Hello
I just finished my first project fully animated in Spine for a serious game.
It was hard ( front view characters acting /speaking, not actions in side view...), but the result is great (according to my client).
I used to animate in Flash/AnimateCC for long years and the Spine's workflow (and quality of the result 🙂 ) is very different. A very new approach of animation for me.
As I went along, I noted the (ideal) possible options that would improve the workflow, OMHO.
I'll try to be as clear as possible despite my average English:
The ability to display the preview view on another screen.
the ability to scale the whole root ignoring the inherit scale option unchecked to avoid this kind of result :lol
Could be very handy when a character grows in perspective (walking toward us)
Add markers above the dopesheet
it seems essential to me to get your bearings, especially when an animation serves as a bank of poses.
-Separate top/down and right/left for the transform constraints.
E.g for the vertical move of a face, the face controller's influence (e.g for the chin) shoud be different if the character looks up or down.
-Check/uncheck the visibility of a whole bone (with child bones and attachments) instead of check/uncheck each attachment visibility one by one.
-Copy/paste mesh binding values from a mesh to another
-Nested animations ( like moviecClips in Flash). E.g to switch between different animated face expressions on the same body.
-Add an "empty key" option in the dopesheet. which would prevent unintentionally creating a default interpolation when clicking on the "keys all of the shown timeline" button at the end of the animation. And it would simplify the way to reverse a part of ananimation.
-The IK still hard to use when a limb bends in positive + negative direction.The transition has to be done when the limb is straight to avoid a frame jump. Maybe having the choice to keep the bones positions when the Ik mix is at 0 would simplify the thing? Or, even better, the ability to key the positive/negative direction of an IK.
-The possibility of locking (or/and collapse) the skeletons that you don't want to animate in the dopesheet
-Transform constraints : a move or rotate... constraint influences an other constraint (scale...)
-Ability to key the order of skeletons (e.g when a character is hiding by an BG object-on a different skel- then stand in front of this object)
(I didn't use the skins)
Well it seems a lot :grinteeth:
Spine is a great soft, it revolutionized my way of doing animation but I think with these "ideal" options, the work would be easier (for me). Does it make sense ...or not?
Thanks for reading, and thanks for your great work.
PS: the script PhotoshopToSpine is the 8th wonder of the world 😉
