About translucent shader and texture

SsuanLoBeach · 2025-02-19T23:54:32+00:00

Can the Spine 2D animation software automatically split assets into opaque and semi-transparent pixel regions when exporting? For example, if I have an asset like animal fur where the inner/core area is fully opaque, and the outer edges have a semi-transparent alpha gradient, can Spine separate these regions so that the opaque part uses a standard shader (e.g., for solid rendering) and the semi-transparent part uses a transparent shader (e.g., for blending) when imported into Unity?

Key Clarifications:

Example Scenario:
Animal fur with a solid opaque core (no alpha) and outer edges fading to transparency (alpha gradient).

Goal:
Opaque regions → Standard shader (e.g., Spine/Sprite/StraightAlpha with no blending).
Semi-transparent regions → Transparent shader (e.g., Unlit/Transparent with alpha blending).

This phrasing emphasizes the automatic separation of alpha regions and the shader-specific rendering requirements for performance and visual fidelity.

Spinebot · 2025-02-19T23:55:11+00:00

Spine does not automatically split assets into opaque and semi-transparent regions during export. When you export assets from Spine, they are typically exported as a single texture atlas, which does not differentiate between opaque and semi-transparent regions. The separation of these regions and the assignment of different shaders would need to be handled manually in Unity. You can achieve this by using custom shaders or by manually creating separate materials for different parts of your asset. For example, you could use a standard shader for the opaque parts and a transparent shader for the semi-transparent parts, but this requires manual setup in Unity rather than an automatic process in Spine.

Misaki · 2025-02-20T01:14:07+00:00

suanLoBeach As Spinebot answered, you cannot do that to the images when packing textures from Spine. If you want two atlas textures in a certain state for shaders, you can use Photoshop or any image editor to edit the individual images first, then run the texture packer separately to pack them. (Such an approach is also used when a normal map is needed.)
Packing is deterministic, so if the sizes of the images entered all match, they will pack in the same arrangement if packed with the same pack settings.