spine-sdl Runtime Documentation

Licensing

Please see the Spine Runtimes License before integrating the Spine Runtimes into your applications.

Getting Started

Installation

The spine-sdl runtime is available as a C and C++ API. The C API is based on the generic spine-c runtime, the C++ API is based on generic spine-cpp runtime. To integrate spine-sdl into your project:

  1. Create a new SDL project. See the SDL documentation or have a look at the example in spine-runtimes repository, which uses CMake as the build system.
  2. Download the Spine Runtimes source using git (git clone https://github.com/esotericsoftware/spine-runtimes).
  3. If you are using C:
    • Add the sources from spine-c/spine-c/src/spine and the file spine-sdl/src/spine-sdl-c.c to your project.
    • Add the folders spine-c/spine-c/include and spine-sdl/src/ to your header search path.

  4. If you are using C++:
    • Add the sources from spine-cpp/spine-cpp/src/spine and the file spine-sdl/src/spine-sdl-cpp.cpp to your project.
    • Add the folders spine-cpp/spine-cpp/include and spine-sdl/src to your header search path.

In your C or C++ code, include either of the following header files to get access to the spine-sdl API:

// C API
#include <spine-sdl-c.h>

// C++ API
#include <spine-sdl-cpp.h>

Note: spine-sdl requires the SDL_RenderGeometry API which is available since SDL 2.0.18. Ealer versions of SDL are not compatible with spine-sdl.

Samples

The spine-sdl example works on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. For a spine-c based example, see example/main.c, for a spine-cpp example see example/main.cpp.

Windows

  1. Install Visual Studio Community. Make sure you install support for C++.
  2. Install CMake via the Windows installer package.
  3. Download the Spine Runtimes repository using git (git clone https://github.com/esotericsoftware/spine-runtimes) or download it as a zip via the download button above.
  4. Run CMake GUI from the start menu
  5. Click Browse Source and select the directory spine-runtimes
  6. Click Browse Build and select the spine-runtimes/spine-sdl/build directory. You can create the build folder directly in the file dialog via New Folder.
  7. Click Configure. Then click Generate. This will create a Visual Studio solution file called spine.sln in spine-runtimes/spine-sdl/build and also download the SDL dependencies.
  8. Open the spine.sln file in Visual Studio
  9. Right click the spine-sdl-example-c or spine-sdl-example-cpp project in the solution explorer and select Set as Startup Project from the context menus
  10. Click Local Windows Debugger to run the example

The entire example code is contained in main.cpp

Linux

  1. Install the SDL build dependencies
  2. Download the Spine Runtimes repository using git (git clone https://github.com/esotericsoftware/spine-runtimes) or download it as a zip via the download button above.
  3. Open a terminal, and cd into the spine-runtimes/spine-sdl folder
  4. Type mkdir build && cd build && cmake ../.. to generate Make files
  5. Type make to compile the example
  6. Run the example by cd spine-sdl && ./spine-sdl-c-example (C) or by cd spine-sdl && ./spine-sdl-cpp-example (C++)

Mac OS X

  1. Install Xcode
  2. Install Homebrew
  3. Open a terminal and install CMake via brew install cmake
  4. Download the Spine Runtimes repository using git (git clone https://github.com/esotericsoftware/spine-runtimes) or download it as a zip via the download button above.
  5. Open a terminal, and cd into the spine-runtimes/spine-sdl folder
  6. Type mkdir build && cd build && cmake ../.. to generate Make files
  7. Type make to compile the example
  8. Run the example by cd spine-sdl && ./spine-sdl-c-example (C) or by cd spine-sdl && ./spine-sdl-cpp-example (C++)

Using spine-sdl

The spine-sdl runtime supports playback and manipulation of animations created with Spine with SDL. The spine-sdl runtime comes as both a C and C++ implementation, based on the generic spine-c and spine-cpp runtimes. It adds loading and rendering implementations based on the SDL APIs.

Please consult the Spine Runtimes Guide for a detailed overview of the Spine Runtime architecture, and the spine-c and spine-cpp documentation for information on the core APIs used to playback and manipulate animations created with Spine with C and C++.

Exporting for SDL

Please follow the instructions in the Spine User Guide on how to

  1. Export skeleton & animation data
  2. Export texture atlases containing the images of your skeleton

An export of the skeleton data and texture atlas of your skeleton will yield the following files:

  1. skeleton-name.json or skeleton-name.skel, containing your skeleton and animation data.
  2. skeleton-name.atlas, containing information about the texture atlas.
  3. One or more .png files, each representing on page of your texture atlas containing the packed images your skeleton uses.

Note: The spine-sdl runtime currently does not support atlases exported using pre-multiplied alpha. The spine-sdl runtime does also not support two color tinting and the screen blend mode available in the Spine editor.

