When comparing Adobe Animate (formerly Flash Professional) vs Spriter, the Slant community recommends Adobe Animate (formerly Flash Professional) for most people. In the question“What are the best sprite animation programs?” Adobe Animate (formerly Flash Professional) is ranked 1st while Spriter is ranked 2nd. The most important reason people chose Adobe Animate (formerly Flash Professional) is:
This program has developed AAA TV Series and Movies like Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends and My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Powerful tool
This program has developed AAA TV Series and Movies like Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends and My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.
Pro Export to HTML5
Pro Interpolation between frames
Several ways to create animation and special effects: motion tweens, classic tweens.
Pro Create and organize layers
Layers help you organize the artwork in your document. You can draw and edit objects on one layer without affecting objects on another layer.
Pro Bone tool
Bone tool that enables you to link symbols together quickly and easily in a parent/child relationship commonly referred to as inverse kinematics.
Pro Easy to use
Pro Quick and easy keyframe animation
Animation is calculated as movement paths between keyframes, and creating a keyframe requires only placing sprites and assigning a time index.
Pro Easy configuration of character maps
Spriter makes it easy to change the character skin, and the animations persists.
Pro Integration for Unity3D and Construct 2
Modules supporting direct import of Spriter's SCML animations are available for Unity3D and Construct 2.
Pro Price
Price is a lot less than Spine for the pro version and goes on sales often.
Pro Free upgrade to Spriter Pro 2
Free upgrade to Spriter Pro 2.
Pro Has a Free and a Pro version
Pro Steam intergration
Steam integration is great for updates and tracking hour progression with the software.
Cons
Con No more support
Adobe ditched AIR which they will EOL at 2020
Con Exspensive
Flash can be priced at $999.99 on the official Abobe store.
Con Sluggish performance with Unity Runtime
Con This version will never have 3D mess support
Yes, there will be a free upgrade to Spriter Pro 2 which will have this feature, but it will be years until that program is read as mentioned on the official site. The issue being that they do not have a way to program this in their current exported runtime. So, for not both Dragon Bones, Spine, and Blender, are the best options it seems for 3D mesh support which really adds something to game animations.
Con No hotkeys for stepping through animation frames
Stepping the animation forward and backward requires using the mouse, extremely inconvenient when fine-tuning motion paths.
Con No curved paths
All motion paths are linear. Curves have to be simulated by hand-placing additional keyframes.
Con Pro
Need knowledge in animator specification of profession