Spine Pro A Complete 2d Character Animation Guide Free Download

[Najla Ondik]

Thisvideo is an introduction to using spine to get started with game art animation. The video is aimed at beginners. Users familiar with the software or cutout animation, in general, might find it a little slow. I am using spine from esoteric software for this video (currently in version 3.5.46). Generally, I prefer to cover free tools on my blog. Nevertheless, I am making an exception as this tool is a great help for game art creation. Spine is available in the essential version (without some of the more advanced features like IK and mesh deformation) for $69.

I just recorded the first video tutorial on cutout animation. Due to the complexity of the subject I will split it into 3 or 4 parts. The first one is about the basic setup of the character, creating the skeleton and assigning the art as well as a first animation.

The robot character seemed ideal for a starter as he has fewer joints. This makes it easier to set up and animate. There are neither the knee nor ankle joints. The hands and arms are combined to cut out the elbow joint. There is no hair or mouth to animate either. Adding those parts will result in a more dynamic character. It will also mean more time to set it up and animate it.

I hope you enjoyed the tutorial. The plan is to continue this series of video tutorials on character animation using spine. I might end up covering Spriter and DragonBones as well. In the end, it will boil down to spare time.

Hey, great tutorial. I was wondering if it is possible to customize the character when exporting to unity, using this method. For example, would you be able to swap his arm for an upgraded version later in the game or does it export the animations as spritesheets?

That's the big advantage you can change "skins"in the game. Youu make the animations with one skin and then can switch between them and see how they work in spine. I will cover it in one of the next tutorials.

Thanking you will not be enough. This is really good. You are just exceptional.

Keep doing the good work ??

Woahhh! The Most Awesome Post I Have Ever Read ??

Seriously Appreciating Post.

Is there a way to flip the GO or spine model horizontally without having to recreate all the animations in Spine facing the other direction? I have tried rotating the GO along the Z axis but that breaks the collision object. Scaling the GO along the X axis does not allow negative numbers. So, these methods have proved unfavorable.

Reason for Spinemodel right now not supporting flip is due to how Spine translates all bones not in world space. Anyhow with Spine 3.0 I believe Nate (the dev for Spine) fixed this and changed how the bones are being scaled which means that the Defold team might have a better way of creating a solution now.

Anyhow, there is already a ticket for this (and also for weird behaviour of physics when rotated 180 degres in an axis). For now I would recommend trying out above temp solution if you want to avoid creating 2 of every animation.

What I then do in, my GO script, is turn off one or the other based on which direction the character/GO should be facing. By sticking the current spine model name in a variable (and updating that when I switch them), i use this variable for all my animation calls and only have to deal with one set of animations.

When you retarget animation from one character to another, and the target and source characters have the same number of spine bones, the animation is mapped directly from spine bone to spine bone. The source spine animation is reproduced exactly on the target spine.

If the source character has fewer spine bones than the target character, the source spine animation is solved evenly over all the target spine bones. The reproduced animation is not exactly the same, but is adjusted so the spine still moves naturally based on the source character.

This same behavior is available when targeting animation from an Actor to a character. Actor assets have two spine bones, while characters may have many. When you use an Actor as the motion source for a character, the spine animation is mapped directly if the character also has two spine bones. If the character has more than two spine bones, the animation is solved evenly over all the spine bones.

I'm using spine and the spine animation script. Is it possible to save the spine Animation poses? Because if I'm using constandID and load a save file it get back to the standard idle animation and only save the rotation

I'm looking for saveing the changed spine animations for exapmple NPC, Player or other 'spine animations'. I'd like to save the changed animation . After loading a save file it switch back to the prerset/default animation

My biggest problem is I have absolute no programming skills. This is why I use adventure creator and other kind of visual scripting systems like playmaker. If you or anyone could help me I would be very grateful. This would be very awesome!

hm...good question...I've set it to the standard animations but I've realized the state itself is not saved:

I'm using the 'Remember Transform' and now I've added the 'Remember NPC' script but it still do not save the state. Am I missing something I should add to them?

