CelAction2D

CelAction2D is professional 2D animation software for films, TV series and commercials. It is the software of choice for many leading animators, and represents the state-of-the-art in high quality, high volume production.

Using vectors and/or bitmaps, character models can be rigged into a skeleton so that animation can be changed and reused easily. The movement of the skeleton can also be automatically inbetweened in a variety of ways, making animation faster than ever before.

Effects are built into the scene so they can be created, animated and edited quickly by the animators themselves. With over 60 effects available, scenes can be made visually richer and more dynamic with very little effort.

Audio samples can be played simultaneously in the exposure sheet for timing and lip-syncing purposes. You can have as many as you wish, all starting at different frames if necessary, and they are all colour-coded for ease of use. CelAction2D automatically mixes together the samples so that you can hear them together.

The animation can be previewed in low resolution in real time, and then rendered out at any resolution (even 4K) to film or video, automatically composited with the background and with full camera control.

Remarkably for a 2D program, CelAction2D has no drawing tools – all assets are created in your preferred software (such as Photoshop, TV Paint, Illustrator or Flash), allowing you to choose exactly how you create your images. So vectors, scanned sketches, photos or even 3D CGI are all easily imported and animatable. What CelAction2D gives you is the power to animate these assets extremely quickly. You never have to draw the same thing twice.

Our true power comes from the fact that we separate the drawing from the animation. Now your team can be split into designers (who have drawing skills to stay on model and create all the assets) and animators (who just need to have a sense of posing and timing). Your animators can come from any animation background, drawn, stop-motion or 3D CGI, and they will still be able to produce perfect work quickly.

CelAction2D interoperates well with other software, allowing you to choose the best tools for your production pipeline. The best animation comes from using a variety of different skills and creative inputs – the same is true for the production process. There is no such thing as an “all-in-one” solution for animation that gives the best quality and highest efficiency – professionals need access to the right software for each task, and we make it easy to customise your workflow to how you want it to be.

To integrate better with 3D, CelAction2D can import 3D CGI models and can position them anywhere in a fully three-dimensional space, allowing easy set-up of complex environments. Cameras can be moved and rotated on all three axes within the scene, making any move imaginable simple. 3-D stereoscopic cameras can even be created and adjusted to match the focus of the animation, without having to calibrate it as a post-production process.