looking for a 2d puppet rig based animation program

[joetheflower]

for years now i've been using an animation tool called AnimeEffects, a software that is baiscally if adobe after effects was only had tools for rig based animation. Its free, open source, on github, and its creator has a website for it. I totally recommend it if you want to start 2d puppet rigging! (theres tutorials on Youtube)

anyway, the program itself is fine but really barebones when it comes to features. it been 2 years and the program hasn't been updated at all! my animation are starting to get more complicated, and i want to move on to a better program! any suggestions? also i would love it if they were any free recommendations to but, i'm not looking for a miracle here

 

[lobotomist]

i think dragonbones is the to go free tool and spine is the absolute best but not free. both can export to the most popular game engines.

If you're not looking to export the rig but the completed animation. both synfig and opentoonz are much more feature rich.