Monday, December 5th, 2016 Posted by Jim Thacker

Unity Technologies to make Anima2D available for free


Popular Unity 2D animation toolset Anima2D will be made available for free next January, Unity Technologies has announced. The add-on previously cost $60 on the Unity Asset Store.

Anima 2D’s co-creator Sergi Valls joins Unity Technologies itself, where he will be working to integrate similar tools directly into the Unity game development environment.

A powerful add-on for creating bone-based 2D animations
Created by Spanish mobile developer Mandarina Games, Anima2D provides a comprehensive set of skeletal 2D animation tools, including IK support and automatic weight generation.

The add-on includes a pose manager, and supports onion skinning.

Anima2D also comes with tools for optimising the geometry of Unity sprites; and enables sprites using the same texture atlas to be combined into a single skinned mesh to improve runtime performance.

Similar tools to be built directly into Unity
Anima2D has now been removed from the Asset Store until January, when it will be relaunched for free with “revised documentation and essential support”.

Unity Technologies doesn’t plan to integrate Anima2D directly into Unity, but developer Sergi Valls will be working to build the same features directly into the core software.

According to the firm: “The end result will be seamless and not a Unity with Anima2D preinstalled.”

Availability
The updated version of Anima2D will be made available as a free download in the Unity Asset Store in January 2017. The previous build required Unity 5 and above.

Read the announcement that Anima2D will be made available free on the Unity blog

Read more about Anima2D on the product website