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Development
Game Development
Unity
What are the best 2D animation tools for Unity?
10
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Considered
178
User
Recs.
Sep 3, 2023
Last
Updated
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Best 2D animation tools for Unity
Price
Platforms
Languages
73
Unity 2D
Free+
Windows, Linux, Mac
C#
--
Spine
$69 / $299
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2D Toolkit
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Anima2D
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Creature
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See Full List
73
Unity 2D
My Rec
ommendation
for
Unity 2D
My Recommendation for
Unity 2D
All
8
Experiences
1
Pros
4
Cons
2
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Built into Unity 4.3+
2D game creation was a major feature request from the Unity community and was added with version 4.3. 2D is provided in both the Pro and Free distribution of Unity.
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Top
Con
•••
Lacks critical features
Vertices can't be animated, so you can't have ANY organic feel (like... lungs breathing). Parent bone can't be animated without affecting the children. This is especially impeding for organic feel, again. No option to show & unshow assets (or it is hidden), like for switching weapon on your character for exemple.
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ArticulateAkhushtal's Experience
BECAUSE OF IT TOOLSFOR ANIMINATION
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Specs
Platforms:
Windows, Linux, Mac
Languages:
C#
Top
Pro
•••
Integrates with Mecanim
Mecanim brings state machines and blending to 2D bone animation. The state machine editor allows for designers and programmers to visually create a Finite State Machine (FSM) to control when animations should play. Mecanim also allows for blending so an animation can transition smoothly between two states without the need of in between frames made by an animator.
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Top
Con
•••
Poor script interface for texture atlases
Accessing individual sprites within an atlas texture is possible at runtime, but requires use of the Resources folder subsystem.
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Top
Pro
•••
Sprite Sheet and Bone based animation supported
Both types of 2D animation for game development are supported in Unity’s system and can be used interchangeably in the timeline.
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Top
Pro
•••
Easily change sprites dynamically
Usually used for character customization, programmers can change any sprite in a bone animation at runtime easily by referencing the bone and loading the new sprite from the resources folder.
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Free+
Recommend
61
2
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Spine
My Rec
ommendation
for
Spine
My Recommendation for
Spine
All
8
Pros
5
Cons
3
Top
Con
•••
Price high for this product
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Top
Pro
•••
Funded via Kickstarter
Spine received resounding support from Kickstarter backers, beating its pledge goal by over 5 times.
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Top
Con
•••
Professional Edition is expensive
Essential edition includes nearly all features, but IK Weights and Mesh Animations are not included in the Essential Edition.
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Top
Pro
•••
Integration libraries support most engines
Spine provides integrated modules for 14 major engines including GameMaker Studio, Cocos2Dx, LOVE, MonoGame, Unity, XNA, Flash, HTML 5, libgdx, Corona, and more. Generic runtime libraries are also available for C, C++, Objective C, C#, JavaScript, Lua and ActionScript 3. Dozens of third party libraries support additional targets.
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Top
Con
•••
No integration for lesser known engines
Spine does not directly support for Construct 2 and Clickteam Fusion.
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Top
Pro
•••
Allows for easy use of artwork from third party programs
Spine's developers provide scripts which makes exporting artwork from third party programs much easier to do.
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Top
Pro
•••
Community-driven feature roadmap
Esoteric Software maintains public Waffle issue trackers to help plan and prioritize feature additions.
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Top
Pro
•••
Simplified UI allows for an easy learning curve
No-nonsense workflow allows you to create your artwork in programs much better suited for the task like Illustrator and Inkscape for example, while Spine itself focuses only on the important task of skeletal animation.
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$69 / $299
Recommend
26
3
--
2D Toolkit
My Rec
ommendation
for
2D Toolkit
My Recommendation for
2D Toolkit
All
11
Pros
9
Cons
2
Top
Pro
•••
Includes source code
No need to pay more to get access to the source code.
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Top
Con
•••
Doesn't integrate with Unity's Sprite system
2D Toolkit provides a completely proprietary sprite implementation. Though it can be used alongside Unity's 2D systems, the two are completely separate and require different code to utilize.
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Top
Pro
•••
Good documentation
The documentation for the toolkit is well written and there are video tutorials as well as an active community.
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Top
Con
•••
No skeleton-based animation
Although a great solution for sprite sheet animations 2D Toolkit does not natively support skeletal based animation.
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Top
Pro
•••
Create different resolutions of atlas
2D Toolkit allows for different sizes of atlas from 1x, 2x, or 4x which can be changed depending on platform resolution.