If I'm trying this script on a sprite animation obect in the hierarchy without anything, the 'animation name' in the inspector of the 'Skeleton Spine' script switch from 'Idle_sitzen' back to 'Idle' too

sry for the late answer: It works on a Skelleton Anmation component that isnt't part of a Character! Awesome!! but it still don't work on a Character but I think you are aware of it. Thank you very much for this script

To have the Spine integration save changes to a "Standard" character animation, an update to both AC and the Spine integration script will be necessary. I will make these changes as part of the next update.

Creating a great animated character is no easy task. Professional animated characters require a mix of fantastic design, an understanding of movement, thoughtful rigging, clever keyframing, and the right tools.

One of the most important character rigging tools for After Effects recently received an overhaul that can't be ignored. Duik Bassel is the long-awaited update to Duik, a free character animation tool for After Effects. Duik Bassel is full of helpful features that make it easier than ever to animate characters in After Effects.

To help get you up to speed with Duik Bassel I've created a video tutorial all about using this incredible tool. It was a really fun video to put together and I hope you learn something new along the way.

In the following tutorial we'll learn how to get up and running with Duik Bassel in After Effects. The tutorial covers all of the Duik Bassel basics you need to know and we even give you a free character project file so you can follow along. Remember, Duik Bassel is not included with After Effects. You will need to download and install Duik from the Rainbox website. Did I mention that the tool is completely free?!

This was definitely just an introduction to the wide world of character animation in After Effects. If you're interested in creating animated characters like a pro I highly recommend that you check out Character Animation Bootcamp. The course is a deep-dive into the world of character animation. You'll learn the ins-and-outs of posing, timing, storytelling and more.

Morgan Williams (00:11): Hey everyone, Morgan here from school of motion. And in this tutorial, we're going to take a quick look at doing a very basic character rig using the new DUIK facile. Now do it's been around for quite some time, but this latest update to DUIK Bassel is really amazing and provides a whole new set of tools and a whole new procedure for rigging characters in after effects. And it's really a game changer in a lot of ways. Now we're going to do a very basic straightforward rig here, but if you're interested in learning a lot more about rigging characters and after-effects please check out my rigging academy course at school of motion. So let's take a look at the character we have to rig here. This is Mo Gran, whose name sounds suspiciously like mine and who looks suspiciously like me designed by the amazing Alex Pope.

Morgan Williams (01:04): Now let's take a look at the way this character is broken up. The arms are broken up into upper arm for arm and hand pieces and note that the upper and lower arm and the hand, they all overlap each other with perfectly circular overlaps. And those overlaps are indicated by these marker guides here that we're going to be using as part of the rigging process in rigging academy, we talk a lot about prepping artwork, but the basic idea is especially for limbs knees, ankles wrists, you want to try to have perfectly circular overlaps between the artwork whenever possible. This is going to give you the greatest range of motion. It's also a good idea to create these markers, to mark, where those circular overlaps are. And you'll see why. Once we get a little farther in here, the legs are divided with a thigh, a calf, a foot, which is basically the ankle, the heel up to the ball of the foot, and then a total layer sticking off the end there.

Morgan Williams (02:19): And once again, all of these have the circular overlaps that we talked about. Now, in this case, we're using a jointed torso. In other words, we've separated the torso into separate pieces. Now the truth is that I don't generally recommend this. It's often not really very possible, especially if you have complicated or textured artwork, and it's usually better to use the puppet tool when you're rigging torsos. But for this simple lesson, we've created a very simple torso with separate pieces. We have a pelvis piece, a belly peace in the middle there, and then a chest piece sitting on top and then a separate little neck piece right there. We also of course have the head, which in this case is just one layer. If we were going to be creating facial rigging, we'd actually want separate layers for all the different facial features and then pre composed together.

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