Effekseer vs LoongBones

Effekseer is a free, open-source tool for creating particle effects for games and movies. It exports effects as 2D animations or 3D effects, with runtimes available for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, iOS, Android, and Emscripten. Included runtimes support DirectX, OpenGL, Unity, UnrealEngine4, and Cocos2d-x; separate downloads also provide plugins or libraries for GodotEngine, RPGMakerMZ, WebGL, DXLibrary, and other listed integrations. Programmer libraries support DirectX 9/11/12, OpenGL, Metal, and Vulkan. The listed available version is 1.80.7. Version 1.80 adds collision settings, UV repetition for tracks and ribbons, movement-aligned rotation, additional spawning options, external-model emission sources, and directional billboarding. It supports direct loading of gltf, glb, obj, geo, and bgeo models. GPU particle simulation and CPU/GPU profiling are preview features that may not be available in all environments. The tool and runtime use the MIT license; texture and effect data use CC-0. Playing effects in a game requires separate runtime or library packages.

LoongBones is a 2D skeletal animation solution with an online editor and a runtime player. The browser-based editor uses HTML5 and canvas, so it requires no installation, and it can create, modify, and export animation data, images, frame sequences, and other digital assets. Its tools include mesh deformation, bone binding, inverse kinematics, collision, and mesh curve deformation. Imports include PSD files, images, texture atlases, LoongBones projects and data, and supported Spine files. Exports include animation formats, images, sprite sheets, and GIFs, with plugins for additional formats. The runtime plays LoongBones animation data and supports Egret, Cocos, PixiJS, Unity, and Unreal; it is described as open source, free to download, and MIT-licensed. The product also says it supports AI-generated animation and has integrated DeepSeek. A seven-day free experience includes 100M storage and up to 10 projects. Membership costs 19.90 CNY a month or 199.90 CNY a year. The listed platforms include Android, iOS, Linux, macOS, self-hosted, web, and Windows.