
Adobe XD
CreateStudio is an on-premise video-making and editing software that helps video creators, social media marketers and YouTubers create doodles, animations and explainer videos. The platform enables developers to include emojis, sh...Read more
Introbrand is an animation solution that helps small businesses, clubs and educational institutes create product, service, marketing and personal branding videos. It allows staff members to utilize multiple pre-designed templates ...Read more
VistaCreate (ex-Crello) is an online graphical design SaaS that encompasses image and photo editing tools within a rich, canvas-based workspace. Available for free. Upload your own photos, use the library of 50M+ royalty-free crea...Read more
Adobe Animate is an animation solution that helps businesses create interactive content including 2D drawings and 3D animations and share them across various online platforms. Designers can use the application to create raster and...Read more
The MakeStoryboard app has won the favor of animators and video designers alike. The app has an easy-to-use user interface (UI) with a drag-and-drop ability, custom text fields, notes, image uploading capability, and an in-built s...Read more
Adobe After Effects is a motion graphics platform that helps businesses design animated videos and streamline visual effects (VFX) processes. It enables graphic designers to store digital content in a centralized repository, share...Read more
HitFilm Express is an on-premise video editing software that provides businesses with tools to create and edit professional videos on a centralized platform. Editors can produce shotgun or lighting effects, add blaster impacts and...Read more
Animations are important for storytelling. Whether you’re in the gaming, entertainment, retail, architecture, or engineering industry, you can use animations to create attractive visuals for marketing your products or services. Animated videos also find an application in the e-learning industry to help visualize concepts and make learning easier for students.
Creating animations, however, is a time-consuming and complex process, and the complexity varies based on your desired animation type (e.g., 2D, 3D) and quality. Several underlying functions, even in simple animations, are effort-intensive. These include generating character skeletons, creating transitions, and assembling animated frames.
That’s where animation software comes into the picture. It offers features such as prebuilt templates, automatic light and color scheme adjustment, motion capture, and rendering to help automate the process of creating animations.
In this buyers guide, we explain the features and benefits of animation software as well as the considerations and market trends you should keep in mind when purchasing the software.
Here's what we'll cover:
Animation software is a software tool that automates the process of creating animated feature films, cartoons, GIFs, whiteboard animation videos, and other media. It allows design artists to create an animated video frame by frame, either from scratch or by using a prebuilt template. It also lets them import media files from other applications to add music or additional effects to their animations.
The software automates functions such as rendering videos, adding transitions, adjusting the background, syncing the audio, and creating bone structures to help reduce the time and effort required to create animations. It’s used in various industries including education, entertainment, advertising, marketing, manufacturing, and medical.
It’s easier to select software when you know what its common features are. Let’s look at some of the common features of animation tools.
2D and 3D modeling | Access 2D and 3D animation features such as rigging, vector animation, bone tools, animation curves, automatic weight calculation, auto-meshing, and inverse kinematics. Use prebuilt templates to speed up the process. |
Animations and transitions | Create animations from scratch, or use prebuilt templates. Add graphical and media objects, modify the appearance of the objects, and synchronize them with the audio. Use built-in transitions or create your own. Define the sequence of transitions, or use autogenerated transitions. |
Media imports | Import pictures, videos, graphics, audio, and other media. Customize the media, adjust its quality, add audio and transitions, modify the size, and much more. |
Prebuilt templates | Choose from a collection of prebuilt templates that you can edit, rearrange, and add your own branding to. Change the text, font, color, size, and other parameters as required. |
Rendering | Assemble all animated scenes (2D animation or 3D graphics) in a sequence of individual frames to generate a video clip. Convert keyframes or simulated models into their final appearance by adding lighting, effects, transitions, textures, and more. |
Video editing | Edit video backgrounds, color schemes, fonts, text, frame hierarchies, and more. Edit any imported media to fine-tune the characters, motion animation, lighting, etc. |
Before evaluating animation program options, you should assess the kind of buyer you are. The majority of buyers in this market belong to one of these categories:
Here are the key benefits of choosing an animation platform:
Here are the latest animation software market trends that you should be aware of:
Note: The application selected in this article is an example to show a feature in context and is not intended as an endorsement or a recommendation. It has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable at the time of publication.