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Top
Pro
•••
Built to work inside Unity
2D Toolkit is an editor extension so users don’t have to leave the Unity engine for tile mapping.
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Top
Pro
•••
Add colliders in the atlas editor
Choose from either a box, sphere, or mesh collider that will output as either a 3D or 2D collider in Unity.
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Top
Pro
•••
Supports the Tiled TMX Format
Create tilemaps in Tiled and implement with 2D Toolkit.
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Top
Pro
•••
Create Atlases within the tool
Create sprite sheets for tiles to save draw calls and to keep tilesets organized.
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Top
Pro
•••
Great for sprite sheet animation
Allows creating atlases and set up the animation quickly in 2D Toolkit’s editor.
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Top
Pro
•••
Pixel-perfect camera  
Pixel games in the style of 8 or 16 bit systems need to have each pixel uniform on the screen which 2D Toolkit supports with a camera component.
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Get it
here
Recommend
16
2
--
Anima2D
My Rec
ommendation
for
Anima2D
My Recommendation for
Anima2D
All
5
Pros
3
Cons
2
Top
Con
•••
No longer supported by Unity.
This has been merged into the 2D Animation package.
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Top
Pro
•••
Purchased by unity
Everything you could want from a skeletal animation system, free and because purchased by unity promises to be native in future.
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Top
Con
•••
Uses the Unity hierarchy
It's impossible to rename your asset after making your animation, otherwise you lose dependencies.
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Top
Pro
•••
Free
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Top
Pro
•••
Spring bones
Much like spring joints native to unity, you can set bones to have dynamic spring animations based on their parents.
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Get it
here
Recommend
23
9
--
Creature
My Rec
ommendation
for
Creature
My Recommendation for
Creature
All
4
Experiences
1
Pros
3
Top
Pro
•••
Automated animation
One of Creature's strengths is its ability to assign motors on bones which will generate animations based on parameters set on the motors.
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DeterminedRanginui's Experience
Haven't used it. It's too expensive
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Top
Pro
•••
Unity runtime always up to date
Among various game engine supported, Unity is the most up to date runtime including the most recent features, many samples, integrating well in the Unity editor.
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Top
Pro
•••
Easy to use
Creature has a simple workflow structured into 3 steps: Meshing, Rig and Animate.
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Get it
here
Recommend
9
2
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Blender
My Rec
ommendation
for
Blender
My Recommendation for
Blender
All
16
Pros
15
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Includes video editing & compositing tools
Blender's node-based compositor has comprehensive video sequencing and post-processing features.
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Specs
Platforms:
Windows, Linux, Mac, FreeBSD
Technology:
C, Python
3D:
Yes
2D:
Yes (as of 2.8)
See All Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Regular release schedule
Releases are made every ~3 months.
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Top
Pro
•••
Coherent and streamlined workflow / internal use logic
The trick with Blender is to get used to its usage philosophy, as it keeps consistent through all the application. Once you get it, every feature or addition is learnt naturally, almost effortlessly.
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Top
Pro
•••
Very versatile
You don't have to switch between software when you want to do different things. Because modeling, sculpting, composting, video editing etc can all be done in blender.
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Top
Pro
•••
Has a large community
There's a huge community to help you get started immediately.
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Top
Pro
•••
Very useful for a freelancer
It offers a round solution (it covers many areas and professional fields) for a freelancer, for free, constantly updated, very polished, and allowing high quality results that clients do require. After some learning, it becomes very useful for professional work.
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Top
Pro
•••
Supports both low-poly and hi-poly modeling
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Top
Pro
•••
Wide import and export format support
Support lots of modern 3D formats including DAE and FBX - ideal for game developers.
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Top
Pro
•••
Has a powerful rendering engine
Blender runs the Cycles path tracing engine under the hood. Cycles is a very powerful rendering engine capable of full path tracing (light fall off, caustics, volumetrics). It is mostly compatible with OpenCL and CUDA rendering, and is implementing mycropolygon displacement features. The upcoming release has a viewport engine called EEVEE whereby you can see and interact with your work in render mode in real time!
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Top
Pro
•••
Free and open source
Blender is licensed under the GPL. Some Blender modules such as the Cycles rendering engine are licensed under the Apache 2.0 license.
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Top
Pro
•••
Powerful animation suite
Blender provides a full rigging system, and automates animation by interpolating between keyframe positions.
