Toonz - open source

[Hirazi Blue]

2D animation software Toonz (at one time distributed by Softimage Co.) is about to go open source...

Digital Video, the makers of TOONZ, and DWANGO, a Japanese publisher, announced today they have signed an agreement for the acquisition by Dwango of Toonz, an animation software which was independently developed by Digital Video (Rome, Italy).

Digital Video and Dwango agreed to close the deal under the condition Dwango will publish and develop an Open Source platform based on Toonz (OpenToonz). Effective Saturday March 26, the TOONZ Studio Ghibli Version will be made available to the animation community as a free download.

OpenToonz will include features developed by Studio Ghibli (*Toonz Ghibli Edition) which has been a long time Toonz user. Through OpenToonz, Dwango will create a platform that will aim to have research labs and the animated film industry actively cooperating with each other.

With this agreement in place, Digital Video will move to the open source business model, offering to the industry commissioning, installation & configuration, training, support and customization services while allowing the animators’ community to use a state of the art technology at no cost.

Digital Video will also continue to develop and market a Toonz Premium version at a very competitive price for those companies willing to invest in the customization of Toonz for their projects. A comprehensive list of the new services available can be found at http://www.toonzpremium.com.

(Quoted from here)

[anhungxadieu]

nice, Used by Studio Ghibli and ‘Futurama’
http://www.cartoonbrew.com/tech/toonz-s ... 38111.html

[luceric]

looks like me like corporate talk for a contract getting in the way of buying the company. Ghibli probably had a continued development deal for Toonz, and perhaps provisions against a sale of the company (sometimes called an escrow deal), and so they came up with this setup where they open source it with the Ghibli custom development on top so they can move forward with the deal for whatever reason they actually wanted to buy "Digital Video" for. Probably not ToonZ-related.

[Hirazi Blue]

The future of Toonz is bright... click

[FXDude]

I don't know, but Toonz (of different flavors) seems to be the one and only product in their "products" page.

[Hirazi Blue]

OpenToonz is online, but while the page is in English,
all documentation and the “terms of use” you have to agree upon before downloading seem to be still in Japanese only...


edit: At least now it has become clear, that they are licensing the software using a "New BSD License".