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Add to SafariWhen comparing Unity 2D vs 2D Toolkit, the Slant community recommends Unity 2D for most people. In the question“What are the best 2D animation tools for Unity?” Unity 2D is ranked 1st while 2D Toolkit is ranked 3rd. The most important reason people chose Unity 2D is:
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.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
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.
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.
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.
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.
Pro Good documentation
The documentation for the toolkit is well written and there are video tutorials as well as an active community.
Pro Includes source code
No need to pay more to get access to the source code.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Pro Create Atlases within the tool
Create sprite sheets for tiles to save draw calls and to keep tilesets organized.
Pro Supports the Tiled TMX Format
Create tilemaps in Tiled and implement with 2D Toolkit.
Cons
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.
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.
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.
