[Discussion] Creature vs Spine

CodePoKE

Yesterday I came across Creature; a software animation tool that beside some new features, has a different approach to things than Spine. The core idea is that animation should be done as much as possible using something called "Motors".

Essentially a Motor is either a function or system applied to a set of bones with variables that can be adjusted. On one hand this could be a simple function or preset application (flap wings, bounce, etc). On the other it could be a procedural system that generates an animation, such as Automated Walk Cycles, or even more important, bones that follow a physics model. (An example being a tail that swishes according to the model format)

This final example for us is pretty much the missing feature in Spine. We have a lot of characters which extra secondary motions (hair, spikes, flames, tails, etc) and the time spent on make these look and feel good is just too much.
The problem with it is that we are not trying to make the bones or animation do anything special, but instead are just trying to mimic a physics model which could easily be simulated.

Some of this functionality could be implemented rather quickly in Spine. (Essentially "macro"s with variables that could be applied and tweaked) The other more complex systems would obviously require more work.

Some other functionality of Creature which we have found to be lacking in Spine:

Sprite Swapping; easily creating animations. In our current pipeline we have setup things such that upon loading a skeleton is scanned for bones with certain names, and their frames replaced with animations. (Hand setting the frames in Spine for trivial animations was just too tedious)
Path Motion; a no-brainer: the infamous "Growing Vine" example would be no work at all. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpVMiUC8Ewk

The main problem is that our "fix" to most of these things requires us to recode the tools in LibGDX / our game, and then the artist can only see the results after exporting and importing them into the game.

Creature: http://creature.kestrelmoon.com/more_info_2.html

Mitch

Show me a single Creature animation that you would describe as the best output from that tool.

BinaryCats

Its hard to judge a product with one 2 second animation

Pharan

Old topic: New competitor enters skeletal animation

Mitch

BinaryCats wrote
Its hard to judge a product with one 2 second animation

I'd just like to see a single good looking stylized animation because I looked and couldn't find one. They seen to be really proud of their goat animation.

CodePoKE

The issue at hand isn't whether or not a talented artist has or hasn't yet spent hundreds of hours creating a gorgeous animation in the tool.

The problem is that we have about 50-ish characters to animate in various animations, and the secondary motion and motion path functionality already saved hours when I asked the animator to compare the tools with a sample animation.

Another unexpected benefit was that the animation only contained keyframes for the "core" animation, which made maintaining it a lot easier.

Mitch

The issue is precisely that no talented artists have picked it up.

CodePoKE

Why would you need to see work from an artist to acknowledge shortcomings in Spine or strengths in other software?

Most of the features proposed drastically reduce the time required to make certain types of animation, they don't alter the quality of the resulting animation.

Or do you just not agree that features such as second-hand motion are viable and worthwhile? (I am actually curious)

Mitch

The degree of difficulty and effort required to produce animations of a certain quality is what my concern about Creature is. Seeing good art being generated with Spine sold me on moving to Spine. Creature didn't have (still doesn't AFAIK) anything even remotely on par with the output of some of the Spine projects. Walk/gait motors are something I know a ton about - I come from the robotics/animatronics world - and I know for a fact I'd never EVER want to animate a stylized cartoon character with one. It might be good for laying in some base keyframes, but thats about it. I haven't seen anything from Creature that proves otherwise or Creature's community that shows the degree of polish I want from my stylized characters and I'm certainly not a trend setter. It's cool that it can animate a realistic goat though.

PS:
Character Showcase
I have a crap ton of animation to do too 🙂

CodePoKE

Like I said before, the second-hand motion/physics and path-following are the features I am particularly interested in.

I haven't heard your opinion on those yet.

The others are mostly useful to create a start setup to work with.

Mitch

Secondary animations like hair and capes are better done in real-time so if their runtime is robust enough to mix in engine physics fantastic.

But I digress, good start with no finish is still unfinished. Sure there are some useful simulation things that could be added to Spine to make animating for people who want procedural tweaking instead of keyframes, but ultimately it comes down to get what you want quality wise. Creature can't yet, for me.

CodePoKE

The whole point is that the physics is included into Spine so you can see the effects in real-time in-editor and have runtimes which use these same rules so it looks uniform on all different platforms.

The question isn't on whether we should all switch to Creature. (We shouldn't)
The question is what we can add to Spine to make it better.

As for unfinished; the motors (in my interpretation and workflow) are not used to produce final animations.
They are primarily intended as a way to save time, the exact reason why Spine exists.

The same for path following; just imagine how fast the infamous plant grow animation would have been done if path-following was included into Spine.

Essentially I should've renamed the thread: Creature; or What can we add to Spine?