does not have a built in sprite packer (I don't think) but the best vector animation tool I know of, that can also handle bitmaps is Anime Studio. It has a great 2D bones system which works well with vectors. Victor Paredes has made some great work with it:



Has flash export,PNG & other file formats.
Pro version is pricey but smithmicro are often having sales, chart here comparing versions:
http://anime.smithmicro.com/comparison.html
Debut version is much cheaper but has significant features missing.

[Greender]

Why not stick with flash? ... I'm looking for free or inexpensive alternatives. Don't ask me how I used it before