Best Free Animation Program?

[Ryzu 984]

So I want to learn to animate but all the programs I've tried have been crap and extremely frustrating to even draw a line. Personally I'm hoping for something like Flash MX, which I've used before.

[LunarQuartz 13]

I'm not sure, I have Pencil, but its hard to animate when you can't even draw your... WHATEVERITISYOURDRAWING! Or.. animating.. anyway, I've been looking for something to use which involves flash puppets, but I'm kind of broke.. I would suggest either using a drawing tool then draw every thing frame.. eh, I'm not much on animation, anyway.

[nami438 90]

If you're low on cash, I'd say animate on paper in real life with a lightbox, scan all the pages in, cleanup, ink and colors in the GIMP, then export as a GIF in the GIMP.

 

This would only be feasible for short frame by frame animations, less than 15 seconds animated on ones, and not too much compositing necessary. Any more and it might become a hassle to keep up with the paper.

 

If you have a tablet, you could just animate straight into the GIMP, each on a separate layer.

[XxConfusedUnicornxX 834]

I'm not sure there's any free animation programs... But if you are animating ponies you can try Pony Creator

[nami438 90]

I'm not sure there's any free animation programs... But if you are animating ponies you can try Pony Creator

You can animate in Pony Creator?

[XxConfusedUnicornxX 834]

You can animate in Pony Creator?

You can move your character around and take screenshots then combine in movie maker or imovie.

[nami438 90]

You can move your character around and take screenshots then combine in movie maker or imovie.

Oh wow, interesting. Thank you!

[Ryzu 984]

Apparently I found this link for toonboom pro for free, I'll try it out but may be bad

Toon Boom Pro Seems pretty good, has rigging and examples I've seen seem to be pretty good. If anyone wants a free copy https://www.toonboom.com/free-animation-software

[nami438 90]

Apparently I found this link for toonboom pro for free, I'll try it out but may be bad

Toon Boom Pro Seems pretty good, has rigging and examples I've seen seem to be pretty good. If anyone wants a free copy https://www.toonboom.com/free-animation-software

There will be a watermark on every frame though, so you can't actually use the animations you make. I have a similar deal for Maya and Mudbox, they're only good for learning.

[Ryzu 984]

There will be a watermark on every frame though, so you can't actually use the animations you make. I have a similar deal for Maya and Mudbox, they're only good for learning.

My school in the future will give me a free copy, due to a class I'm taking.

[SasQ 1,379]

There's also Synfig Studio, which is free (as in freedom and as in free beer), open-source and cross-platform. You can animate vector graphics (e.g. SVG images) in it as easily as in Flash. It even has bone system animations.

 

For producing scalable vector graphics (SVG), you can use Inkscape, which is just great for that purpose (and it is also free). I make most of my graphics (pony & non-pony, illustrations for my website etc.) in it. I also make animation frames in it, and then export as transparent bitmaps (PNG) to another program in my toolchain: The GIMP, where I compile GIF animations from these frames (I can position them on layers and set up display times for these layers). I can also add some raster effects there, if they were impossible to make in Inkscape already.

 

The best thing in this toolchain is that it uses only open formats, so you can easily import/export between these programs and other programs which understand these formats too. With Adobe Flash, you're mostly limited to their closed environment and use only Adobe software for everything. Importing to Adobe programs is usually easy, but exporting to other software is almost impossible, and Adobe made it on purpose, to imprison their users in their closed environment, so that they could draw money from them. (Recently they try to introduce a model where users would need to pay for using their programs constantly, even if they bought the software, and if they won't pay, they will lose the ability to use it any longer, and they'll lose their works they created in that software so far, since they won't be able to open it in any other software.)

Edited May 11, 2014 by SasQ

[Bucky McGillyCuddy 956]

 

 

I would suggest either using a drawing tool then draw every thing frame.. eh,

Still quicker than anything Flash can make haha. 

[SasQ 1,379]

I'd say animate on paper in real life with a lightbox, scan all the pages in, cleanup, ink and colors in the GIMP, then export as a GIF in the GIMP.

 

I don't think this is the best option in 21^th century. It would waste a lot of paper and ink, it would require tremendous amount of time (there are around 24 frames in every single second of footage, which gives around 31680 frames in a 22-minute episode), which would be a huge waste of time, since in most animations there are lots of elements which don't change much, and you would have to redraw them anyway, again and again.

 

Even drawing directly in GIMP is not much better, since it only saves paper, but not time. Sure, one can do it (thumbnails attached):

 

but it is really pain in ass to do it, especially on a larger scale than just simply Twilight's creepy head spin   And it's hard to maintain consistency between frames (notice the jumpy eyes and wobbly horn).

 

As far as I know, the animators of MLP:FiM use pre-drawn pony puppets consisting of vector body parts in different poses and orientations, and then they simply move these parts around in each frame. This saves a lot of time and assures consistency between frames.

Edited May 11, 2014 by SasQ

[Everleaf 541]

I am planning on animating in actual fact a pony project and I do not do animation by paper (I suck at it) so I need the same help for the project as soon as I have something to animate I will be asking for voice actors so on sorry I cannot help but I need to know the same thing...

[nami438 90]

My school in the future will give me a free copy, due to a class I'm taking.

Ooh nice!

 

I don't think this is the best option in 21^th century. It would waste a lot of paper and ink, it would require tremendous amount of time (there are around 24 frames in every single second of footage, which gives around 31680 frames in a 22-minute episode), which would be a huge waste of time, since in most animations there are lots of elements which don't change much, and you would have to redraw them anyway, again and again.

