Does your program support per-frame/per-cell layers like Aseprite, where each cell can have multiple independent layers?
Yes. Manabit supports layered sprite animation: each layer can have its own frame strip with independent art per frame, and with Sync on you can preview all layers composited together (similar to Aseprite’s cels).
The difference is organizational: Manabit uses per-layer frame strips rather than one shared timeline grid. Layers can also hold multiple named animations (e.g. idle + walk on the same layer).
It's not exactly the same as Aseprite because Manabit does not have 1 timeline for all the layers. It's 1 timeline PER layer. I hope that clears it.
You are alsfo free to join the discord if you have more questions!
No problem! Yes there is a Sync toggle that syncs all frames to preview them simultaneously. It may seem a little different at first but it does have it’s advantages because you can choose which animation sets you want to sync. In the case that for example, you have a player’s legs animated to run, and you want the player’s upper body to have different animations such as aim, reload, punch, etc. In aseprite you would have to copy the leg’s run frames to all upper body animations to preview them simultaneously in combination. And that would only work if you have the same amount of frames on the leg’s run animation as each upper body animations. Another issue would be editing the run animation you would have to copy the edited frames on to all upper body animation. Furthermore, if you introduced more leg and upper body animations you would have to do a lot of manual work to preview them to see if they sync well. In Manabit, you just select which animation from which layer you want to preview by selecting the animation you want to preview as the “favorite “.
Yes it’s possible but it’s different than sharing timelines. It’s designed to handle any combination of animations for game design mostly, so you can build all assets in one file and preview it all together.
I do encourage you to give it a try. It’s slightly different but infinitely more powerful. And it will only get better with updates.
I hope that clears up the differences. You can also read the docs for more info.
We updated our animation system. It is now more in line with what you mentioned here.