When choosing a right software package, it is recommendable to take into consideration such factors as user-friendliness, features, functionality, extras, and price, of course. This quite influencing aspects make the decision a bit complicated. Here’s a comprehensive list of animation software packages. Some of them are free, some are shareware, some offer free trials, and some are paid.

VirtualStage is enables the beginners or advanced level filmmakers to create 3D animated movies, stage plays, and virtual dramas. With VirtualStage it is possible to create and build virtual film sets, configure the lighting, and position cameras. The actors perform actions and make gestures as you define.  The speech is generated by means of both speech synthesis or recordings of real voice. This application is easy in usage, yet it gives users a full control.

Beneton Movie GIF is a GIF editing tool. Beginners or advanced users will be able to find this utility simple and effective to use. BMG has support for more than 45 file formats. It supports such files as BMP, JPG, PNG,  and GIF.  You can quickly move the frames using drag-and-drop. BMG allows multiple frames selecting. This makes it easy to copy, delete,  paste, cut, or move parts of your animation. It also features various effects such as distortion, rotate,  and transition. With this options you’ll get the desired results in a few clicks. Among other essential features are built-in image editor, ability to export as AVI video, and individual frame properties. Windows Vista compatible.

TouchArt Sampler offers great way to learn the art of performing live visuals and VJing. Touch can be used in VJ visuals,, interactive art installations,  music visualization, stage lighting, architecture projections,  live performance, research and engineering.  TouchArt  lets you manipulate visuals in real-time, with the control of lighting, textures, color, video playback, motion, and composing. You can create your own presets, record to QuickTime movies, and replace textures. This application allows users to create synth playlists and sequence them in autopilot mode.

Fun Morph is a easy-to-use photo morphing and warping software. Morph and warp face or image of friends, family, or celebrities. Turn them into a cat or a pig or any jokes. You can save movie in all popular formats, including AVI video, Web page, e-mail, greeting cards, animated GIF, and picture sequence.

BluffTitler DX9 is software to create spectacular 3D video titles for Windows. BluffTitler is the easiest way to impress your friends with cool 3D titles. The software includes various features, as for example it a variety of innovative vertex and pixel shader effects, improved reflection mapping, normal-mapped textures, multiple texture effects, hand drawn effects, and morphing text.

EximiousSoft GIF Creator is a powerful application for creating high quality GIF animations. It provides  about 40 effects for making cool animations. You can use it to create impressive banners in no time, make more effective animations by adding outlines and shadows. The software keeps all original images quality. It supports BMP, GIF, AVI, PCX, JPG, PNG, TGA, TIFF, PSD, CUR, ICO, ANI, and SWF file formats.

People Putty an easy utility that allows users to put face onto a character and sculpt a character into realistic animal or human. You can tune a characters into a wide range of ‘personality types’, add hats, flowing hair, glasses, beards, and other accessories. You can also upload your own voice with accurate lip-syncing.

Web Animation Studio creates GIF Animations. File types: GIF, BMP, JPG, JPEG, AVI, MOV, PIC, PCX, TRGA, RGB, CEL, TIF, TIFF, PCD, PSD, PDD, WAV, MID Info: New generation of GIF animation. The best optimization. Optimization of graphic pallets to reduce file sizes. Interfaces with scanners. Online help. You may easy create professional GIF files.

MorphBuster is a tool designed to create amazing and unbelievable transformations using morphing. This is a special technique in which an image is turned into another. With MorphBuster you can make incredible morphs in minutes. Turn a friend into a tiger. Watch your child grow into an adult. The tool allows to create amazing morph animations a professional animator does. JPEG, GIF, Flash, AVI, and other formats are supported.

AMC GIF Construction Set Pro is the world’s leading GIF animator intended to edit, assemble, and optimize animations as well as create transparent GIF files. Features include: Animation Wizard, Supercompressor, Banner generator and Transitions for sophisticated animated effects. You can rotate, crop, colour-adjust and resize all or part of an animation sequence. Extensive documentation and tutorials so you can get right down to things that flash and move. Vista compatible.

