Software - Danimation/Animation-Resources GitHub Wiki

All the software listed is free to use.

2D Animation Software:

Animation Paper - an easy and intuitive animation software designed to mimic animating on paper

Pencil2D - an easy, intuitive tool to make 2D hand-drawn animations

OpenTooz - Based on the software "Toonz", developed by Digital Video S.p.A. in Italy, OpenToonz has been customized by Studio Ghibli, and used for the creation of its works for many years

Krita - an all purpose illustration and animation package

Synfig - open source vector based animation software

Graphics Gale - pixel art animation software

3D Animation Software:

Rumba-Animation - Rumba aims to be the best professional 3d animation solution on the market and it supports most Maya rigs

Blender - a free and open source 3D creation suite. It supports the entirety of the 3D pipeline—modeling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing and motion tracking, video editing and 2D animation pipeline

Storyboarding and Animatic software:

Storyboarder - Storyboarder makes it easy to visualize a story as fast you can draw stick figures. Quickly draw to test if a story idea works. Create and show animatics to others. Express your story idea without making a movie

Monkey Jam - a digital penciltest and stopmotion animation program. It is designed to let you capture images from a webcam, camcorder, or scanner and assemble them as separate frames of an animation

VR Animation Software:

Quill - a VR illustration and animation tool

Medium - you can intuitively create organic shapes, complex characters, and abstract art

Utilities and Useful software:

Audacity - Audacity is an easy-to-use, multi-track audio editor and recorder

Advanced Renamer - A great tool for when you need to batch rename images or any files.

Ramses - An open source asset management software for After Effects and Blender.

Crowdrender - a tool for setting up your own blender render farm, works on a local network and over the net.

OCA - is an open format to ease the exchange of traditional/frame-by-frame/cel animation between different applications.

Storyforge - is a tool designed for writing the narrative content of a computer game. You can use it to write and organise all the on-screen text and spoken dialogue which your game needs; it will all be stored inside Storyforge’s database.

Compositing and video editing Software:

Natron - open Source Compositing Software For VFX and Motion Graphics.

Ebsynth - bring your paintings to animated life.

Davinci Resolve - editing, color correction, visual effects, motion graphics and audio post production all in one software tool

Game engines:

Godot - free and open source 2d and 3d game engine

Unity - build 2D, 3D and VR games and apps

Unreal Engine - real time 3d creation and video game engine

Annotation and reference software:

Syncsketch - is a great piece of software for giving animation feedback with annotation and draw overs

Epic-Pen - creates an overlay that lets you draw, write and highlight over any desktop software in real-time, allowing you to move seamlessly between your software and your notes. Has a free version and paid version

PureRef - a stand-alone program for Windows, Mac and Linux that keeps track of your images. Can be mood boards or need reference images for your painting or 3D model

Screen to gif - allows you to record your screen and outputs as an animated gif

Video\Image player software:

DJV viewer - provides professional review software for VFX, animation, and film production. Playback high resolution, high bit-depth, image sequences and videos, with frame accurate control and color management

VLC - is a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player and framework that plays most multimedia files as well as DVDs, Audio CDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols

Transcoding and encoding software:

HandBake - a tool for converting video from nearly any format to a selection of modern, widely supported codecs

DUME - a fast, versatile and easy to use open source media encoder

Illustration software:

Inkscape - whether you are an illustrator, designer, web designer or just someone who needs to create some vector imagery

Magma Studio - has all the features that you expect from a professional drawing & painting tool, with one major difference – it works directly in your browser

Plugins/Scripts

Photoshop

AnimationMaster - brings over 1000 controllable motion presets directly into Photoshop’s video timeline. It is a very fast way to animate layers and produce videos

After Effects

Duik - a comprehensive animation and rigging toolset for Adobe After Effects

Dufx - list and manage all the effects used in an After Effects project

Blender

Grease Pencil Picker - to retrieve and set the Layer and Material by sampling a stroke. It will save time searching for them and will solve those "Damned, wrong layer!".

Grease Pencil to Unity - An exporter and importer tool to convert Blender Grease Pencil for Unity.

Maya

Useful websites:

FramexFrame - frame by frame and sequential images from various animated films for study and appreciation

Line of Action - timed figure, environment and gesture drawing with a wide range of models and poses

Quickposes - pose library for figure & gesture drawing practice

Animation Screencaps - frame by frame archives of entire animated movies and TV shows, from a variety of different studios

Living Lines - a library of pencil tests and production art from a variety of old cartoons

Character Design Reference - a comprehensive reference library for all things related to character design

Pencil Test Depot - an archive of pencil tests

Frame by Frame - provides educational breakdowns of animated and live action clips for animators looking to learn and non-animators who just can’t get enough of the artform

online frame calculator - this is a simple utility to calculate frames out of time given and the other way around

Animation Price Guide and 3D VFX Cost Calculator - online calculator to work out what to charge your client based on multiple factors ranging from style of animation, duration and equipment costs.

Allocations Template - Guide to time allocation for animated shots that takes into account complexity and amount of characters

The Industry Job Spreadsheet - compiled by Chris Mayne and is an amazing resource for job seekers. It is full of industry job postings and can be filtered to show only animation roles

Animation Methods - if you always wanted to specialize as a 3D animator and didn't know where to start, we will give you the complete self-taught online course. Specialising in Maya.

Animator Island: Start - character animation tips, tricks and tutorials

MetaHuman Creator - a free cloud-based app that empowers anyone to create photorealistic digital humans, complete with hair and clothing, in minutes. MetaHumans come fully rigged and ready to animate in your Unreal Engine projects.

Quixel Megascans - the world's largest scanned 3D asset library

Sketchfab - best 3D viewer on the web and allows you to download and sell 3D models

Mixamo - Automated rigging and motion capture system all within a web app.

Texturing Software:

Quixel Mixer - free texture painting software, to cover most of your texturing needs.