Synfig
Free desktop software for tweened 2D vector and cutout animation.
Synfig is a free, GPL-licensed 2D animation application for creating vector- and bitmap-based animation on Windows, macOS, and Linux. It focuses on reducing frame-by-frame drawing through tweening, layer-based compositing, bones, and parameter controls for character rigs and motion graphics.
Why it stands out
- Designed specifically for 2D animation rather than general illustration alone.
- Automatic in-betweening helps reduce manual frame-by-frame production work.
- Combines vector tweening with bitmap cutout workflows in one application.
- Includes advanced rigging controls such as bones, skeleton distortion, linked parameters, and expressions.
- GPLv3 licensing and public source code make it usable and modifiable without vendor lock-in.
Good to know
- The application is desktop-only, with builds listed for Windows, macOS, and Linux rather than browser or mobile use.
- Development builds are meant for testing newer features and may be less stable than the regular release.
- The listed minimum platform support excludes older systems such as pre-Windows 7 and pre-OS X 10.8 machines.
Photos
Independent animators and small studios can produce 2D vector or cutout animation without commercial software costs. Create character rigs using bones and bitmap artwork. Build motion graphics with vector shapes, gradients, filters, and distortions. Experiment with newer animation features by installing the development build separately from the stable release.
Vector tweening, bitmap and vector artwork support, 50+ layer types, filters and distortions, bone-based rigging, skeleton deformation for bitmap artwork, linked layer parameters, mathematical expressions, stable and development builds, documentation, forums, and multilingual video training links.
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