I know I'm absolutely crazy for attempting this

Swordmaster

I have this habit of trying to walk before I can crawl. But I know what I want to do, the hard part is doing it.

I have never used this program before in my life. I have used Photoshop, Clip studio, and messed around in blender for years. I know my way Around Zbrush too. But I have no background in anything other than Illustration, never animation. I saw what this program is capable of, and fell in love with it immediately. And I plan to get very familiar with it. So because I am absolutely insane, I decided to draw an 8 way character for use in a video game in Clip studio paint. Drew every single body part in a separate layer. named all the layers in a very tidy easy to understand format. The question I have is...where do I even start? I stare at the UI of the program wondering what it is I'm supposed to do next. I don't know what I'm doing at all.

I want to animate this guy. Set up his skeleton. turn all the pieces into meshes that I can morph and shape. Turn him into an asset for a game engine to make him walk around in the engine. and I know that this program can do that.

Please be gentile. don't mock me too harshly.

Spinebot

Welcome to Spine! It's great to hear about your enthusiasm for animation and your background in illustration and 3D software. Let's break down the steps to get you started with animating your character in Spine.

Import Your Artwork:
- First, ensure your artwork is properly organized in layers, as you mentioned. Each body part should be on a separate layer.
- Export your layers from Clip Studio Paint as individual PNG files or a single PSD file. Spine can import PSD files directly, which can save you time.
Setting Up Your Project in Spine:
- Open Spine and create a new project.
- Import your artwork by going to File > Import Data > From Photoshop if you have a PSD file, or File > Import Data > Images if you have individual PNG files.
Creating the Skeleton:
- In the Setup mode, start by creating the root bone. This is the main parent bone of your skeleton.
- Add child bones for each major part of your character (e.g., hips, spine, arms, legs, head). You can do this by selecting the root bone and clicking the New Bone button.
Attaching Images to Bones:
- Drag each image from the Images panel onto the corresponding bone in the Tree panel. This will attach the image to the bone.
Creating Meshes:
- Select an image and click the Mesh button in the Properties panel to convert it into a mesh.
- Adjust the vertices of the mesh to fit the shape of the image. This will allow you to deform the image during animation.
Animating Your Character:
- Switch to Animate mode.
- Create keyframes for different poses and movements. You can start with basic animations like idle, walk, and run.
- Use the Graph editor to fine-tune the timing and easing of your animations.
Exporting for Game Engine:
- Once your animations are ready, you can export them for use in a game engine.
- Go to File > Export and choose the appropriate format for your game engine (e.g., JSON, binary, or texture atlas).

Here are some additional resources that might help you:

Don't worry about being new to this; everyone starts somewhere. With your background and determination, you'll get the hang of it in no time. Good luck, and enjoy animating your character!

Nate

Silly Spinebot, Swordmaster obviously has the skeleton set up in Spine! Someday the bot will understand the images you post. It gave good starting information, but not specific to an 8 direction character (what a place to start!).

Erika, our resident rigging expert, is likely the best one to answer this question. It's the weekend though, so she may not be along until Monday (and that's a holiday in some places). Until then, I suggest checking out her Twitch streams:
https://esotericsoftware.com/spine-twitch
There's roughly a bazillion hours of streams there, so definitely use the filters and/or ctrl+F on that page to search for relevant topics. There are many chapter links to allow you to jump to parts you are interested in, as it would otherwise be too hard to find specific topics. However, for the more recent recordings we cut out as much as possible, so they are down to ~40 minutes rather than 4 hours.

There are two 6 part videos series you might want to look at:

Rigging Helmet (3 years ago)
Designing an 8-direction character for Spine (5 years ago)

When Erika chimes in, she can say if there are Spine features or other things you should know since these videos were recorded.

Note the newest Twitch recording was posted recently, 9 days ago, and the the streams are ongoing. Erika streams on Tuesdays, check the schedule if you would like to join her!
https://www.twitch.tv/esotericsoftware/schedule
Erika is the instructor for our workshops and seeing how she does rigging can give some really great tips!

Swordmaster

Nate I thank you so much for this helpful reply. I don't even have the skeleton set up, nor can I even figure out how to make the Skeleton move the images. I'll simply learn how.I will figure this out. But anyway thank you for your reply. I was expecting the usual responses I get when I tell people I'm trying to carve a tunnel through a mountain with a sewing needle.

Nate

Ah, if you have that much to learn then be sure to see the user guide:
https://esotericsoftware.com/spine-user-guide
It tells you what everything does, though not necessarily how to make the best use of everything. You'd start by creating bones and moving your slots under them, then learn the basics of setting key frames and animating. Try not to get too distracted by the more advanced features like constraints and meshes.

Once you can make basic animation, reading up on animation theory will help improve the quality of your movements. See our Animating with Spine video series:
https://esotericsoftware.com/spine-videos
I highly suggest doing the exercise in each video, rather than just watching.

You can use 4.2's new Import PSD feature to bring images in from a PSD (you don't have to use Photoshop to make the PSD). There are many tags to control how things are created in Spine. We're working on documentation for that, until then it works essentially the same as the PhotoshopToSpine except much faster. Organizing your PSD well can help a lot if you plan to have many attachments.

Erika

Welcome to Spine!
I explained on several streams how to achieve what you are attempting, especially the Helmet series:

However, if you are new, and if you want to retain sanity, I highly recommend keeping each direction separate.
There is no greater frustration than having to remember a thousand steps that you can't get wrong at the price of making all your work useless!

Start with your front facing character, rig it, animate it, and ignore the other directions for now. When it's done let's rediscuss what to do with your gained experience, and if you're ready for the difficult road or reasonable one.
For the reasonable one I will recommend to duplicate your front facing rig, maybe even in the same project, import the other direction images, match the bones to the new direction then parent the images to the bones, and then complete also this second rig, and so on until every direction is done.
You can do this! and if you'd like, keep me updated 😃