There are some animation applications available but Synfig made its way trough crowd-funding and it's been successful. It is powerful, free, open-source vector-based 2D animation software package, developed from the scratch for producing feature-film quality 2D animation with fewer resources and people, it is released under the GNU General Public License.
Synfig stores its animations in its own XML file format, often compressed with gzip. These files use the filename extension .sif (uncompressed), .sifz (compressed) or .sfg (zip container format). The files store vector graphics data, embed or reference external bitmap images, and also a revision history of the project. It can render to video formats such as AVI, Theora and MPEG, as well as animated graphics formats such as MNG and GIF. It can also render to a sequence of numbered image files, using formats such as PNG, BMP, PPM and OpenEXR.
Layers: Synfig supports a multitude of layers of various types; geometric, gradients, filters, distortions, transformations, fractal and a few others.
Bones: Full-featured bone system allows to create cutout animation using bitmap images or control your vector artwork. The Skeleton Distortion layer allows to apply complex deformations to bitmap artwork.
Sound support: Synfig has basic features for syncing your animation with soundtrack using Sound Layer. Linux users can get all benefits of full-featured audio editors through the JACK integration.
Features:
Synfig stores its animations in its own XML file format, often compressed with gzip. These files use the filename extension .sif (uncompressed), .sifz (compressed) or .sfg (zip container format). The files store vector graphics data, embed or reference external bitmap images, and also a revision history of the project. It can render to video formats such as AVI, Theora and MPEG, as well as animated graphics formats such as MNG and GIF. It can also render to a sequence of numbered image files, using formats such as PNG, BMP, PPM and OpenEXR.
Layers: Synfig supports a multitude of layers of various types; geometric, gradients, filters, distortions, transformations, fractal and a few others.
Bones: Full-featured bone system allows to create cutout animation using bitmap images or control your vector artwork. The Skeleton Distortion layer allows to apply complex deformations to bitmap artwork.
Sound support: Synfig has basic features for syncing your animation with soundtrack using Sound Layer. Linux users can get all benefits of full-featured audio editors through the JACK integration.
Features:
- Ability to design the animation in the front-end and render it at a later time with the backend
- Supports multitude of layers of different types
- Requires less resources and people
- Capability of simulating soft-shading using curved gradients within an area
- Wide variety of other real-time effects that can be applied to layers or groups of layers
- Ability to control and animate the width of lines at their individual control points
- Ability to link any related data from one object to another
- Works with High Dynamic Range Imaging.
