What is the best system for creating sprite sheets for animation?

I have been drawing most of my game art in GIMP and can use layers, copy-and-paste, et cetera, to create sprite sheets for importing into GMS2 but there must be better methods. Neither a forum search nor my favorite web search engine provided a great answer. So...

What system or software are you using to create sprite sheets for object animations?

 

What is your actual problem? They've got pretty different demands and that might influence what tool is the best.

• Is GIMP-->export-->GMS2-->import too tedious to use when you want to add new graphics?
  • Make bug reports about the clipboard being weird and hope Yoyo gives us a traditional copypaste
• Is keeping track of the sheet data hard because GIMP doesn't support animated graphics (and sheet grids) naturally?
  • Look for other editors... GraphicsGale supports both layers and animated subimages, so it's the best of both worlds
• Is GIMP's pixelart tools too limited?
  • Find something else... Aseprite, PaintNET, GraphicsGale
• Is GIMP too scary and complicated?
  • Find something else... Aseprite, PaintNET, GraphicsGale

 

As far as I know, there is not a clean way to convert stacked layers in GIMP into a sprite sheet; for a 30-layer animation I have to stretch the canvas and then select each layer, float it, and move and anchor it to the next grid location ... 29 times. I could alternatively start with the full grid and then draw freehand but I find it difficult to line up the animations that way. My hope is that there is a software which fulfills these purposes by providing some transparency guidance or something like that but includes a 'Convert to sprite sheet' function. I am comfortable with the pixel art tools and complication level of GIMP and the export/import to GMS2 is acceptable. Thanks for the response!

 

Not sure if this plugin will help. It exports all the layers in your image to separate files. So not quite the single spritesheet that you want, but you should be able to import all the files at the same time to be the different frames in the GMS sprite editor.
https://khalim19.github.io/gimp-plugin-export-layers/

 

Load your stacked animation GIMP file into Krita, group the layers which must be converted to an animation (multiple-select the layers, and hit CTRL G), and then select the group. Choose Layer, Convert, Convert Group to Animated Layer.

This will create a animated version of your stacked layers in Krita.

To play: Settings, Dockers, Timeline. Or switch to the Animation workspace (top right button below the close button in the interface).

To export to a spritesheet, use the spritesheet exporter script here:
https://github.com/Falano/kritaSpritesheetManager

Although I use TexturePacker for these final tasks myself. The free version of texture packer might suffice for your purposes. In that case just export all your layers from GIMP as PNG files, and drag into TexturePacker.

The big advantage of using Krita instead of GIMP for your animations: Krita has actual animation tools. And Krita loads GIMP files directly.