OpenToonz, animation software with features used by Studio Ghibli releasing this month

Not exactly gaming news, but could be useful for developers. Dwango has obtained the rights to the animation software Toonz used by Studio Ghibli and plan to release an open source version named OpenToonz.

QuoteJapanese developer and media company Dwango announced that it has acquired animation production software Toonz from Italian developer Digital Video, with a forthcoming release of an open-source version containing the same feature sets as the Toonz Ghibli Edition developed by longtime Toonz user Studio Ghibli.

Toonz Ghibli Edition is a customized version of the Toonz software which was developed by the famed Japanese studio and has been used in the ink and paint, color design and digital composition process for most of their titles ever since The Secret World of Arrietty. In addition, OpenToonz will also include effects developed by Dwango that utilize its artificial intelligence technology, and a plug-in feature that enables anybody to add original effects to OpenToonz. The new open-source software -- which is completely free to use and update -- will be officially presented in Tokyo at Anime Japan, running March 26-27

So it's going to be open sourced, with an expanded feature set used by world respected animator Studio Ghibli, wow.

Quote“The contract with Dwango, which offers the Toonz open-source platform to the animation community, has enabled Digital Video to realize one of its strategies, i.e. to make of Toonz a world standard for 2D animation,” said Claudio Mattei, Managing Director at Digital Video. “It will be also the starting point of a new exciting plan to endorse the open-source business model, by supporting training and customizing Toonz for the old and new users. We are proud to share this path with Dwango and with Studio Ghibli, the renowned Toonz user since 1995.”

Hopefully this will be useful for game developers too. Quite a few games I've seen recently have used pretty great cut-scenes and mini-movies, so this could help story-based games quite a bit.

Thanks to AWN for the news. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.