When comparing DragonBones Pro vs Pyxel Edit, the Slant community recommends Pyxel Edit for most people. In the question“What are the best 2D animation tools for game development?” Pyxel Edit is ranked 3rd while DragonBones Pro is ranked 4th. The most important reason people chose Pyxel Edit is:
Tiles can be animated within Pyxel Edit, with "onion skin" frame overlays to assist in making smooth frame transitions.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Animation weight
This is a very useful feature because you can make a walk animation that you can simply change the animation weight to see the character start running, because it will increase the scale of the movement of the bones in the animation. This will increase the hand and the leg swing as you increase the animation weight and the character, making it appear as though it is running.
Pro Switch sprites
Can easily switch sprites in between the animations like switching clothes and other multiple behaviors.
Pro Completely programmable animations
Watching and moving can be programed depending upon certain events.
Pro Animation speed changing, bone scaling, switching postures
Size as well as animation speed can be easily changed during an animation.
Pro Multiresolution with texture scale
Can easily export to different texture sizes to target multiple resolution platforms.
Pro Color transform, changeable Z-Order
Can easily change the Z-Order of a sprite during an animation and can also change the color mask on a sprite, in between an animation.
Pro Animation reuse/clone
Create once and use the same animation for different characters just by simply cloning the same animation for the new characters.
Pro Nesting skeleton, timeline tween
You can nest skeletons and change the timeline of the animation in between the animations in order to make some cool effects.
Pro Flash Pro extension, WYSWYG
There is an extension available for Adobe Flash users, which gives a WYSWYG design window inside of flash.
Pro Open source
Pro Supports animations
Tiles can be animated within Pyxel Edit, with "onion skin" frame overlays to assist in making smooth frame transitions.
Pro Intuitive UI
Pyxel Edit is widely acclaimed for its ease of use.
Pro Tileset extraction
Given an image and specified tile dimensions, Pyxel Edit will extract a tileset with no duplicate tiles. This mostly works for flat images though. If you feed Pyxel "finished maps" you will still get a lot of duplicates.
Pro Tilemap serialization support
Tile-based images (maps) built in Pyxel Edit can be serialized via XML or JSON for easy import elsewhere.
Pro Cheap compared to others
For only $9 (£6), this is one of the cheapest but also one of the best pixel editors out there.
Pro Live tile-update
Instantly see if your tiles are tileable and/or seamless and fix it easily.
Pro Indexed tiles can be used for reusing objects in animations
Cons
Con Almost no documentation
Con Not developed anymore
Publisher/ Developer dropped support for the software and left it in the dark. Use Spine instead.
Con Deceptive pricing
It's not "free" if you can't save, and tutorials cost money.
Con development has stopped -- developer has stated 8/20 that a new version will be released soon
Con Lacks some tools
Con No Linux version
There is no Linux version of the editor.
Con Free version lacks features
The free version of Pyxel Edit is an outdated beta. It does not receive updates.
Con Proprietary, closed-source software
This software does not respect your freedom.
Con Mac version is dependent on Adobe Air
The OSX version of the application requires Adobe Air to run.