A game engine is not a pipeline. Blockbench handles low-poly 3D modeling and animation with glTF and OBJ export. Pencil2D does frame-by-frame 2D animation on bitmap and vector layers with onion skinning, running on hardware modern tools have abandoned. Pixelorama is a pixel art editor built specifically for game developer workflows. All three are GPL-licensed, all three export directly into engine-agnostic formats, and none of them require you to touch Blender or Photoshop to get a shippable asset.
The full list of 10 covers the entire non-engine pipeline: 3D modeling, 2D animation, pixel art, audio cleanup, level editing, and asset processing. Every tool listed works with Godot, Unity, Unreal, MonoGame, or a custom engine. The original article exists because someone on each of these projects decided their team's pain point was worth solving publicly. That context matters when you evaluate whether to adopt something or fork it.
Read the full piece for the specific export formats, license types, and platform support details on all 10 tools. The technical specifics are what determine whether any of these slot into your existing pipeline or require workflow changes. The list is a starting point, not a recommendation.
[READ ORIGINAL →]