Hello dear Spine animators !

That might sound like a simple challenge but...
I want to do two exactly similar legs with a skinned mesh :think:

Is there a way to duplicate a chain of bones with its skinned mesh ?
If not, what is the simplest way to make two similar chain of bones with a skinned mesh ?

Also another question, can you replace bones binding in the mesh editor ?

Thank you very much.

Thank you so much for your quick answer,
I received my new license page by email, problem solved.

Hello,

I bought Spine Essential a while ago (16 Sep 2015) and now that I have changed computer I would like to reinstall it but the link for my license page that has been sent to me at the time seems to be broken now...
How can I reinstall Spine with my license ?

Thank you for your help.

Hey Pharan,

Ok no worries.

Here is the github for the plugin for C2 that Im using https://github.com/flyover/spine-c2-plugin
Then I added some features, like to control the framerate.

Hello,

I am currently using Spine with Construct 2.
It seems that the last version of Spine is exporting the meshes in the Json differently than previous versions :

before we would have something like
"skinnedmesh"
and now there is something like
"weightedmesh"

is this change really necessary ? it messed up my plugin... I am curious why this changed really ? :doh:

for now I will stick to the 3.0.10 because of that

Many thanks

Well you actually kind of can do it if you want, with the speed rate in Spine.

I am desperately looking for a proper plugin as well.
If necessary, I would be happy to deal with anybody who would be able to help. I can offer my skills as a CG or traditional animator / cartoonist / illustrator for compensation. Or money if really requested.

Currently, a kind of plugin is already ready : https://github.com/flyover/spine-c2-plugin
But it is not yet quite finished and there are issues.
The two main issues are the following :

• When you create a sprite in your Construct 2 layout while there is already a Spine object in it, something wrong happen on the alpha blending and the parts from the png files are not well cut, there is a black outline around each parts.
• The scrolling feature is not supported by Spine objects. When a camera movement is ongoing, it seems that the Spine object translation will move twice the distance of it, so it gets more and more out of the frame the more you move the camera.

Hello eq2k

Hopefully you will read this message,
I am a 5 years experienced french animator/cartoonist creating a point'n click video game with Construct 2, you can take a look here : http://beloceanpictures.tumblr.com/

I am desperately looking for somebody who would have the skills to develop a proper plugin spine/construct 2. On a topic posted 1 year ago I have seen you saying that you were a very experienced developer. I would like to know if by any chance you would be happy to help ?
I don't have much money but I can pay if needed, however I would prefer and be really happy to do some counterpart working like : CG animation, traditional animation, character design or illustration... I can guarantee good quality job !

Thank you very much !
paultorris@gmail.com
http://paultorris.tumblr.com/

Hello Pharan,

Thank you so much for your detailed answer. Everything makes more sense to me now.

So I kind of found a workflow to do what I want : I am working on Spine with a 0.4 speedrate (in the playback options), toggle off interpolated option. That way I have this preview of 30*0.4=12 fps animation and can accurately create a 12 fps animation.
Then, as you said, we edited the plugin's (for construct 2) runtime code so that it refresh the spine object 12 times per second regularly, whatever the actual framerate is (thanks deltatime). Then we only have to multiply the speed rate by 0.4 as well in the plugin, and the result will be exactly the same than in my Spine preview running 12 fps animation without interpolation.

However I agree that it is not very intuitive, the fact is that I am slowing down my animation in Spine so that I only have 12 keys to manage for one second. But in reality my animation has been slown down. So yea, a feature to change the amount of frames to make 1 second would be great in my opinion.

Even if at the end of the day it wouldn't change a lot for me. As you say that exporting the animation with 12 stepped keys per seconds is not the best way to make this 12 fps animation feeling, and that this is better to edit the runtime, if the feature was there I would just have to take off this 0.4 speedrate in the runtime.

May I ask you just for curiosity, why is it better to edit the runtime rather than exporting a 12 stepped keys per seconds animation ?

Anyway my problem is solved, so that's great, thanks a lot for your help !

Hello,

I was wondering, if I have an animation using different "drawn poses" and that I often need to switch visibility on / off different parts of the skeleton and its sprites, is there a way to put them into "layers" or "groups visibility" so that I only have to turn on / off the visibility of one object instead of turning on / off the visibility of each bone + their sprites each time ?

Thanks !

EDIT : Ok just figured out that RIGHT CLICK on the top bone of a skeleton part kind of does the trick, still that would be great to have a way to create groups to easily toggle visibility on / off on groups of skeleton parts.

Yea exactly they would be their own parents even though they would share the root bone because everything need to be parented to it. For the cog center I would suggest to create a guide in photoshop (or whatever software you used to create the sprite). You can create the same sprite with a red dot to the accurate center by using photoshop tools to find it (for example by putting it into a selection square you will have the pivot center).
Then you can import it into Spine. Once you have it into "images" in your tree, you can drag and drop it directly on the respective sprite in its slot. It will snap the new sprite to the old one. You can then display which one you want, use the guide to place your bone and then you can even remove the sprite.

Hello enav88,

I would suggest to create 3 bones: 1 in the middle of your front wheel, 1 in the middle of your back wheel, and the last one in the middle distance of both. Then you parent the respective sprites to each, and you animate them independently without parenting but at the same speed.

Hopefully it will help.

you can turn off interpolated option in the playback window, then it will stick to the speed rate. You can also put 0.8 in the speed rate. As the default framerate is 30 you will then have an accurate 24 fps animation preview.

However if you export it in .json the framerate will remain 30fps with interpolations (so probably being played back at a higher rate than 30).

Hello everybody,

Being a professional animator myself I find Spine very efficient for animation. However I think there is not enough control on the framerate.
For example, I am currently working on a personal project where I need some kind of traditional animation feeling with a low framerate like 12 fps.

On Maya, once I am done with my "splining", I usually bake my animation. What it does is that it creates a key every X frames and convert all the keys in stepped. At the end of the day I have a 12 fps animation out of my 24 fps animation, and it has this kind of traditional animation feeling. But in Spine, as the default framerate is 30 and cannot be changed, and as there is no baking feature, I need to manually create a key every 3 frames to have a low framerate animation, and still this is not 12 but 10 fps.

I think it would be great to be able to change the default framerate of Spine if that is possible. Else, to create some kind of snap grid in the dropsheets that helps you putting your keys every X frames (every 2.5 frames in this case) or a bake keys feature like in Maya. I have seen this feature in Spriter and this is quite convenient, even if Spriter is much less convenient to animate overall.

I already checked the playback features but this is not what I am looking for. In theory it would do the trick by applying a 0.4 speed rate to the animation and taking off the interpolated option, but the thing is that then when I am exporting it for Construct 2 this is not understood by the plugin I am using. So I need to have a 30fps animation with step curves to cheat it and make it believe this is 10 fps.

Does anybody else think that such a feature would make sense ? or if maybe I can already do what I want another way ? do I make sense ?

Thank you very much.