When comparing Anima2D vs SmoothMoves, the Slant community recommends Anima2D for most people. In the question“What are the best 2D skeletal animation tools?” Anima2D is ranked 4th while SmoothMoves is ranked 13th. The most important reason people chose Anima2D is:
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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Pros
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.
Pro Free
Pro Spring bones
Much like spring joints native to unity, you can set bones to have dynamic spring animations based on their parents.
Pro PlayMaker integration
Developers echo17 provide Playmaker action scripts for SmoothMoves.
Pro Texture swapping and tinting at runtime
Animations can be re-skinned in several ways, entirely on the fly.
Cons
Con No longer supported by Unity.
This has been merged into the 2D Animation package.
Con Uses the Unity hierarchy
It's impossible to rename your asset after making your animation, otherwise you lose dependencies.
Con Bone hierarchy is not collapsible
When working with a complex skeleton, the entire tree is always visible. There is no way to hide bones under their parents.
Con Unity Middleware
SmoothMoves is not a stand-alone application. It runs entirely within the Unity Editor, and is not compatible with other engines.