Godot as a 2D video animation tool ?

paganoni

Hi there ! I've just heard of Godot today, downloaded it and enjoyed the overall first feeling.

I would like to know if Godot can be used for creating (mainly) 2D sketches and export them as video movies. We're working for a theater show and need to (re)create some video animation that have been previously done with AfterEffect. Our main artist does know nothing at animation tool (but is very good with photoshop and illustrator), and I have some knowledge in OpenFrameworks and C++ coding. Using OpenFrameworks for 2D animation is too tedious, we need a tool can could be the Flash animation studio of the 21 century, timelines AND scripting or coding - does Godot fit the bill ?

Thank you for you help

Megalomaniak

Blender 3D(grease pencil toolset), or one of many dedicated 2D animation tools such as Pencil 2D, or Studio Ghiblis OpenToonz would likely be a better fit. Unless you are specifically interested in creating interactive browser based web content, in which case using something like godot with the html5 export template might make somewhat more sense.

Grease Pencil:

<iframe src="

width="640" height="360" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe> GP - "Kairos" Fan art recreation, made with Blender Grease Pencil by Daniel M. Lara (Pepeland) from Pepe School Land on Vimeo. That channel also has some tutorial videos for Grease Pencil.

OpenToonz:

Pencil 2D(likely the most familiar of these three to an ex-flash user):

Of these three I know about blender the most and blender certainly has python scripting, I do not know what the scripting situation might be in others if any. Since OpenToonz is a major animation studios production tool I'd expect there to be something but then, they likely are comfortable just modifying the source since they created the tool.

paganoni

Thank you fo your answer, I'm aware of some of those 2D tools but I would really prefer to use tools like Godot because some of the animations we need to create could benefit from scripting, 2D physics, textures tweaking and so on. In fact we are not really into 2D toons frame by frame animation, but more on a kinda "simple" effects like

background traveling with animated sprites on top
use of VideoPlayer class and cook some more content on top of video
scripted positions, scaling, and maybe more more on properties
and why not, very simple 3D sometimes

With Godot we could think about new perspectives in the future, and the ROI (time spent learning in that case) will be better than with a pure 2D animation studio. For example I could experiment with sensors, remote network raspberries, OSC, OpenCV, who knows ? I a pure newbie in Godot but I really wonder how it could be used to fullfill our needs.

I just begun to read the docs, seems that the AnimationPlayer and related stuff can be ok to create simple movements, following bezier paths, so quite the same as in Flash kinda timeline with interpolation keyframes.

Your thoughts are welcome ;-)

Megalomaniak

Sounds like Blender would be your perfect bet. You don't have to use the offline renderers, viewport renderer can be used too and for the time being at least, it does even include it's own integrated game engine(about to be replaced by another 'interactive' solution in near future). To top it all it is a fully featured 3D animation and effects suite with it's own video editor and compositor, and as pointed out in previous post it has tools for 2D animation as well. Essentially a whole production pipeline in one single program. And again, it is very scriptable, and if that is not enough it is opensource and can be freely modified in C/C++.

Huge well established user base capable of answering any questions you might have exists at blenderartists.org.

https://www.blender.org/

paganoni

Just another point about Blender : I gave it a try many many years ago, and from what I can recall it was a pretty hard learning curve... Is Blender today easier to use for 2D animation as far as you know ?

Megalomaniak

Depends, how many years ago? If 10 or so then, yes its definitely improved in usability, though its still going to take some learning, this is not the sort of software you pick up without reading the manual(and I dare say the manual has gotten a lot better too), but then neither are any of the other professional 3D packages. Besides, how is using a game engine as an animation suite going to be any easier? ;)

TwistedTwigleg

Blender is much better for beginners now than it was when I started several years ago. I'm not sure on the 2D animation side, but everything in Blender has taken leaps and bounds in terms of usability.

It still does have a learning curve, but I would say its no harder than any alternative program (like Maya, Godot, Unity, Flash, OpenToonz, etc) in terms how how steep the learning curve actually is. Learning any program takes time and effort, and personally I don't think Blender's learning curve is terrible (and there is loads of tutorials to help you along the way!).

I would suggest taking some tutorials aimed at teaching 2D animations, and see what you think after giving it a few weeks.

(I am a little biased, because I've been using Blender for around 5-8 years now, so I cannot say firsthand how easy Blender is for beginners. I have read that Blender is much easier than it was before though, and personally I've found that working in Blender is way easier than it was a couple years ago :smile: )

gtkampos

Another plus for Blender. You can check the Coa tools if you want to make 2d cutout animation. Its a plugin for blender that you can check here: https://github.com/ndee85/coa_tools

There is videos on youtube from the creator showing how to use. Very useful.

null-painter-error

I heartily second (or third or whatever) the suggestion to use blender with coatools for 2d animation. There is some learning curve there, but you seem willing to undertake it and I can personally attest that 2d in blender is great! I used Spriter before, and I'll never look back.

I made this recently with blender.

Ace_Dragon

Godot's priority right now is tools to make games, any effort on adding cinematic or video making functionality would take away from that.

The Grease Pencil stuff coming to Blender 2.8 will take care of your needs, it's being developed in tandem with an actual 2D movie known as 'Hero' (it will offer tons of state-of-the-art features such as a dedicated grease pencil object).

taiyang

There are many 2D animation software available, include Harmony, Adobe Animate, Moho Pro, Synfig Studio, Opentoonz and etc.