When comparing ex2D vs Puppet2D, the Slant community recommends Puppet2D for most people. In the question“What are the best 2D plug-ins for Unity3D?” Puppet2D is ranked 3rd while ex2D is ranked 4th. The most important reason people chose Puppet2D is:
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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Pros
Pro Fantastic font editor
The atlas font editor that comes with ex2D is fantastic and makes it very easy to manage and modify the fonts in your project. Key features:
- Support fonts export from BMfont and Hiero.
- Multiple fonts can be put together in one big texture atlas to save draw calls.
- Fonts can also be put together with other texture sprite to save draw calls.
- Manage fonts easily in the atlas editor.
Pro Includes a very useful clipping system
Quickly clip sprite, text and other sprite type in a rectangle
Pro Best in class sprite animation editor
The UX for editing sprite animations with ex2D is simply better then any of the alternative frameworks. You can:
- Scale and scroll enabled time line editor.
- Move, add, remove and insert Frame Element by dragging and dropping them directly.
- Adjustable single frame length to make animation creating more versatile.
- Support adding animation events directly in the timeline editor.
- Preview animation result in the editor.
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.
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.
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.
Cons
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.