Adobe Animate

About this release

Animate is a drawing application with a timeline attached, and that combination is why traditional animators keep using it. Artwork is drawn as vectors directly on the stage, frames advance along a timeline the way they always have, and onion skinning shows the frames either side so a hand drawn sequence can be built the way it would be on paper. Nothing about the workflow assumes you want a computer to do the animating for you.

Rigging covers the other half of the trade. Symbols nest inside each other, the bone tool builds an armature for cutout characters, and inverse kinematics moves a limb the way a body moves rather than as a set of disconnected rotations. Classic and motion tweens fill the gap between poses, and the graph editor gives real control over the easing on any property.

Output is unusually broad for an animation package. The same scene exports as video for an edit, as an image sequence for compositing, as a sprite sheet with an atlas for a game engine, as animated raster formats for the web, or as an interactive piece with code driving the timeline. That range means a character built once travels across several deliverables without being rebuilt.

The drawing tools themselves have kept improving. Pressure and tilt sensitivity work properly on a tablet, brushes can be defined as vector patterns that stretch along a stroke, and the paint bucket handles gaps in linework without the endless closing of small openings that used to eat an afternoon.

What it does

Vector drawing on the stage

Artwork stays resolution independent from thumbnail to broadcast size.

Frame by frame with onion skin

Traditional hand drawn animation with the surrounding frames visible while you draw.

Bone rigging

Armatures and inverse kinematics for cutout characters that move as a body would.

Tweening with a graph editor

Classic and motion tweens with real control over easing on every property.

Sprite sheet export

Characters export as sheets with an atlas ready for a game engine.

Wide output range

Video, image sequences, animated raster formats and interactive output from one scene.

Changed in this version

• Faster stage redraw on scenes with deep symbol nesting.
• Improved pressure and tilt response on drawing tablets.
• Brush library reorganised with a searchable list.
• Sprite sheet export gains better packing on large character sets.
• Timeline scrubbing made smoother on long sequences.

System requirements

Install order

1. Unpack the archive to a short path.
2. Close other Adobe applications before starting the installer.
3. Run the installer through to completion.
4. Launch once and set the tablet pressure response before starting a real scene.

Worth knowing before you start

File details