Free Animation Software for Beginners: Features, How to choose?

If you wish to know the tools to create animation, here we have listed a few top-rated Animation software available for free.

Free Animation Software for Beginners

Coming far from the previous years’ creative practices, today is the age of Animation which opens up numerous path for creators to elevate their designs and creative copies. Due to availability of many animation software, creators can now create advanced designs out of their thoughts. Initially, animators can begin creating their ideas on free software instead of spending huge amounts on paid online animation software. We have listed popular free animation software for beginners on this page below.

Also Read: How to Create a Strong Animation Portfolio: A Complete Guide for Aspiring Animators

What is Animation?

The field of animation is getting quite popular over the past couple of years. Due to the hit of many animation movies such as Frozen, Finding Nemo, and Kung Fu Panda which generated millions of dollars in revenue, animation industry is at the hike. Do you know about the first fully computer-animated film? It was Disney-Pixar’s Toy Story which generated over $373 million at the box office and called the second-highest-grossing movie of the year 1995. Due to this, demand for animation courses is also at the hike.

There are thousands of Animation tools that create on frame-by-frame basis and each frame is equivalent to a single photo or drawing. Animation software can be divided into following two categories:

• 2D animation software: it represents everything in a particular width and height. In simple language, everything is flat in 2D animation. Popular examples of 2D animation are ‘The Simpsons’ and ‘The Lion King’.
• 3D animation software: it signifies the designs in a block. The blocks will be represented in terms of width, height, and depth. 3D animation software adds shadows, shading, and perspective. The Lego Movie and Ice Age are the famous examples of 3D animations examples.

List of Free Animation Software for Beginners

Below is a list of some of the best free animation software for beginners who have just started their career.

• Blender

Blender is a popular animation platform extensively used by professionals, and creates exquisite animations. It is one of a free & open-source 3D suite used for modeling, rigging, animation, rendering, simulation, motion tracking, and for video editing. If you are a beginner, you can definitely try blender for its robust functioning. It is popularly used by individual artists, students and animation enthusiasts. The software is available on MacOS, Windows & Linux. Candidates aspiring to take beginner animation classes may use Blender software during their learning process.

         Features:

• • Blender offers advanced modeling, sculpting, CPU & GPU rendering, HDR lighting support, real-time viewport review and PBR shades.
  • It lets you import raw footage, track the footage and view the camera movements.
  • Besides, the video editing feature, blender also offers advanced audio & video tools

• Pencil 2D

Pencil2D animation software provides a collection of features to users interested in using free animation software. It comprises a layer menu for bitmap, camera, audio and vector layers. These features help to elaborate animations. This free online animation software has intuitive layout and convenient UI which makes it easy to recommend to newbies. Along with this, the HD support from Pencil 2D software, allowss you to save your creations in high quality.

• Synfig Studio

The third most popular free animation software in our list is Synfig Studio. It is an open-source 2D animation program that creates high-quality films. There is no need to make animation frame-by-frame in this software, you just need to enter the key positions, and eventually the software will robotically calculate in-between frames. This software can create complex scenes and dynamic structures.

         Features: 

• • Synfig Studio has 50+ layers to create complex animations
  • Vector tweening feature and Supports HDR imaging
  • Apply numerous real-time effects

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• Moho Debut

Moho Debut is a perfect choice both for animation amateurs and aficionados. Moho Debut lists at the fourth position in our free and popular animation tool and it offers a simple interface and a collection of strong tools. It offers bilingual support as it has different languages including English, French, Chinese and Japanese. This software is available in on MacOS & Windows.

         Features: 

• • It offers to choose from a selection of pre-made scenes, props, characters, audio & video clips, etc.
  • It has a powerful vector drawing tool that lets the users create their own characters as well as objects 
  • It bends any object along its distinct path and Edit several layers at the same time
  • It allows to create and save your own keyboard shortcuts

• Tupi tube

TupiTube another best free animation software for children and amateurs. Being an open-source platform, it allows to create 2D animation using a simple interface with a moderate learning curve. TupiTube offers a wide range of tutorials but the only drawback in this software it can’t be used to create 3D videos. The software is available on Windows & MacOS.

         Features: 

• • The software offers tools for vector illustration such as ellipses, rectangles, polygons and lines.
  • You can import and us images as animated assets or static backgrounds 
  • It allows exporting all the final images, files and animations to several file formats

• K-3D

K-3D is another infamous free animation software for PC. It was primarily designed for generating polygon models and its engine is well-equipped for exhibiting object surfaces. It uses polygons and plugins are optimized for handling robust projects. K-3D software is popular for its useful undo/redo tools.

• Powtoon

Powtoon software was launched in 2012 and is a free-to-use animation app mainly designed for creating explainer videos. Amateurs and professionals both can use this app. Along with that, it is extensively used to create infographics and marketing clips by companies like Google, Adobe, IBM, eBay, Cisco, etc. 

         Features: 

• • Powtoon allows you to export files to Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo as well as Powerpoint presentations and PDFs
  • It lets you customize the styles and modify the aspect ratio and sizes
  • It also allows to import many popular themes from Powerpoint

• Renderforest

Renderforest is a widespread free animation app and is used universally to create an animation from more than 100 ready-made templates for mobile devices. In renderforest, user is given an option from many video templates, including slide shows, explanatory videos, , splash screens, logos, corporate presentations, etc.

• Opentoonz

OpenToonz is listed at the ninth position in our free animation software for beginners list. It is one of the best free animation software which is widely used to create 2D animations. An open-source software, it is widely used in both non-commercial and commercial set ups.

          Features: 

• • It has many functionalities including incident light, varying picture styles and curvy distortion
  • It gives an option for many drawing tools such as indexed colour palettes, vector & bitmap drawing tools, etc.

• Animaker

Animaker software is designed for novices to create simple animations and live-action videos, YouTube videos, commercial videos, video marketing, etc. within minutes. It functions on HTML5 engine, offering unbroken performance. Animaker has a massive library and collection of images and videos. The software has thousands of royalty-free sound effects and music tracks.

         Features

• • Animaker allows one click-resizing and multi-user collaboration

• • It also includes text-to-speech software to create human-like voices

Also Read:

• Difference Between Aimation and VFX
• 2D Animation Vs 3D Animation: Which is Easier?
• Differences between Graphics and Animation