SAM

How to install

1. Click the green Download SAM button above. Your browser saves SAM-Setup.exe.
2. Open the downloaded file. You don't need administrator rights.
3. If Windows shows "Windows protected your PC", click More info, then Run anyway. Windows shows this for any program that isn't code-signed by a paid certificate, not because something is wrong with it.
4. Follow the installer, then start SAM from the Start menu.

SAM checks for new versions when it starts and offers to open the download page when one is out.

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Features

Drawing

• Ten kinds of stick: line, rectangle, circle, taper, trapezoid, polygon, multi-line (with a width per vertex), image, freehand raster painting and text.
• Any stick can be converted to any other kind in place.
• Fills and borders can be solid colours, linear or radial gradients, patterns (Photoshop .pat files or folders of PNG/JPG tiles) or your own images. An on-canvas handle lets you aim and scale a texture.
• Borders can be stamped with a brush tip instead of a pen. You can use Photoshop .abr brushes, import Krita .bundle brushes or save your own.
• Comes with free brush and pattern packs (all CC0, see NOTICE.md for credits).

Rigging

• Each figure is a tree of sticks: moving a stick carries its children with it.
• Inverse kinematics chains, a selectable master node, join/split of figures, horizontal and vertical flip.

Animating

• Frame-by-frame posing, with faded onion skins of as many previous frames as you choose.
• Generates inbetween frames between two keyframes.
• One layer per figure, plus per-stick depth ordering.
• Copy and paste a single frame or a whole block of frames.
• Undo/redo, autosave and playback preview.
• Figure libraries: store figures once and drop them into any scene.

Import and export

• Imports and exports Pivot Animator .stk figures (Pivot 2 and Pivot 5) and Stick Nodes .nodes figures. Those formats have no gradients or textures, so exported fills become flat colours.
• Exports a PNG image sequence, or an MP4 or AVI video out of the box.
• Point the export dialog at your own FFmpeg install to also get WMV and animated GIF.

Requirements

• Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit.
• FFmpeg is optional and is never bundled. It is only needed for WMV and GIF export.

Installing

The installer (see How to install) works for the current user only, so it needs no administrator rights, and puts the program in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\SAM.

On first launch SAM creates its working folder in Documents\SAM:

Folder	Contents
myAnimations	your animations (.sam)
myStickFigures	single saved figures (.stck)
Libraries	figure libraries (.samlib)
Brushes	brush tips (.abr, .mbrush)
myPatterns	pattern packs (.pat, folders of images)
myExportedVideos	default destination for video export

Uninstalling leaves this folder alone.

File formats

Extension	What it is
.sam	a whole animation
.samlib	a library of figures
.stck	one figure, native format
.stk	one figure, Pivot Animator (import/export)
.nodes	one figure, Stick Nodes (import/export)
.mbrush	your own saved brush tips
.abr	Photoshop brushes (read only)
.pat	Photoshop patterns (read only)

.mAnim and .marlib files from MarionettaPlus, SAM's former name, open unchanged.

Building from source

SAM is a qmake project. It is built with Qt 6.6.1, MinGW 64-bit (the kit Qt's online installer calls Desktop Qt 6.6.1 MinGW 64-bit).

Qt Creator: open SAM.pro, pick the MinGW 64-bit kit and build.

Command line: build in a folder next to the source checkout, not inside it:

$env:PATH = "C:\Qt\6.6.1\mingw_64\bin;C:\Qt\Tools\mingw1120_64\bin;$env:PATH"
mkdir ..\build-SAM-Release; cd ..\build-SAM-Release
qmake ..\<checkout>\SAM.pro -spec win32-g++
mingw32-make -f Makefile.Release -j8

The program is release\SAM.exe. Run windeployqt release\SAM.exe to copy the Qt runtime next to it if you want to run it outside Qt Creator.

Installer

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File installer\build-installer.ps1

This builds Release, stages the program with its Qt and MinGW runtime and compiles installer\out\SAM-<version>-setup.exe with Inno Setup 6, plus an identical SAM-Setup.exe. That fixed-name copy is the one to attach to a GitHub release: the Download button above links to releases/latest/download/SAM-Setup.exe. Add -SkipInstaller to stop after staging: installer\out\app is then a portable folder. Anything placed in installer\content\ (brushes, patterns, libraries, figures) is copied into the user's Documents\SAM on install, without overwriting files already there.

The version number comes from VERSION in SAM.pro. The About box and the window title carry their own copy of it and must be updated by hand.

Tests

tests/tests.pro is a QtTest suite covering the data model, undo/redo, file formats and rendering:

mkdir ..\build-tests; cd ..\build-tests
qmake ..\<checkout>\tests\tests.pro
mingw32-make -f Makefile.Release compiler_moc_source_make_all
mingw32-make -f Makefile.Release
$env:QT_QPA_PLATFORM = "offscreen"; .\release\tst_characterization.exe

Run the compiler_moc_source_make_all step whenever a test is added. Without it the new test is silently left out. Under the offscreen platform no fonts are available, so the text-rendering test is skipped.

Architecture and design notes are in CLAUDE.md.

License

Copyright (C) 2026 Matteo Vittorio Ricciutelli.

SAM is source-available, not open source. It is free to use for any purpose, commercial included, under the PolyForm Strict License 1.0.0 with the additional permissions listed there. The animations, images and videos you make with it are yours, including for commercial use.

Redistributing SAM or modifying it requires the author's written permission. To request it, or to propose a contribution, write to matteoricciutelli(at)mail.com. The full terms are in LICENSE. It also lists the extra permissions that apply to the Qt libraries.

SAM is built with Qt, dynamically linked under the LGPLv3. Third-party notices, including the Qt and FFmpeg terms, are in NOTICE.md and the LICENSES folder.