Spine Editor what's next after 3.7!!!

foriero

Hi, lets ask users what they would like to see in 3.8> version of Spine Editor. Here are few topics we have discussed with Nate so far.
If anyone has anything to say to it please do it here. Thank you, Marek.

Small things

Alpha numeric sorting in hierarchy ( animations )
Right click red key removes the key and turns it into green again
Export options for events ( at least audio events )

Project "lock" file
Most of the teams today work over dropbox or other clouds. It happens often that two animators open the same project at the same time and do changes. Dropbox thankfully take care of this and we get conflicting files so that we can merge them. But still it is hassle. Simple solution would be to create "lock" file next the the spine project so whoever is trying to open that project that is already opened on other machine will be able only export it or view it.

Images Scale Factor
Imagine that you have exported AI file into Spine and already did all animations. That export resolution was for example targeted to 2k displays. Time goes by and there is need to make the whole already made animations for 4k devices. So if you regenerate AI file into Spine with 2x then spine simply won't correctly display the work done in past. And for that we need simple float value for each spine project ( may be skeleton ) which will determine exactly this scale ratio of images to original images that the Spine was first time animated with. ( It is a bit similar concept like pixelsPerUnit in Unity )

Check for Launcher Update
"Check for launcher update!" on onset just before you check for new spine version. And if possible download that new launcher and install it automatically. It takes pretty lot time with the cadence you post updates to install the spine launcher over and over again. May be it is not possible but for sure you see how to improve it.

Curve Editor

Rulers

Mix Times View

For easing developers setting correct mix times in their respective engine it would be actually nice if Spine Editor can have Mix Times View where animators can prepare transition mix times so that all looks nice after export. If not defined the default 0.2 is used.

Link project...

Allows to link project into current project. The concept of linked project(s) allows us evolve characters in their respective spine projects but use them in production of animated movie/youtube episodes as needed. Also it will allows us to send more projects to different animators at once and once they are all done we can then link all those projects into one and composite final episode scene animations.

Animations grouping

Since linked skeletons workflow for Peppa Pig like episodes will result in many animations that are just situation and environment specific we need to group the animations into logical groups. For example Episode01, Episode02.... groups.

Saving/Loading Layouts

Respective in each mode ANIMATE/SETUP allow us to save and load layouts ( workspaces )

Animatable audio Volume and Pan

Right now we can only set Volume or Pan for specific audio event. Would be nice to have that be controlled with animatable curve.

Multimonitor setup

Currently spine editor is not capable detach views and put them on second monitor.

Animation View/Setup View

Would be nice if we can position also Animation View/Setup View as we needed. Current solution is also not bad given that the main canvas always stays on main monitor once you have detachable views implemented.

If this happens would be nice to have that ANIMATE and SETUP with humanoid T posture moved to the middle of the toolbar.

Tree views

Constraints, Draw Order, Skins, Events, Animations, Images, Audios View.

Add more views as we have currently Animation View. Not sure if it is good idea to have skeleton be selected in top combobox. Better is to list skeletons like in main Tree.

Tool Views

Currently all views are somehow mixed together. Nice categorisation would be very helpful

High resolution icons

On 4k and 5k displays the icons appear pixelated

Font retina support

On 5k retina the font is somehow scaled and pixelate. I guess a checkbox in settings "retina" could be possible solution. When checked double the size of generated font texture. If not SDF could be here possible solution for all font sizes.

foriero

Nate

3.6 took too long to release, though it was packed full of good stuff.

For 3.7 we said we'll do a smaller release. We had audio in shortly after the 3.6 release and everything was going well, then we packed it full of stuff and it has also taken too long to release.

The main focus of 3.8 is on adding a curve editor. The plan is not to get distracted with many smaller features so it can be released in a timely fashion!

PuppyPuppyPuppy

Me likey! Curve editor will be amazing!

foriero

Just updated initial post. Can anyone who is using Spine for living add comments or more features they would love to see in upcoming versions? Thank you, Marek.

fantasyz

When implementing Curve editor in 3.8, should I expect x,y will also be controlled separately not only in the curve editor, but also on other part of the system like transform constraint? I think its a good time.

To me the most important thing right now is the Hierarchy panel, having Skeleton, Draw Order, Events, Image, Animation placed in a single Hierarchy panel is just a little annoying. They should have their own panel. I don't think I need to explain as there are threads discussing this before.
(the Spine settings popup also has this design issue, putting everything on a single page making a very long list. Luckily we don't need to change setting very often.)