Loading Spine skeletons

The spine-sdl runtime uses the SDL_Renderer API to display skeletons. Before a skeleton can be loaded from exported files, an SDL_Renderer must be created:

SDL_Renderer *renderer = SDL_CreateRenderer(window, -1, SDL_RENDERER_ACCELERATED | SDL_RENDERER_PRESENTVSYNC);

Next, the texture atlas can be loaded like this using the C API:

// C API
spAtlas *atlas = spAtlas_createFromFile("data/spineboy.atlas", renderer);

For the C++ API, a SDLTextureLoader is needed:

// C++ API
spine::SDLTextureLoader textureLoader(renderer);
spine::Atlas atlas("data/spineboy.atlas", &textureLoader);

With the atlas loaded, the .json or .skel file can be loaded using the C-API like this:

// C API
spSkeletonJson *json = spSkeletonJson_create(atlas);
spSkeletonData *skeletonData = spSkeletonJson_readSkeletonDataFile(json, "data/spineboy-pro.json");
spSkeletonJson_dispose(json);

For the C++ API, loading of the skeleton file is achieved like this:

// C++ API
spine::AtlasAttachmentLoader attachmentLoader(&atlas);
spine::SkeletonJson json(&attachmentLoader);
spine::SkeletonData *skeletonData = json.readSkeletonDataFile("data/spineboy-pro.json");

The spAtlas/spine::Atlas and spSkeletonData/spine::SkeletonData instances can then be used to create spSkeletonDrawable/spine::SkeletonDrawable instances to render the skeleton data.

Note: the loaded skeleton data and atlas can and should be shared across spSkeletonDrawable/spine::SkeletonDrawable instances to reduce memory consumption and enable batched rendering of skeletons that share the same atlas data.

Skeleton drawable

The main addition of spine-sdl on top of spine-c and spine-cpp is the skeleton drawable. It holds a spSkeleton (C API) or spine::Skeleton (C++ API), which stores the skeletons bones, slots, attachments, constraints and so on, and a spAnimationState (C API) or spine::AnimationState, which manages animating the skeleton. The skeleton drawable provides methods to update the animation state, apply it to the skeleton, update the skeleton and draw the skeleton using SDL_Renderer.

You can creating a skeleton drawable using the C API like this:

// C API
spAnimationStateData *animationStateData = spAnimationStateData_create(skeletonData);
spSkeletonDrawable *drawable = spSkeletonDrawable_create(skeletonData, animationStateData);

The spAnimationStateData stores mix times between animations and is required to construct the internal spAnimationState. Please refer to the spine-c documentation for more information.

For the C++ API, creating a skeleton drawable works like this:

// C++ API
spine::SkeletonDrawable drawable(skeletonData);

You can optionally pass a spine::AnimationStateData to the spine::SkeletonDrawable constructor if you want to share mix times between drawables. Please refer to the spine-cpp documentation for more information.

With the skeleton drawable created, you can access the contained skeleton and animation state instances to manipulate them.

// C API
drawable->skeleton->x = 400;
drawable->skeleton->y = 500;
spSkeleton_setToSetupPose(drawable->skeleton);

spAnimationState_setAnimationByName(drawable->animationState, 0, "portal", 0);
spAnimationState_addAnimationByName(drawable->animationState, 0, "run", -1, 0);

Or in C++:

// C++ API
drawable.skeleton->setPosition(400, 500);
drawable.skeleton->setToSetupPose();

drawable.animationState->setAnimation(0, "portal", true);
drawable.animationState->addAnimation(0, "run", true, 0);

Please refer to the spine-c and spine-cpp documentation for more information on the APIs to manipulate skeletons and animation states.

The skeleton drawable also provides a method to conveniently update the skeleton and animation state it contains:

// C API
spSkeletonDrawable_update(drawable, deltaTimeInSeconds);

// C++ API
drawable.update(deltaTimeInSeconds);

The update method takes the delta time between the last and current frame in seconds and then updates the animation state, applies the animation state to the skeleton, and finally udpates the world transforms of the skeleton.

After the animation state and skeleton have been updated, it can be drawn:

// C API
spSkeletonDrawable_draw(drawable, renderer);

// C++ API
drawable.draw(renderer);

Once you no longer need the skeleton drawable, you can free its memory via:

// C API
spSkeletonDrawable_dipose(drawable);

// C++ API, if the drawable was allocated on the heap via new
delete drawable;

Note: freeing a skeleton drawable does not free the skeleton data and atlas it was created from. The skeleton data and atlas need to be freed separately through the respective API (spSkeletonData_dipose(skeletonData)/spAtlas_dispose(atlas) in C, or delete in C++).