http://www.toonzpremium.com/ is a 2d animation tools
from :
TOKYO – Japanese developer and media company Dwango announced that it has acquired animation production software Toonz from Italian developer Digital Video, with a forthcoming release of an open-source version containing the same feature sets as the Toonz Ghibli Edition developed by longtime Toonz user Studio Ghibli.
Toonz Ghibli Edition is a customized version of the Toonz software which was developed by the famed Japanese studio and has been used in the ink and paint, color design and digital composition process for most of their titles ever since The Secret World of Arrietty. In addition, OpenToonz will also include effects developed by Dwango that utilize its artificial intelligence technology, and a plug-in feature that enables anybody to add original effects to OpenToonz. The new open-source software – which is completely free to use and update – will be officially presented in Tokyo at Anime Japan, running March 26-27
“During the production of Princess Mononoke in 1995, we needed a software which enables us to create a certain section of the animation digitally,” Atsushi Okui, Executive Imaging Director, Studio Ghibli, commented. “We checked for what was available at that time and chose Toonz. Our requirement was that in order to continue producing theater-quality animation without additional stress, the software must have the ability to combine the hand-drawn animation with the digitally painted ones seamlessly. From then onwards we continued to use the software while going through major updates to make it easier for us to use. We are happy to hear that this open-source version contains the Ghibli Edition. We hope that many people inside and outside of the animation industry will utilize this software for their work. We would like to extend our gratitude to the staff of Digital Video.”
Digital Video will also continue to develop and market a Toonz Premium version at a competitive price for those companies willing to invest in the customization of Toonz for their projects.
With the aim of building an environment where research labs and the animated film industry actively cooperate with each other, Dwango hopes to develop a platform via OpenToonz to help the animation industry instantly apply various animation production-related research results acquired in the field.
“The contract with Dwango, which offers the Toonz open-source platform to the animation community, has enabled Digital Video to realize one of its strategies, i.e. to make of Toonz a world standard for 2D animation,” said Claudio Mattei, Managing Director at Digital Video. “It will be also the starting point of a new exciting plan to endorse the open-source business model, by supporting training and customizing Toonz for the old and new users. We are proud to share this path with Dwango and with Studio Ghibli, the renowned Toonz user since 1995.”
“It is a great honor for us to be able to release OpenToonz as open source software,” added Dwango Chairman and CTO Nobuo Kawakami. “We’d like to express our deepest appreciation to Digital Video and Studio Ghibli for their help and support We hope the high-quality software that meets the demands of animation professionals will contribute to revitalizing the animation industry. Dwango will also utilize OpenToonz in order to present its research and development results."
An OpenToonz demonstration and exhibition will take place at the Kadokawa booth in AnimeJapan 2016 held at Tokyo Big-Sight March 26-27. In addition, a business seminar entitled “Open Source Project of Animation Production Tool” will be held at the Creation Stage on March 26th. Nobuo Kawakami, chairman of Dwango and Shun Iwasawa, assistant professor at Tokyo University, will be on stage welcoming Studio’s Ghibli’s Atsushi Okui as a special guest.
OpenToonz Seminar in AnimeJapan 2016
“Open-Source Project of Animation Production Tool”
Saturday, March 26, 2016 – 11:00-11:45
Tokyo Big-Sight, Creation Stage in East 6 Hall
Speakers: Nobuo Kawakami, chairman of Dwango, Shun Iwasawa, assistant professor at Tokyo University, and special guest Atsushi Okui, Executive Imaging Director, Studio Ghibli.
In addition to this seminar, there will be exhibition and demonstration of OpenToonz for two days – March 26 & 27 – at theKadokawa booth in the main area (J41). Attendees will be able to try the software at the booth.
http://www.toonz.jp/
According to the website the software works on windows, mac and LINUX!! 
This is great news for the open source and animation community. We are finally getting a professional grade traditional animation software for free.
Hopefully this will drive Toonboom and Tvpaint to bring their ridiculously overpriced licenses to a more affordable digit.
