Flutter - Correct way to create multiple instances from SkeletonDrawable

PABretherton

Hello!

So after reading some stuff on this forum and playing around with it myself, I realised that this line:

SkeletonDrawable.fromAsset("assets/test.atlas", "assets/test.json").then((drawable) async

Naturally takes some time.

Once completed it passes an instance of the skeleton "drawable" to the function.

Let's say I want to have multiple clones of that "drawable" instance - say for example I have an army of soldiers who all use the same skeleton data.

What's the best way to do that?

Also - reading your documents you mention this -> See the section "Pre-loading and sharing skeleton data" below.

But there is no such section in the Runtime Document and I would really like to read that section!

Thank you for your help.

Spinebot

To create multiple instances of a SkeletonDrawable in Flutter efficiently, you should load the SkeletonData and Atlas once and then reuse them for creating multiple SkeletonDrawable instances. This approach minimizes load times and memory consumption. Here’s how you can do it:

Load the Skeleton Data and Atlas Once:

   final atlas = await Atlas.fromAsset("assets/test.atlas");
   final skeletonData = await SkeletonData.fromAsset("assets/test.json", atlas);

Create Multiple Instances Using the Loaded Data:

   List<SkeletonDrawable> skeletonDrawables = [];
   for (int i = 0; i < numberOfInstances; i++) {
     skeletonDrawables.add(SkeletonDrawable(skeletonData, atlas));
   }

This way, you avoid the overhead of loading the skeleton data and atlas multiple times. Each SkeletonDrawable instance will share the same SkeletonData and Atlas, which is efficient in terms of both memory and performance.

Regarding the missing section "Pre-loading and sharing skeleton data" in the documentation, it seems to be an oversight. However, the approach described above effectively covers the concept of pre-loading and sharing skeleton data.

For more detailed information, you can refer to the spine-flutter Runtime Documentation.

PABretherton

Thank you so much 🙂

Mario

Thank you for pointing out the missing section in the documentation! I've updated the documentation accordingly.

One thing Spinebot did not mention: you have to manually dispose of the skeletonData and atlas if they are no longer used by any SpineWidget (or SkeletonDrawable):

skeletonData.dispose();
atlas.dispose();