A lot of people dream about drawing and animating cartoons ever since they were kids, but they never pursue. They fear that it’s too difficult to learn and they can’t afford to spend hundreds on expensive software like Adobe After Effects. It doesn’t have to be that way. You don’t need to spend a lot of money to learn animation. All you need is a free trial of popular animation software like Adobe After Effects, a decent computer and a will to learn. To help you get started I’ve compiled a list of some fine free software for animation for beginners, so read on!
Animation is a fun and exciting way to take your work to the next level, but it also brings increased complexity when you add movement into the mix. The world of animation tools is vast and informative. In this guide we will go over some of the best free software for animation for beginners, with a special focus on digital painting applications.
Terragen – Use It to Make CG Animation
Difficulty Level: Middle
Pro: The recently updated version is the best one. Ray-traced preview is a great function to help us making animation.
Con: The interface looks complicated, but it gets easy to know after you are familiar with it.
A completely free program that you can download and install on all Windows computers and tablets, Terragen is the ideal program for you to create the 3D animations and environments that you want. If you want a photo-realistic CG environment, using Terragen is the best way to do it!
Releasing imagination instantly, Terragen Creative is the one tool you’d like to consider. You can use it to make beautiful scenery.
For advanced tools, you can choose FBX to make animation quickly. The featured image gallery on its homepage will give you a deep understanding of the final outcome you can achieve with Terragen.
Features:
- Ray-traced preview. Without watermark after exporting
- Photo-realistic clouds and ozone simulation
- Rendering is twice as fast as the previous version of the program.
- Adding terrain, objects, and shader to your final product is very easy with the intuitive interface.
Seamless3d – Open-source Free Software
Difficulty Level: Easy
Pro: It is an open-source 3D modeling package. The good thing is the handy infinite Undo/Redo operation.
Con: Some advanced features are missing like drawing.
Seamless3d, an open-source 3D modeling software that you can download, is among the best animation worktable if you want to create specialized images, animated videos, or 3D characters.
It supports FFmpeg video format, so you can use AVI, MP4, and more. Besides, the forum is not active compared with before, but you still can find answers from many tutorials.
Features:
- It comes with infinite undo and redo options for complete flexibility to correct mistakes.
- It allows for partitioned and seamless texture mapping for YouTube videos.
- Has a specialized tree view interface.
Stykz – Simple to Use Animation Program for Beginners
Difficulty Level: Easy
Pro: It is the best stick figure animation if you want to make this kind of video.
Con: The UI is not modern to use and needs time to adapt to using it.
Stykz is completely free to use and without watermark. If you have used Pivot StickFigure Animator, then you will find Stykz is similar to it, but you can import the previous .stk files to animate it again. You can use it to make animation smooth frame by frame.
With its frame-based feature, Stykz is easy to customize each frame. You can change previous and current frames to get what you want. You can download it to have a try considering its easy to use features.
Features:
- There is some animes file on this website, so you can have a reference.
- Edit animation in the software without using another editing window.
- You can share the final work with others including information.
Clara.io
This is a cloud-based software that helps users with 3D modeling, animation, and rendering for free. Although it is a web-based tool but does not need to install any plugins in the browser for functioning. This is one of the Best Free Animation Software Download for Windows that allows excellent skeletal animation and polygonal modeling. Amazing quality of Clara.io is that you can import your animated files in more than 30 3D formats like Blender, Collada, Babylons, STEP, FBX, and STL are a few of them.
This software has a great library featuring various photorealistic materials offering simple but advanced materials. Clara.io is a cross-platform program which works with all the major Operating Systems and browsers such as Firefox, Chrome, Edge, IE 11 and Windows, Linux, macOS, iOS, and Android. This software has review tools and allows multiple users to edit an animation at the same time.
It is featured with wonderful plugins with which you can even develop Custom 3D viewers. Users have the view that it is quite powerful free animation software (such as Maya and 3D Studio Max). Moreover, you can easily share your galleries and different 3D models.
KeyShot
This fast and user-friendly 3D rendering program is the last one in our Best Free Animation Software Download for Windows list. It allows the user to make stunning visual within a minute that too without spending a single penny. This software supports both 2D and 3D animation, HDRI lighting and dynamic texture. Moreover, it has a special feature that enables users to simulate real-world camera behavior.
Blender
Blender is one of the most popular Animation software out there. While most might point out it is because it is open-source software, I think it features in this list and many best animation software lists because it is a robust and feature-rich animation software. Blender has an excellent community that will aid you on an otherwise hard animation software to master.
- Blender features support for the entire workflow of an animation project from Modeling to Video Editing. It also allows you to model, rig, animate, simulate, render, with compositing, motion tracking, and video editing. You can make an entire animated movie from start to end with these tools.
- Blender also lets you create pipeline tools, edit video and create scripts within the program to ease your workflow. The ability to create VFX, simulations, and games makes it a versatile and powerful animation software.
Conclusion
There are many free software programs that can help you learn animation. With a PC or Mac and a little talent, you can create a short animated film this year. The first three programs listed below are free 2D animation software for Windows and Mac machines. Many of them can be used to create short animated films, cartoons, and simple video clips.