Design activity
Will your project thrive or whither away?
Here we look at the state of development on each project. Some projects are managed by a single person who has an itch to scratch, but many of these programs have other organisations behind them. For example, Tupi has support from a school in Columbia.
Blender has its own foundation. This has made it possible to employ, more or less, full-time staff to fix bugs and separate developers for new features. The foundation also keeps in touch with companies who have their own needs, helping to fund the entire project.
When organised this way, any project has a greater possibility for a stable and growing code base. Programs that aren’t being developed will soon hamper your progress by lacking a specific feature you need to create a key effect.
When looking at Synfig’s development, activity is still quite high although it peaked in 2013. This ensures that existing faults will be handled, but it’s unknown how many new features will be developed. Yet with support from several user organisations, this project looks promising.
Blender is being used by large studios, and there’s no doubt that developers will continue adding features as well as fixing bugs. They also have their own repository which is showing a lot of activity, and the next version is being promoted heavily.
There are also a lot of add-ons for Blender. A search on Github shows many of them that are active. If you have any special requirements, start by looking for a plug-in there.
Pencil2D has ongoing development, but only one truly active developer, although the project is receiving help via Github and two other developers. Hopefully, this will boost development for this easy-to-use program.
Tupi has not benefitted from a code drop in many months, but I’m pleased to report that the program has had its roadmap updated lately, and with some luck new developers will start helping out again. This program has some pleasing features for automating aspects of the animation process, which is sadly lacking in the other frame-by-frame software available.
GIMP-GAP seems to have a very low development activity, but much of the activity is on GIMP itself which hides efforts on the animation front. GIMP is well established as a graphics package, so the plug-in will also have support.