Good free animation programme?

Question

Where can I find an animation programme that I can use to make moving pictures, which is free to download and doesn't have a trial version?

Answer 1

Blender:

http://www.blender.org/

Maya free edition:

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ind...

Download:

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/mfo...

Answer 2

If you want to create gifs,  try Beneton Movie GIF - free here

http://www.snapfiles.com/reviews/beneton...

Pivot Stick animator might interest you

http://www.snapfiles.com/get/stickfigure...

more advanced animation tools include blender and anim8r

http://www.blender.org/features-gallery/...

http://www.anim8or.com/main/index.html

Answer 3

Some of the better commercial 2D animation programs such as Digicel Flipbook, Toon Boom, TVPaint, TAB, and PAP, have Student or Express versions that are fairly inexpensive. However, you might be disappointed by how crippled these stripped down programs are compared to their more expensive Pro versions. But if you look hard enough you should be able to find them cracked online (rapidshare, bittorrent). There are some free alternatives.

If you're doing old school drawn on paper frame by frame stuff or stop-motion or 2D, I'd suggest MonkeyJam. It's free.

http://www.giantscreamingrobotmonkeys.co...

If you're on a Mac, use Pencil(there's PC and Linux versions as well).

http://www.les-stooges.org/pascal/pencil...

If you want to do Flash animation like the stuff on Newgrounds.com, either break down and buy Adobe Flash or you can try Creatoon or Synfig, which are free. They're not Flash, but they also do vector based symbol oriented

animation.

http://www.creatoon.com/index.php

http://www.synfig.org/

Here are some online resources about the basic principles of animation.

http://www.idleworm.com/how/index.shtml

http://www.awn.com/tooninstitute/lessonp...

http://www.animationarchive.org/2006/05/...

http://www.animationarchive.org/2006/05/...

http://www.karmatoons.com/drawing/1a.htm

http://www.animationarena.com/principles...

http://w ww.animationmeat.com/notes/notes.html

Answer 4

Blender 3d is a free and open source 3d animation application. It has even been used in high-budget movies.

http://www.blender.org/

You can also use GIMP with Gimp Animation Package (GAP), but I suspect this is c**p.

http://www.gimp.org/