When comparing 2D Toolkit vs Blender, the Slant community recommends 2D Toolkit for most people. In the question“What are the best 2D animation tools for Unity?” 2D Toolkit is ranked 3rd while Blender is ranked 6th. The most important reason people chose 2D Toolkit is:
The documentation for the toolkit is well written and there are video tutorials as well as an active community.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
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.
Pro Free and open source
Blender is licensed under the GPL. Some Blender modules such as the Cycles rendering engine are licensed under the Apache 2.0 license.
Pro Wide import and export format support
Support lots of modern 3D formats including DAE and FBX - ideal for game developers.
Pro Has a powerful rendering engine
Blender runs the Cycles path tracing engine under the hood. Cycles is a very powerful rendering engine capable of full path tracing (light fall off, caustics, volumetrics). It is mostly compatible with OpenCL and CUDA rendering, and is implementing mycropolygon displacement features. The upcoming release has a viewport engine called EEVEE whereby you can see and interact with your work in render mode in real time!
Pro Python extensibility
Blender embeds Python 3, which can be used to write add-ons, tools, extend the interface, rig characters and automate tasks.
Pro Powerful animation suite
Blender provides a full rigging system, and automates animation by interpolating between keyframe positions.
Pro Supports both low-poly and hi-poly modeling
Pro Regular release schedule
Releases are made every ~3 months.
Pro Sculpting and 3D painting features
Although Blender's 3d painting and sculpting tools (mostly painting) are not at par with specialized software like Substance Painter, ZBrush, or Mari, it is more than capable of getting most jobs done if the user takes the time to learn and understand it.
Pro Includes video editing & compositing tools
Blender's node-based compositor has comprehensive video sequencing and post-processing features.
Pro Node based modeling support
Pro Keyboard shortcuts
Good keyboard shortcuts for everything. Keep your left hand on the keyboard and your right hand on the mouse.
Pro Very useful for a freelancer
It offers a round solution (it covers many areas and professional fields) for a freelancer, for free, constantly updated, very polished, and allowing high quality results that clients do require. After some learning, it becomes very useful for professional work.
Pro Has a large community
There's a huge community to help you get started immediately.
Pro Coherent and streamlined workflow / internal use logic
The trick with Blender is to get used to its usage philosophy, as it keeps consistent through all the application. Once you get it, every feature or addition is learnt naturally, almost effortlessly.
Pro Very versatile
You don't have to switch between software when you want to do different things. Because modeling, sculpting, composting, video editing etc can all be done in blender.
Pro Generative geometry using nodes
Cons
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.
Con Too many possibilities, no unified workflow
The operations are not optimized enough for specific tasks.
Con The physics engine is a bit lagging behind, especially the destruction physics
Con Difficult learning curve
Blender has a history of being unintuitive, but the 2.8 overhaul made the program far easier for beginners to pick up, and changes continue to be made to further improve the experience. However, there is still a learning curve.
Con Not good for Industrial Design because it uses average vertex normals
You can not create a hard surface with a radius continuity degree along a surface using a specific radius value.
Con Vertex normal issues on edges after boolean operations.
After creating a simple boolean operation the vertex normals are broken. A lot of work to fix the issue and you loos surface continuity.
Con Bad vertex normal after boolean operations
Does not handle well polygon intersections. And need tweaking by hand points or adding average vertex normals via modifiers.
Con Does not handle NURBs
Is not capable of real hard surface for industrial design because is not able to reproduce surface continuity degree as a NURBs does and average vertex normal destroy surface radius.
Con Poor particle system
The Blender particle system can at times be a little limiting and finicky (and buggy) to get working. Even if it can get most straight forward jobs done, it is far from the most advanced system, and could benefit largely from advancements.