GameObject.Dummy missing

u9king

Hello,I'm a Spine beginner and need some help. I want to drag a Spine SkeletonData into the hierarchy to create a SpineMecanim. It successfully creates the Gameobject, but when I drag the animation into the Animator,such as Idle, the skeleton shows some missing: Spine Mecanim GameObject.Dummy. What should I do? I want to use the Animator in Unity.

Harald

@u9king The Animation (not Animator) window is only reliably displaying the animation's events, the GameObject.Dummy member is always missing and can safely be ignored. It is just needed for a workaround to store the event timepoints.

Mecanim animations will only be displayed during Play mode, unfortunately you can't scrub through them in Edit mode, the preview view unfortunately will not display anything due to Mecanim API limitations.

In general we recommend using the SkeletonAnimation component and AnimationState API instead of Mecanim, as it comes with its limitations and additional requirement (see here).

u9king

Harald
Thank you for your response. It has been very helpful to me.

The reason I want to edit within Animation is that, even though I can create magic effects in Spine, elements related to physics——such as colliders or triggers——still need to be implemented in Unity. Especially for components like colliders that change size based on the magic effect.
How can I synchronize these with Spine animations frame by frame?
Should I calculate the timing frame by frame in Unity to create trigger animations for magic effects?
Spine animation events can only ensure the triggering but cannot guarantee frame-by-frame changes.

In summary, I will learn how to use the SkeletonAnimation API. Thank you very much!

Harald

u9king How can I synchronize these with Spine animations frame by frame?

Unfortunately with the Animation window, that's currently not as easily possible as you will not see the animation previewed. You could use events authored in Spine to know the exact timepoint, or have the Spine Editor open to see the animation and get the respective timepoint.

While it's a bit of a different topic, the Spine Timeline integration (for e.g. cutscenes) is a bit easier to use in this regard, and uses the SkeletonAnimation component with the AnimationState API. See the documentation here:
https://esotericsoftware.com/spine-unity-timeline
Depending on what you are trying to achieve, this might be an easier to control solution to sync e.g. GameObject scale at a certain time of an animation.

Harald

@u9king FYI: we have an issue ticket which deals with implementing previews of the Animation (not Animator) window here:
EsotericSoftware/spine-runtimes1253
You might want to subscribe to the issue to receive a notification upon any updates.

Harald

@u9king FYI: We've just implemented the feature of the above issue ticket.

The SkeletonMecanim Inspector now received a Scene Preview option to preview an Animation Clip for e.g. easier event placement. When enabled, the Animation Clip selected in the Animation window is previewed in the Scene and Game views. Lock the SkeletonMecanim Inspector window, open the Animation window and select the Animation Clip. Then in the Animation window scrub through the timeline to see the current animation frame previewed.

A new spine-unity 4.2 unitypackage is available:
https://esotericsoftware.com/spine-unity-download