Dragonframe

When it comes to stop motion film making, Dragonframe is one of the best solutions you can go for. It offers a wide array of professional-grade tools, which allow you to do a lot of interesting things. The software is capable of capturing still images directly from a camera and it places everything you need at your disposal to prepare the pictures, test different shots, add lights and much more. It serves just about any purpose, from hobby to professional film production.

Dragonframe is free to try for a limited period of time, without any significant restrictions. It is available for Windows, Mac OS X, as well as Ubuntu and Fedora and it doesn't take too long to install it. There are no prerequisite tools you have to install and you don't have to sacrifice too much disk space or RAM to run the program.

You may need to experiment with the software's controls for a bit, before you can commit to something serious. The interface consists mainly of a large preview area, playback controls beneath it and a frames list, located on the right side of the window. Also, additional controls are made available when you move the mouse cursor in the preview area. They give you control over the aspect ratio and media layers and they let you create composition guides, drawing layers and more.

The software lets you divide your projects by scenes and you can make various specifications for each scene. For example, you can set a frame rate and a number of frames, choose a video source, set up input triggers and more. All these settings can be made for each scene separately.

Dragonframe comes with many other advanced features, which give you the possibility of pulling off all sorts of interesting tricks. Its step play, capture and repeat functions can bring your animations to life through precise movements. Also, its camera controls can be quite useful for shot composition and lighting. There are many tools to find and experiment with, which makes the software quite versatile. You can experiment with all sorts of ideas and create new and unique animations.

Thanks to Dragonframe's versatility, you can have everything you need to bring your stop motion animations to life.