Hey there!
I am looking forward to build a 2D game in Unity and therefore am looking for a good sprite rendering solution. I’ve checked some features of Sprite Manager 2 and it seems to be ideal for what I have in mind. The only thing is… it’s overpriced. So I started checking 2D Toolkit. Is it worth it? I only need sprite rendering, don’t really need collision and sutff.
Opinions?
I don’t mean to get on SM2’s case but SM was one of the first/only 2D-focussed tools available early on the asset store and it positioned itself at like $150 but for what it does, it really is not worth that much… maybe more like $50 tops. Yet it’s maintained its price and many people still do buy it but now the likes of 2D Toolkit, ex2D etc do a LOT more than that for much less money. If all you need is sprite rendering you might try the free version of Orthello 2D also.
I’ve tried Orthello but it wasn’t as good as I expected, I wasn’t able to adapt to its workflow. But I am very impressed with 2D Toolkit.
you cannot go wrong with 2D Tolkit. already great and actively supported.
UI extension in the works
http://unikronsoftware.com/2dtoolkit/forum/index.php/topic,1358.0.html?PHPSESSID=u932ccujr0vjv8oiko8lnp3j94
From persoanl experience 2D toolkit is much better than spritemanager 2. I’ve had both but bought SM 2 from the guy’s site so could get a refund when it couldn’t handle what I was trying to do. I had the same problems with 2D toolkit, all to do with how many textures could be handled - I had 137 animations of 25 frames - however, the guy at 2D toolkit solved the problem, he actually rewrote the kit to deal with large numbers of textures and he did it in less than a week. He also added spritesheet loading and this was when it was still 1.01 version. Now it can probably do the game for you. I can’t recommend 2D toolkit enough and it is really cheap for what it does. The workflow was much more streamlined than SM 2 at that time as well.
2D Toolkit all the way!
Fantastic bit of kit! 
Thanks for the feedback guys! You just saved me $90.