Open Planet Software has announced Smoovie 2, an update to their stop motion animation app for the Mac. The upgrade boasts a new look, live effects, time lapse features and more.

Smoovie includes 18 live effects, including chroma key, toon, color splash and more. You can customize each effect and make changes as you build your movie, so that the effects themselves can be animated, too. Effects can also be chained together

Smoovie 2 requires Mac OS X 10.7.5 or later. It’s available from the Mac App Store and is on sale at US$29.99 for a limited time. The full price will be $39.99. As a thank you to early adopters, Open Planet Software is offering the upgrade from Smoovie 1 to Smoovie 2 free of charge. A demo is available for download from the Smoovie website (http://www.smoovie.com/).