 

Even drawing directly in GIMP is not much better, since it only saves paper, but not time. Sure, one can do it (thumbnails attached):

 

but it is really pain in ass to do it, especially on a larger scale than just simply Twilight's creepy head spin   And it's hard to maintain consistency between frames (notice the jumpy eyes and wobbly horn).

 

As far as I know, the animators of MLP:FiM use pre-drawn pony puppets consisting of vector body parts in different poses and orientations, and then they simply move these parts around in each frame. This saves a lot of time and assures consistency between frames.

imho it's just preference. Also on the show, they do a lot more frame by frame animation than it may seem at first, which surprised me. The time is saved in that they can recolor puppets and animations (since most characters have the same mare model), and copy and paste animations into different scenes (the Pinkie Pie bouncing animation comes to mind). Still though, the show is not purely moving parts around into different orientations. For a show more like that, see Johnny Test.

 

Also to my knowledge, there are no free programs that allow for the type of animation on the FiM show without watermarking or time limits, which is why I stuck to traditional animation for my suggestions. But you are very right, traditional animation is a pain!

 

On this animation, did you use onion skinning (be able to see the frame before and after the one you are drawing)? If not I think it would help in the future. It takes the guesswork out of where everything needs to be in a new frame to not break the illusion of movement.

Edited May 11, 2014 by nami438

[Soobel 488]

 

but it is really pain in ass to do it, especially on a larger scale than just simply Twilight's creepy head spin   And it's hard to maintain consistency between frames (notice the jumpy eyes and wobbly horn).

 

 

Hmm... I draw first the skeches of frames, fix those jumpings and wobblings and then draw real frames, using copy-paste for static parts etc

[SasQ 1,379]

Hahah great one! You've paid attention to the finest details, such as how her cellulite bumps when touching the ground with her high-heels hooves I just wander what happens with her neck...

[Soobel 488]

Anyway animating is good pracitce for development your 3d minds, turning objects step by step and draw many times same thing.

 

That horse is not my own thing, it's from Tove Jansson's Moomin tales.

Why tove draws her high heels - cant ask.

Edited May 16, 2014 by Soobel

[Mareinthemoon 348]

So I want to learn to animate but all the programs I've tried have been crap and extremely frustrating to even draw a line. Personally I'm hoping for something like Flash MX, which I've used before.

best animation program:

 

Your hand

[Feather Grass 312]

Adobe Flash CS6 Trial.

 

It is the best!

[SasQ 1,379]

Up until your trial ends

 

But to be honest, I tried it and I didn't like it. And here's why:

 

First, I couldn't download it from Adobe website from my Linux machine I use to connect the Internet because it automatically detected I'm on Linux and displayed only a message that my system is unsupported (I didn't know I need Windows to just download the installer? :-P). Even when I disguised my machine as Windows to see the download button, I still couldn't download the installer. It was trying to stuff me some "downloader" which first tried to scan my entire system and registry (thankfully it was also a faked sandbox, because I don't know what information they could get this way when I allowed it to run on an actual Windows), and then tried to connect some suspicious servers which didn't seem to belong to Adobe (at least not officially). So ultimately I needed to download the friggin' app from warez website to avoid all the fuss ;-P No install required, ready for run. (But over 1 GB on disk! What did they put there if similar open-source software can fit below 10 MB? I'd really like to know... ;-P)

 

But this is not the end of the bad story; only the beginning.

 

On the first launch, the application didn't appeared at all. I tried to launch it several times but nothing happened. No error message, no invitation screen, nothing. I thought the download was broken or something and went doing something else. And suddenly, after 30 minutes of stealth running, it appeared on my screen. It turns out that it needed to scan through all my system (sandbox again) and possibly collect a lot of data which it isn't supposed to, and then displayed a message that it requires Internet connection to run. I agreed, knowing that this machine doesn't have one ;-P Again it turned out that it tries to connect some fishy servers and send them those data it collected about me and my system. I killed the process and after next launch it finally started with the GUI.

 

Unfortunately I couldn't export any useful open formats beside those belonging to Adobe. I could export PNG, but only 8000x8000 and no more. It appears to be an internal limit of the software itself.

 

I could create many different projects through the wizard, except just a new empty FLA file. I needed to create a whole project first, and I needed to choose all directories just to leave them mostly empty.

 

In summary, it is pretty lame and not much user-friendly as for the software which is commercial and pretty darn expensive to buy and use (did you know that you need to constantly refresh your license from Adobe to be allowed to use it further, and if you don't pay, they block the software and all your files are kidnapped for ransom until you pay, because without Adobe Flash you cannot open them in anything else?).

Edited May 26, 2014 by SasQ

[Paladin Butters 163]

There is a FREE 30 days I think? lol for Adobe Flash Professional. If you do not know how to animate with that program, I don't know what to tell ya,

[Jeric 46,860]

SasQ is right about Adobe and their horrible Creative Cloud model.

 

I remember back in 2005 when they acquired Macromedia ... and Flash in the process. Those in the Web Dev community who said it would be no big deal would later scream to the high heavens.

 

I do think they offer a temporary license that us supposed to be for ad hoc collab projects, but God help you if you use Flash in that project because as SasQ said, they hold your files hostage and you can't use them after your collab project is over.

 

Unless you are going to use After Effects, stay away from Adobe. I only say this because I know of no other comparable program that is as robust.

 

Flash is also not the best to use if you are just starting with vector animation. It is not as intuitive as the Pro Flash crowd claims

Edited May 27, 2014 by Jeric

[Soobel 488]

PaintShopPro AnimationShop was good and simple - here you can set fps on each frame separately.