Multiple animations, same skeleton, different opacity slots?

muffunny

Hello, I'm new to Spine and I am struggling understanding some very basic concepts 🙁 . I don't know if it is something I am doing wrong or maybe in the code side (cocos2d-x) or maybe it can't be done what I am trying to do.

I have one character skeleton (an octopus) and I have several different animations. Some should be looped (blinking eyes, middle tentacles) and some are just playing once when an event happens ("leg" and "mouth" animations). And most of the animations need to play simultaneously.

My idea is to make the blinking eyes animations with the rest of the image slots off, and the "tentacles" animation with the rest of the slots off, and activate the background images on the other animations.

But when I key frame the slot off in one animation, if affects the rest of the animations.

For instance, I have "blinking eyes" animation, that I key frame the 3 different states images inside one slot. Then I toggle visibility of the rest of the image slots off. So I get only the eyes blinking and plan to place that animation on the top.

Then I make a new animation "leg" for when the user press a button and the leg animation should play only once. But when I toggle the leg back on, it affects the "blinking eyes" animation and the leg appears there as well. My thinking is that shouldn't happens, because the "blinking" animation shouldnt have the leg visible because then at runtime I end up having the same layer several times. Like the leg static, in the "blinking eye animation" but the moving leg from "leg animation" overlay on top of it.

How can I loop an animation playing like "blinking eye" and "tentacles", just some parts of the character while playing another 1 single animation of another part of the skeleton just once without having the layers rendering twice?

Maybe I should key opacity instead of switching off the slot?

Since software can't play several animations simultaneously yet, it's hard to picture it. Any tricks you guys are using to picture multiple animations simultaneously? like maybe duplicating skeletons?

Thanks

muffunny

mfedorov

Make separately animations
1) eyes blink
2) legs move

setAnimationByName(0, "legs move", true); // 0 - track number "legs move" - animation name true - loop animation mode

then when you need to play animation "eyes blink" additively, make other track number

setAnimationByName(1, "eyes blink", false);

and don't forget to use - setSlotsToSetupPose();

muffunny

Hello mfedorov,

Thanks for your help.

For now I found out that if instead animating the slot toggle on/off, if I change the slots opacity it kind of works. But I need to make transparent all of the layers that are not using in the animation. I feel it is so basic and stupid, and I know I am making my life complicated and redundant, but somehow, I still have a hard time understanding the whole (setSlotsToSetupPose) and the way the animations work. I read that the animation only affects whatever has a keyframe, but what about opacity of the layers?

in the editor, it is hard to picture the animation since we can't have both running simultaneously yet, and everytime I activate a layer in the setup pose, that affects all the animations I have done and then new layers appear that I don't wont to see. Maybe when running the app programmatically it will work smoothly, but for now the only way I can animate is having all the layers active in the setup pose, and then on each animation play with the slot opacity. and delete the ones I don't want.

I am very new to animating, so I'm sure eventually I will get it right, so thanks for your help.

best,

Ivan

mfedorov

If you need to hide/show some slots - try to use placeholders with skin [ 1) define new skin in editor; 2) in the slot add Placeholder; 3) put image in to placeholder ] , placeholder have a key to show/hide. Use skinName = you're skin name. IMHO - Layer opacity is not good method to show hide elements.

muffunny

Thank you very much. Ive never used skins, time to give them a try.

Best.

Ivan C.