It isn't open source, but they do offer a free version, with more limited features than the paid version, apparently.

The 2nd one to look at is called Spriter. I haven't actually fired up the program to try it myself, and don't plan on it, for now anyway. They did ask for my email address, and they sent the download link there. The first software I'll link is called Synfig Studio. Or maybe even something you might combine with Blender. But these are dedicated to animating 2d so it might be of more use to you, and possibly easier to learn than Blender as well. I cannot speak to how well any of it works, or whether it will be able to do all that you are after. I've never used any of this stuff, just looked at it out of interest. And if anybody would like to help me create such animations, I would happy to share the credit when they are placed on YouTube.And I have some alternative software to Blender that you might want to check out too. I will be able to spend about a month or so learning and using the Blender and its Python API before the conference at which I want to display these animations, but before I start, I want to know if that is something that is realistically doable for a newbie in that time frame. I want to do these things to represent various synchronized activations of neural sub-networks. Out of such lines under python control, andĬreate, place, and change the coloring and z-level of some moreĬomplicated lines, such as ones having one or more bends in them. Before I spend the much larger amount of time necessary to learn both Blender and its Python API, I would like to know if, and how, it is possible to use Blender-Python to:Ĭreate thousands of lines under program control, in the form of long thin parallelograms, and place the two parallel narrow edges of each such line on selected locations on a selected pair of parallel lines in the image,Ĭhange the color and z-level of nets of connectioned lines formed I have spent hours studying the Python-Blender API, and as of yet it is not clear how to do what I want to do. I want to use Blender and Python to create simplified 2D animations of theories on how the computation of the human brain create consciousness.

Blender 2d animation