Another feature I want is is to have most of those views to support "folder". e.g. Skeleton, Draw Order . Things starting to get out of control and is ugly to look at when a project has lots of parts. Being able to fold and freeze some part of the list would be a great help. It help make things easier to read and easier to drag. Although bone on skeleton can be used to fold things, it is just not easy to read as there are many bones. A bone is a bone but not a folder. It has side effects when trying to use it as folder.

Yet another feature I want is a UI for managing and visualizing stored Selections (those Ctrl + [0-9] ). Right now I just don't use this feature as I generally would forget I stored in those selection memory. It would be very useful if I can store the selection with a name and browse them in a panel. I could imagine I would be using it a lot to toggle visibility of parts. I found myself always need to change perspective of a part of the character and those part always include more parts. e.g. An arm perspective consist of arm parts, cloth, weapon, bracelet, etc. I would like to save perspectives to selection slots and switching between them with a panel.

As a user of spine for quite some time, I myself prefer productivity improvement a little more than new feature. (more productivity = save time, more feature like audio support could bring more work 😛 ) UI improvement directly affect how many time I need to spend to get the same amount work done and also affect the mood when using a software. It affect almost every user of spine. Some new features may take a lot of time to develop but only benefits small portion of user. I would suggest spine team should plan their time equally on both side. If one improvement can be done in a short period of time and save user working hours/efforts. It maybe better to let another time consuming new feature put on hold, or have them being developed in parallel if man power is enough.

Nate

fantasyz escribió
should I expect x,y will also be controlled separately not only in the curve editor, but also on other part of the system like transform constraint?

Too early to say, but likely.

fantasyz escribió
To me the most important thing right now is the Hierarchy panel, having Skeleton, Draw Order, Events, Image, Animation placed in a single Hierarchy panel is just a little annoying.

We have animations and skins. We'll do the others in time.

Hopefully things have improved slightly with regard to the tree scrolling since your previous feedback on this. To answer your question from there, Spine is designed to be tree-centric because in the beginning it did not have a view system

it had two fixed views, the tree and the dopesheet.

fantasyz escribió
Yet another feature I want is a UI for managing and visualizing stored Selections (those Ctrl + [0-9] ).

Yep, we have plans for this too. I typically use the ctrl + number hotkeys as short term selection groups.

Regarding new features versus productivity and quality of life, I agree both need attention. We already spend a lot of time making things nicer and fixing bugs, though there is a lot we still want to do.

foriero

Added in original post the concept of Linked Skeleton...

ilusha

We definitely need a skeleton attachment ("link skeleton" from the topic). I have many different objects in my game and I need to mix them. E.g. place a squirrel or a bird on a tree between branches. And now I do not know other way only to copy an animal animation and paste it to a tree skeleton.

Also very useful feature is rulers.

foriero

Added rulers into original post. :-)

foriero

Ok lets go over it more in depth. We have one character in one spine project and we have second character in another project and then we have animated environment(s) in other spine projects. Now what we need to use character1 and character2 in those different spine projects environments. Right now I can export and import both characters but that way I loose all connection with our original characters and whatever animation we create in that environment spine project with those characters won't be reflected to the original characters spine projects. So the only solution to keep that all or parts of what we animate in that environment spine project on those characters we call "Linked Skeleton..."

Linked skeleton physically resides in different spine project. All animations and rig is linked so whatever change we do is reflected to that original spine project.

There is though one caveat. In producing Peppa Pig like youtube series we need only base animations to be used and then there are like environment specific animations for that particular episode. Like moving whole body from left to right on the screen since there is something happening in the scene.

So what we need from Linked Skeleton is to have project in which they are linked ( environments ) to have possibility to store those episode specific animation inside that project and base animations that are saved into character own spine project. So like two different animation saving. One in that file where they are linked and one reflected/saved to the original character file.

That way we will be able to work on characters and their base animations in time and develop them and on the same hand we wont fill animations in that base character spine project with so to say episode/environment specific animations like that moving around in the environment which is in no way related to base character spine project.

Let me know if this is more clear now. Or is there any other model you have in mind that can solve this episode production needs?

Nate

foriero escribió
Linked skeleton physically resides in different spine project. All animations and rig is linked so whatever change we do is reflected to that original spine project.