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Top
Pro
•••
Python extensibility
Blender embeds Python 3, which can be used to write add-ons, tools, extend the interface, rig characters and automate tasks.
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Top
Pro
•••
Keyboard shortcuts
Good keyboard shortcuts for everything. Keep your left hand on the keyboard and your right hand on the mouse.
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Top
Pro
•••
Sculpting and 3D painting features
Although Blender's 3d painting and sculpting tools (mostly painting) are not at par with specialized software like Substance Painter, ZBrush, or Mari, it is more than capable of getting most jobs done if the user takes the time to learn and understand it.
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Top
Pro
•••
Node based modeling support
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Free
Recommend
1
--
Puppet2D
My Rec
ommendation
for
Puppet2D
My Recommendation for
Puppet2D
All
4
Pros
3
Cons
1
Top
Pro
•••
Mesh Deformation
Instead of having to change sprites to bend legs or other joints mesh deformation changes the mesh shape based on joint weights to bend and move.
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Top
Con
•••
Forced editor scaling causes problems
Puppet2D adjust the scaling of bones in the editor for display purposes, which results in unintended behavior if other objects use a bone as a parent.
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Top
Pro
•••
Inverse Kinematic bones
Bones will move and rotate reacting to the position of the rest of the skeleton. The animator does not have to animate each part of a joint but rather have it follow realistically. Also can be used for ragdoll effects based on physics.
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Top
Pro
•••
Built on top of Unity’s animation system
Mecanim and state machines work natively since Puppet2D builds on top of Unity’s built in animation system.
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Hide
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Get it
here
Recommend
6
2
--
SmoothMoves
My Rec
ommendation
for
SmoothMoves
My Recommendation for
SmoothMoves
All
5
Pros
3
Cons
2
Top
Pro
•••
Supports 2D for Unity Pre 4.3
Some platforms still do not support Unity 4.3+ and this requires using an alternative to the new 2D system. SmoothMoves is one of the only packages that fully support bone based animation before the update.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Spotty Undo
Sometimes undo will not work so be careful.
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Top
Pro
•••
Built in editor
Create animations, set up events, edit curves, and more in the Smooth Moves editor. Smooth Moves is built within a Unity editor window so the user doesn’t have to leave the engine to create content.
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Top
Con
•••
Does not support Mecanim
For those who like to use the visual state machine from Mecanim this is a major lacking feature.
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Top
Pro
•••
Does not rely on Mecanim
Many developers do not like using the visual state machines in mecanim and would rather control animation states in code. SmoothMoves has a simple API to play, stop, and change animations.
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Hide
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Get it
here
Recommend
2
--
GAF:Flash to Unity
My Rec
ommendation
for
GAF:Flash to Unity
My Recommendation for
GAF:Flash to Unity
All
9
Pros
7
Cons
2
Top
Pro
•••
Can convert 99% of what can be done in Flash
GAF supports such Flash features as: Masks support; Filters support; No limitations on timeline; Conversion of shape tweens; Frame labels.
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Top
Con
•••
Sound support available only in Premium version
GAF Converter supports sound but only in the Premium version.
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Top
Pro
•••
No need to use large Sprite Sheets
With GAF converter you get a highly optimized texture atlas and a config file. You don't need to take trouble over cumbersome sprite sheets. You can easily modify an already working in Unity animation and play around with the animations parts whenever you need.
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Top
Con
•••
Doesn't support sounds
GAF does not support importing audio along with Flash animations.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Alows using Flash animations in Unity
You can convert Flash animations directly in Unity with the help of plug-in. The converted .gaf file consists of a texturte atlas and a binary config.
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Top
Pro
•••
Supports different frameworks
Full playback API supported in Unity3d, Cocos2d-x, Cocos2d, Starling.
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Top
Pro
•••
Light, fast, and optimised
GAF is lightweight and fast in a project.
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Top
Pro
•••
Uses dynamic text
GAF can use dynamic text in animation on some platforms.
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Top
Pro
•••
Can customize sprite animation
GAF can swap a sprite with another.
See More
Hide
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Get it
here
Recommend
7
--
AnyPortrait
My Rec
ommendation
for
AnyPortrait
My Recommendation for
AnyPortrait
All
3
Pros
2
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Free Form Deformation
Deform the mesh for animation without setting up skeletal rig.
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Specs
Platforms:
Unity3d
Top
Pro
•••
Built for Unity
Built directly for Unity no need to work in a separate animation software.
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$49.00
Recommend
6
1
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