With Image Tools Group Active GIF Creator you can create fabulous animated GIF images (banners, buttons, and other graphics) for the Web. You can even make movies with pictures created by internal image editor or any image-editing program (Windows Paint, Adobe Photoshop and dozens of others). Active GIF Creator can optimize GIF to make it smaller. Import/export to other graphical formats, batch mode and other tools will make you work easier. Version 3 adds new file format AGIF to store animation projects of the program, new page Script – tools for creation of animation scripts, and adds online updating of language files with screen texts, helps.

2D & 3D Animator produces high-quality images, titles, banner ads, and buttons for your Web page. It comes with an object-oriented design interface that enables you to edit graphics, manipulate text and layers (graphic animations), apply special effects, and then compiles the animated graphic all from within the same program. You can add shadow or glow, draw with opacity, and add deformation, transition, and color adjustment effects. You can create animations from your own pictures and from 3D texts and shapes, or from ready-made templates with a big number of banners, buttons, and logos. To cut loading time for your visitors, have the program optimize your graphic by removing extraneous material. Once finished, output may be exported as GIF or AVI clips as well as JPEG, ICO, PNG, or bitmap images. Changes in the new version include new commands to paste images as new documents and some minor bug fixes.

With Sqirlz Morph you can morph two, three or more images together, or warp images individually. Images A, B, C, D etc can be morphed together in several different ways – in the simple sequence A to B to C to D etc, or by blending all images simultaneously, or with “wild” (random) mixing. Try multi-morphing all the family’s faces into one unique (or gruesome) movie! Save your animation as a Flash movie, AVI video clip, animated GIF file, or bitmap/jpeg files.

Flex GIF Animator allows to create GIF, Flash, Quicktime movie and self-play congratulation animations with Real-time 3D effects and synchronization audio. Optimize for target file size or compression ratio with before-and-after animated previews. Supports create between objects animation. Add 60 stunning effects include particle system in real-time. It has a built-in Windows trick banner maker, screen capturer, morpher, nature image matting tool, and audio recorder.

Animated GIF Banner Maker is software designed for making animated GIF Banner file from more than 30 graphic files including BMP, JPG, GIF, PNG, TIF, WMF, EMF, TGA, DIB, SGI, PCX, and so on. It also supports converting GIF to AVI, converting AVI to GIF, extracting animated GIF to BMP,JPG, or BMP pictures.

With Artful GIF Animator, you can create from scratch, import from AVI, edit and optimize your animated GIF images to develop state-of-the-art animations for web sites. Artful GIF Animator lets you import and export multiple graphic formats. With its easy-to-use interface, you can drag and drop JPEG, BMP, GIF, ICO, and even AVI files into the program and then edit and preview frames on the fly–while you are editing a frame, it animates the resulting picture. It offers many important add-on capabilities, such as tuning up the individual position and editing the color palette for each frame, optimizing animated GIF images using five different color reduction methods, and others. All these makes Artful GIF Animator an excellent add-on tool for Adobe Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro. It is recommended for experienced web designers as well as for those who are taking their first steps in graphic design. Excellent documentation is included.

Animoids 3D Movie Maker allows to build and animate 3D models, teach them behaviors then form 3D movie scenes that can be saved in QuickTime, AVI, or Animated GIF format. Animoids is integrated with an online database of 3D art with hundreds of free downloadable artworks: including sounds, textures, models, behaviors, movie sets and movie scenes. It’s easy to cut and paste between models, use easy tools for stretching, shaping, coloring or texturing your model, or work at the most detailed level by editing individual node points. Building a 3D movie is hard work–see if you’ve got what it takes. Features: more undo/redo control; improved transform options; improved reliability with Windows Me. Version 2.2.10 DL is a minor upgrade that fixes a potential bug related to software expiration.

GIF Studio Pro is a specialized graphics application well-suited for Web production. It is designed for creating animated GIFs, 3D text, and optimized images. GIF Studio Pro supports many file formats, including GIF, BMP, JPEG, AVI, MOV, PIC, TRGA, TIFF, PCD, and even PSD (Photoshop) files. It also provides integrated functionality with most major scanners. Online help and built-in tool tips are provided for easily accessible assistance. GIF Studio Pro lets you edit individual properties of each project through the Options palette, or set global palettes for optimization and other oft-repeated processes. You can add, adjust, import, and export animation frames with ease, and apply a variety of transition effects. Take total control over your project, or create practical graphics in mere minutes with step-by-step wizards. This download includes CyD GIF Studio and CyD Image Viewer.