This is a pretty OK suggestion, though it is complex to implement as we have to go from there always being one project to there being many. Making that change is high risk as many, many places in the code need to be adjusted and it is error prone because missing an adjustment likely appears to work, but references the wrong project and will break later.

So what we need from Linked Skeleton is to have project in which they are linked ( environments ) to have possibility to store those episode specific animation inside that project and base animations that are saved into character own spine project.

This adds a ton of unnecessary complexity. A skeleton should contain all its animations, not have them split across projects. Many actions modify all animations, eg deleting a bone has to adjust all deform keys in all animations. Possibly a better solution is to allow "folders" to organize animations, then you can at least group scene-specific animations.

The current workaround is to use a single Spine project. All your skeletons are in one place. Use a skeleton per scene and hide it when working on other scenes. Your problem stems from wanting to separate skeletons into separate project files. I know there are reasons to do that, but an enormous amount of effort is needed to better support linking project files ("linked project" makes more sense as a feature name, IMO).

ilusha escribió
We definitely need a skeleton attachment ("link skeleton" from the topic).

Note the "linked skeleton" proposal above is not the same as skeleton attachments.

foriero

As I understand linking other project into current project is easier and more straightforward than liking skeleton from other project into current project.

We can live with that and all ok. :-)

Also regarding the animations if they are somehow grouped then all is manageable and nice.

To have only one file with all skeletons is not desirable since we need to share projects with different animators and to share huge projects that contain tens of skeletons is not teamwise manageable.

So to recapitulate. Having Linked project is great. :-) Thank you for that. And having grouped animations is also nice. :-)

I would humbly ask you guys to implement those two features in next version. :-)

Have a nice day, Marek.

Updated initial post for :

Link project...

Allows to link project into current project. The concept of linked project(s) allows us evolve characters in their respective spine projects but use them in production of animated movie/youtube episodes as needed. Also it will allow us to send more projects to different animators at once and once they are all done we can then link all those projects into one and composite final episode scene animations.

Animations grouping

Updated inital post for :

Mix Times View

fantasyz

foriero escribió
Mix Times View

For easing developers setting correct mix times in their respective engine it would be actually nice if Spine Editor can have Mix Times View where animators can prepare transition mix times so that all looks nice after export. If not defined the default 0.2 is used.

Agree. To be precise, what I would like to see is an improved Preview view that can define a sequence of animation and a place where I can add a custom mixing entry with a mixing value and to/from animations.

Here is an example for that view:

Mixing duration to 'Dash'                             [+] // Add New Rule Button
[Idle]   0.1   [  ] Wait loop end.
[Jump]   0.0   [x] Wait loop end.  // no mixing and wait until Jump animation complete its timeline/loop.
*        0.2   [  ] Wait loop end.  // local default mix value for THIS Dash animation from everything else

The panel better show only the data related to current selected animation to make things easier to read.

Note that some animations may require only a single custom mixing value to every other animation. Its better to support a animation local default mix value. e.g. Hurt animation usually need to play fast with small mixing value. We don't want to change default 0.2 just for Hurt. Changing the local default is more appropriate.

foriero

gruen

Mask
i would like to bend the path of an mask instead of only being able to place straight lines

foriero

Nate, is that bend mask possible or is there a reason why the mask is only allowed to use straight line? M.

Erika

I've already answered the Launcher update here: Check for Launcher update!

Regarding the mask feature, the user guide should be clear about it: Clipping - Spine User Guide

Clipping is implemented CPU-side in all runtimes, as most engines do not support direct stencil buffer access or masking. Clipping can be a very expensive operation, especially if you use dense mesh attachments. Always check the performance of your clipped animations on your target platforms.

Most engines wouldn't be able to support it at all, unfortunately. I agree it would be very nice, but considering also how expensive it is at runtime, maybe finding an alternative solution would be better.

@gruen if you want, you can write an example of what you would like to achieve and I can help to find an alternate way of doing it.

wilds

Would love to see a possibility of adding a z coordinate to allow for 3D skeleton manipulation.
Yeah I know it's spine2D.

Erika

In a sense, you could consider the z the draw order, you can also get parts of the same mesh to bend in realistic 2.5D ways really. (the upper the bone in the weights panel bone list, the most forward will be the vertices influenced by it).
What exactly did you picture @wilds that differed from these two already present features?

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