Synfig Studio

Synfig is a powerful, industrial-strength vector-based 2D animation software package. The software has been designed from the ground-up for producing feature-film quality animation with fewer people and resources.2D Animation

2D Animation has traditionally been very expensive because every frame must be drawn by hand. Even with today's digital inking and painting software, the process still relies on individuals hand-drawing each frame. This laborious task is called ‘tweening’. Synfig eliminates the task of manual tweening, producing smooth, fluid motion without the animator having to draw out each frame individually. This allows you to produce 2D animation with fewer people while producing art of a higher quality.

Features

As a true front-end and back-end-application, it is possible to design the animation in the front-end and render it at a later time with the backend Synfig Tool. This could be done another (potentially faster) computer without a graphical display connected.

The software is capable of simulating soft-shading using curved gradients within an area so that the animator does not have to draw shading into every single frame. There is also a wide variety of other real-time effects that can be applied to layers or groups of layers like radial blurs and colour tweaks that all are resolution-independent. Other features include the ability to control and animate the width of lines at their individual control points, and the ability to link any related data from one object to another. Synfig also works with High Dynamic Range Imaging.

Input and Output Formats

Synfig stores its animations in its own XML file format. These files use the file name extension .sif (uncompressed) or .sifz (compressed). The files store vector graphics data, and can also reference external bitmap images.

Synfig 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. Synfig also has basic support for SVG import.

Windows and MacOS Compatible:

* Windows XP
* Windows Vista
* Windows 7
* Windows 8
* Windows 8.1
* Windows 10

Apple MacOS:

This software is compatible with all Intel based Mac computers from MacOS 10.6 Snow Leopard to the latest new release.