Last year we announced the beta version of Construct Animate. We're now delighted to launch Construct Animate out of beta! You can try our new browser-based animation tool right now at animate.construct.net, and subscriptions are now available to purchase to unlock the full features of Construct Animate. Check out our new logo too!
We've done absolutely loads of work on Construct Animate since the launch of the public beta. So it's definitely worth another look if you last tried it out around then.
Introduction video
See our YouTube video below for a brief summary of the export options and a demonstration of how to create a new animation. Alternatively read on below for more details.
What is Construct Animate?
Construct Animate is a new browser-based animation tool that lets you easily set up sequences of movement over time in the Timeline Bar, and export your animations as videos, GIFs or image sequences, as well as publishing to the web, or even desktop apps and playable ads. Use it for banner ads, training materials, education, cut-scenes, game content, or just let your creativity run wild.
Construct Animate will be familiar to anyone who has used Construct before, but it has numerous adaptations for animation, such as the new video export option. Subscriptions for Construct Animate are around half the price of Construct 3 - see the pricing for available plans.
Features
Construct Animate is crammed with impressive features, as it builds on the groundwork laid by a decade of high-performance gaming technology in Construct 3. Here's a few of its features - some of which are new since the launch of the public beta!
- Timeline animations for sequencing movements and changes over time, including cubic beziers, custom ease curves and auto-keyframing, plus a revised and improved interface for the Timeline Bar since the public beta
- Export to video to quickly get a video file of your animation with faster-than-realtime encoding and including audio, in both the widely-supported MP4 format, as well as the open WebM format. Codec options include H.264, VP8, VP9, and even the modern AV1 for video, and AAC or Opus for audio.
- Export to GIF and share it directly from the editor for use with many apps and websites that still use GIF instead of videos.
- Export an image sequence to get every frame of your animation as a separate image file, ready for processing in other tools, including exporting a video with transparency.
- Also export to the web, as standalone desktop apps, and Playable Ads, allowing for interactive media that is convenient to distribute.
- The best visual block-based system for creating interactive logic in Construct's Event Sheets. It's ideal for animators without programming experience, and yet powerful enough to make impressive and sophisticated content.
- Use mouse, keyboard, touch and even gamepad input for interactivity.
- Advanced users can use JavaScript coding for enhanced interactivity or procedural generation with an industry-standard programming language. Or even use it to learn JavaScript!
- Instantly load Construct Animate in any browser. There's nothing to install! It'll run on everything from Windows to Chromebooks, and it works offline too.
- A simple and easy-to-use interface.
- Effortless support for modern hi-dpi and high refresh rate displays, and automatic display scaling to any resolution.
- A built-in image editor and animations editor for frame-by-frame Sprite animations.
- Use hierarchies to connect objects so they move, scale and rotate together.
- Use layers and sub-layers for managing complex content and advanced compositing effects.
- Apply over 80 different effects to individual objects, layers or layouts, including PhotoShop-style blends like Screen and Overlay, hue rotation, color replacement, blurs, distorting, and masking - and even stack multiple effects.
- Mesh distortion allowing deforming various objects for new kinds of effects.
- Use some simple 3D features like 3D shapes and the 3D camera object for an extra element of depth.
- Use Live Previews to adjust things like particle effects live in the editor.
- Video playback with any browser-supported format
- Integrate web content like YouTube videos, iframes, and custom HTML and CSS content.
- Use form controls like Text Input to collect details from viewers.
- Audio playback for music and sound effects, including with a range of audio effects like low-pass filters, delays and convolution.
- Over 100 built-in example projects.
- Easily view your content on mobile devices with Remote Preview.
- Networking features like AJAX and WebSockets, along with using data formats like JSON.
- Advanced text features like BBcode formatted text and SpriteFonts.
- Tile randomization to break up the repetitive appearance of tiled images.
- A debugger and profiler to inspect your animations and get a deeper insight to how they work in practice.
- Flexible search tools including 'Find all references'.
- Multi-monitor support
- A gaming-grade renderer with outstanding performance that can handle whatever content you throw at it (and with WebGPU support on the way too).
- Unique support for rendering with OffscreenCanvas in a Web Worker, ensuring animations run perfectly smoothly and jank-free on the web, even with other intensive web content running simultaneously.
Integrate with Construct 3
Construct Animate uses the same project file format (.c3p files and project folders) as Construct 3. This means at any time you can import your Construct Animate project in to Construct 3 and carry on - perhaps turning it in to a game, or publishing a mobile app!
It also works the other way round - Construct 3 projects can also be imported in to Construct Animate, so long as the project doesn't make use of features specific to Construct 3, such as game-specific behaviors that Construct Animate does not support.
Construct Animate can also be used to create content for Construct 3 games as well. For example you could design a cutscene, export it as a video from Construct Animate, and then import the video to a Construct 3 project and play it with the Video object. Alternatively you could design character animations and export them as image sequences to import to the Animations Editor. There are lots of possibilities!
We are investigating more options to further integrate Construct Animate and Construct 3, including providing a way to use the video, GIF and image sequence export options from Construct 3 as well as Construct Animate. We hope to publish more information about that in future.
And it's worth emphasising, we are by no means giving up on Construct 3! We're excited about Construct Animate but game development has always been a huge part of what Construct is about, and always will be.
Conclusion
We're pleased to make Construct Animate fully available! We took on board a lot of feedback during the public beta period, and worked hard to respond to it, including updating the user interface and adding new export options like GIF and image sequence exports. It's also a new lower-cost way to get in to Construct, a possible stepping stone to game development, and all builds on our leading edge browser technology to make it accessible with no install and high performance across a wide range of platforms. Purchase a plan today and unlock the full capabilities of Construct Animate!