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http://www.synfig.org/cms/
- Looks really promising in that it is actively developed, open source, and run on Linux
- Not sure how to go about exporting to a format that one of the Haxe libs can use
Thanks! It looks like the added benefit is that this tool doesn’t need to pre-render frames, as this lib plays back the animations natively!
I’m currently trying to improve the library. Check out the dev branch, you should have better performance than the haxelib version. Also I’ve added some nice features (macro to parse the scml, etc.)
Excellent! That’s great to hear. I think I’ll give Spriter + your SpriterHaxeEngine the first go among these options.
I’ve been checking out some 2d skeletal animation tools recently, and have serious issues with every one I’ve tried.
Dragonbones - installing the design panel for the latest version of Flash proved difficult. Once I got it going, over the course of an hour Flash crashed twice.
It appears the new standalone editor doesn’t serve any good purpose either. I can only edit an animation in a very limited way. It’s difficult to explain, but it appears to be a bug. I can’t find any documentation for the new editor that isn’t written in Chinese/Japanese.
Flump - I tried for quite some time but never was able to get past the error ‘non-symbols may not be in movie layers’. I changed all the relevant Movieclips to Graphics but then I got another error - ‘unrecognized library item null’.
I tried everything I could think of to resolve the issue but couldn’t work it out. I could find no documentation for this particular error.
Spriter - Crashed every time I started it up. Fortunately Windows troubleshooter managed to configure it so it would run. It didn’t take long though for it to crash on me again though. While it was intuitive and relatively easy to use I found it buggy and unpolished. It was constantly doing weird and unexpected things. All of a sudden the images would disappear from the hierarchy view, or the images would freeze and only the bones would move when testing the animation, requiring me to restart the program to resolve it.
I’m very disappointed with the free tools out there, is there anything free that isn’t buggy?
Hope your problem with Spriter will be fixed on the next release (Spriter 2.0). I don’t know when it will be released but hope it will be soon enough.
That’s a shame, looks like all those tools have plenty of room for improvement!
Nope, I just had a quick scan of the BabylonHx page, and it looks like there’s support for “bones” but when I clicked on the links nothing really happened. Also, does it come with an editor for the animations, or would the animatins have to be hand-coded?
Spine may not be open source, but it certainly runs on Linux, I’ve used it several times on Linux.
Thanks - I’ve updated my post!
Hello !
You can use Skeletoraxe. It’s a free library developed 2 year ago which works perfectly.
I used it to developed GhostSplash
You can download it right here
And here you can find a little tutorial.
Good luck !
This discussion is great! But it needs to be updated: what are currently the best options to create Flash-like animations and use them in Openfl projects? Both free/open and commercial/closed.
The latest one is Skeletoraxe: it looks like I can export Flash animations and use them in Openfl, right @ispebo? It is free.
Is it maintained right now? Can I use it on Openfl 3.6.1 (with Lime 2.9.1) or do I need the latest versions?
Then we have Spriter, that can export animations usable with @loudo SpriterHaxeEngine library. Spriter is not free.
Is SpriterHaxeEngine maintained right now?
Same questions: can I use it on Openfl 3.6.1 (with Lime 2.9.1) or do I need the latest versions?
Is it possible to use Spine animations? Is SpineHaxe alive and running?
Flump converter is not maintained anymore, I think: I had a try with it more than 1 year ago and “helped” the developer to fix some bugs, but didn’t have the chance to use it further.
Other options?
I am currently stuck with prerendered animations, but it is not a viable way to create great projects.
Yes I’m still maintaining SpriterHaxeEngine. There is a library for Tilemap (openfl >= 4.0.2) in the dev branch ready to be tested. I will soon add some new features that will probably work on openfl 3.6.1 first because my game still use this version.
There is a free version of Spriter. Of course there are only few features but maybe it’s enough for simple animations.
Anyway, it’s cheaper than Flash/AnimateCC.
I think Spine haxe is not maintained but I think it’s still usable.
Also, I found this flash converter. https://github.com/siratama/Flash-To-Haxe-Converter
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@GiG, Skeletoraxe is free (it was always the intention). It has been more than 1 years that I haven’t modified the code. I did not try again but I guess it should work.
If you try it and it does not work I suggest you try to solve it by changing classes.
It’s simple, Skeletoraxe is composed only of 3 classes.
@loudo: I own Spriter Pro license, so it is not a problem for me 
Great! I’ll give it a try!
Spine looks very cool, it is a pity SpineHaxe is not being maintained, as it is becoming older and older very fast because of TileMap advent. Anyway… if I am not wrong Starling can import Spine animations, right? But if I use Starling I will have to adapt a lot of code, I think 
I’ve never heard of Flash-To-Haxe-Converter, it sounds pretty straightforward! I wonder if I’d better stay with Flash or Spriter.
@ispebo: will you update it to use TileMaps?
What happens if I use blendmodes in Flash/Spriter and export the animations? Do the generated code/xml/scml keep track of these informations?
Well, I’d like to know more about the new rendering method with TileMap, because if it doesn’t support blendmodes in HTML5 yet I am still stuck with this long awaited feature.
openfl-dragonbones is working with the latest OpenFL (4.0+).
The only catch is that you have to use an older DragonBones version (2.2).
I’m not sure if there is a blend mode feature in Spriter.
But one of the next feature I would like to add in my engine is : color change and shader per Spriter and then mesh deformation.
@GiG: Sorry, I’m not maintaining it anymore. I committed sources so that everyone can modify / improve it at will