Where does it say this? I couldn’t find a statement about Linux on any of their various sites. Details on the release have been really thin so far (for instance, they haven’t specified the license that they’re releasing it under (I’m concerned that a LightWorks-like scenario may happen). On the upside, OpenToonz does have a GitHub page, though no public repositories yet. So there’s hope.
I’m looking forward to finding out more on the 26th.
http://www.toonz.com/htm/products/46productline/prodtoonzreq.htm
Newer versions dont include it though, so we might not have it at first:
http://www.toonz.com/htm/products/prod71Hreq.htm
Hopefully it wont be too hard to port
That is a VERY old version.
The feature doc for Toonz 7.2 only quotes Windows and OSX http://media.wix.com/ugd/591c30_e3ed8e8434d344a2b841f5548c6a9b10.pdf
Yes i did mention. Lets hope…
Wow, this is awesome!!
Their account in github is ready just put in soon for source code, curious how it’ll be.
Well, if the open sourced version will be the same one as studio Ghibli has been using for their feature length animations, then this could potentially be a quite disruptive move in the animation software market.
Nodes, compositing, IK cutout animation, excellent frame-by-frame functionality… The feature list is an impressive read.
The feature list compares well to ToonBoom’s flagship Harmony, but based on the comments from other users, it seems that Toonz provides a smoother workflow plus a GUI that is more well thought-out compared to Harmony.
And for more complex work the nodal view is more or less essential to have - which is only available in Harmony, and is a missing feature in the freelancer oriented Advanced edition.
I can relate - I have worked with Toonboom Harmony for a tv show a year ago, and I thought the GUI and workflow was quite incoherent compared to just about any other animation product I worked with in the past. Of course, I am no Toonboom expert - but still: I disliked working in it.
Competing products such as Anime Studio, TV Paint, Toonboom Advanced, and other products operating in the freelancer market segment might be in for a rough ride - IF OpenToonz turns out to be the full featured $6000 production proven animation tool.
2016 is proving itself to become a super interesting year for 2d animation tools!
I’m hoping Ghibli’s version has nice brushes in it. Seems to kind of hint it so one can only hope.
I would love to check it out, I hope the licence allows copyleft ect into blender 
I’m immediately hoping for some way to get finished vector animations from opentoonz into blender for use with Daniel Lara’s new greasepencil toolset. One can dream. 
Are there any hints as to weather this is a:
“dump the code and work on something else…”
style of open-source (as happened with NOX).
… or a “lets open our application up for open-source collaborators and studios to continue making it even better” ?
haha, poor nox
Still would like to see a similiar good looking and sophisticated DOF in cycles and/or the compositor.
THAT would be kickass!
If the original devs abandon it, I sincerely hope a community can build up around it nonetheless. Hopefully toonz will at least expend the bare minimum of resources to foster a user and dev community around it, even if they themselves cease development.
My concern is that it’s more of an “open source in name only” (e.g. LightWorks) or perhaps a freemium model (a la MySQL). That said, the fact that they have a presence at all on GitHub offers some opportunity for optimism.
Can you elaborate about your concerns? I don’t fully understand why that would be so undesirable. Unless the concern is primarily that an open source version would lack critical features, to entice users into paying for a full-featured commercial version? I noticed the article in AWN mentioned something about a premium version, but I got the impression the boon there is offering customization for studio needs (an API, perhaps?).
Most of it revolves around the fact that we don’t yet know what license they’re releasing the source under. That should be cleared up once the official announcement is made later this week. I’m hopeful that they’ll build an engaged community of users and developers around OpenToonz, but part of that depends on how they manage the project… and the license that they choose.
Short version: I’m hopeful… but the skeptic in me has a very active imagination. 
With the aim of building an environment where research labs and the animated film industry actively cooperate with each other, Dwango hopes to develop a platform via OpenToonz to help the animation industry instantly apply various animation production-related research results acquired in the field.
To me it sounds like they’re interested in having a community help develop OpenToonz. If what they say is serious. Which at the moment I can’t really say they are or not. Once March 26th roles around than I suppose we will find out.
Although to be honest, I don’t have any reason to doubt that they are not.