Is it possible to draw and animate a 2D cartoon using only UE5?

Hi, I need to understand if Is it possible to draw and animate a 2D cartoon using only UE5. I mean drawing frame by frame or any other suggested technique.

Thx for your attention and your help

Hey there @Dan108! Welcome to the community! So “possible” is tenuous. While it’s entirely possible, that would be an absolute NIGHTMARE to put together. There isn’t an explicit 2D suite with the capability to draw and animate in UE. We have Paper2D but all that really does it gives you a medium for sprites so it’s best used with assets made in other programs before hand, there’s no native way to draw sprites so you’d have to program it yourself. You can work in 2D orthographic views, but 2D asset creation just isn’t what Unreal is geared towards.

Short answer: Not really. If you wanted to use Unreal’s Cameras and Movie Render Queue suite to work with 2D animation, you’ll be doing that animation outside of engine and importing it.

Hi, thx for the kind reply. I wish to ask you if it’s possible to add a request for building a 2D tool for drawing and animate in UE5 please. I wish to explain my point of view, as a beginner in animation I’m willing to explore both, 2D and 3D, I’m studying comics, illustration, cinema, sound design, and I wish to start studying animation. If I could learn just one program that does everything instead than “too many” (I really struggle learning new software) I would learn better and faster, and with more pleasure, and even more I will learn how to use Unreal Engine 5. I think that this tool may also provide new creative way to explore game development.

Thx a lot for your attention, have a nice day. :slight_smile:

Absolutely understandable! With the trajectory the engine is definitely leaning more on the side of hi-fidelity 3D going forward to the future. It’s not that 2D has no place, but it’s definitely not the focus of the engine so the odds of getting a full 2D animation suite are rather low. Spine2D style animation in engine is totally capable, but frame by frame would take an entirely new branch.

However it does have the capability to support almost all of your other studies quite effectively besides the hand drawn 2D aspect/illustration.

Blender is a good alternative where you can actually work on 2D animation to a decent quality as well as 3D if need be.

Disclaimer: One or more of these links are unaffiliated with Epic Games. Epic Games is not liable for anything that may occur outside of this Unreal Engine domain. Please exercise your best judgment when following links outside of the forums.

Hi Dan! Our team developed a software powered by Unreal Engine named Odyssey to make 2D animations: https://praxinos.coop