
Spine: an animation tool that focuses on 2D animation for games - joubert
http://esotericsoftware.com/spine-in-depth
======
scrollaway
I used Spine a while back. It's such a lovely tool with a great UI, and
compatible with Linux.

It's neither free nor open source though so I don't know if this is very
suitable here on HN.

In any case, I wrote an exporter for Inkscape since they only had an
Illustrator plugin for vector graphics:

[https://github.com/jleclanche/inkscape-spine-
exporter](https://github.com/jleclanche/inkscape-spine-exporter)

~~~
galaktor
fwiw, Spine is made using libgdx [1], which is open source. The various
stretch-goal animation runtimes are also available [2] on Github.

AFAIK the team behind both libgdx and Spine are quite good at giving back to
the community. After libgdx they quit their day jobs and went full-time as
Esoteric Software [3] and did an excellent job following through with Spine's
two kickstarters.

I think this is very relevant to HN not only because of the guys' open source
contributions but also their entrepreneurial history (success?).

[1] [https://github.com/libgdx/libgdx](https://github.com/libgdx/libgdx) [2]
[https://github.com/EsotericSoftware/spine-
runtimes](https://github.com/EsotericSoftware/spine-runtimes) [3]
[http://esotericsoftware.com/](http://esotericsoftware.com/)

(I'm not affiliated with ES but was a backer of Spine and am a user of libgdx)

~~~
aptwebapps
I think Spine was started by one of the libGDX guys, Nate Sweet, and someone
else (I can't find an About or Team page on their site). The other primary
libGDX developer is Mario Zechner ('badlogic around here) but I don't think
he's on the Esoteric team. I think he works for RoboVM now, in fact.

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j2bax
Our company seriously pursued using Spine for all of our in game 2D animations
in small to medium sized budget projects. Unfortunately the runtime license
was far to costly and restrictive to use for work for hire type client work,
of which most of our work is. Really wish we could just pay a flat fee rather
than cause all sorts of red tape and recurring payments for our clients. Most
of the games we produce are for not for profits that can't really justify
those kinds of recurring costs. Ultimately, we built our own tool that I'm
sure is far more primitive but gets the job done.

~~~
eps
Not sure I understand - are you referring to $299 Pro license or are you a
500K+ enterprise and have an issue with $2200 license?

~~~
scotty79
I guess he's talking about $2200 (+259$) per user per year for the use of the
program and runtimes. I'm not sure what the "use" constitutes of (especially
in context of runtimes).

~~~
j2bax
Yes this is correct. All of our other tools and libraries consist of us paying
up front for the version we need for our release. If they release a new
version, and our application needs that new version, then I am all about
paying for it, but having to come back and pay every year whether we've
incorporated a new version or not is very challenging for us and our clients.
What if every piece of software and library we used required this? It would be
an absolute nightmare.

------
joeyjojo
A similar animation tool that I use regularly is Flump, which exports nested
Flash animations as texture atlases and XML. It is a fantastic tool if you are
an ex-Flash developer looking for a fast workflow with great animation
performance.

I have just released a runtime that supports canvas/webgl through PixiJS. It
is currently available for Haxe developers but I will be releasing a bower
package soon.

[https://github.com/tconkling/flump](https://github.com/tconkling/flump)

[https://github.com/jackwlee01/pixi-flump-
runtime](https://github.com/jackwlee01/pixi-flump-runtime)

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orillian
I backed the kickstarter for this tool back when it came out and I'm glad I
did. I don't do a lot of this type of thing, but overall it's the quickest and
easiest one I've used! It's been a boon for making small animations for many
of the quick projects I've worked on. Keep meaning to do something real and
proper with it, but I've yet to take the time.

Every time I go to use it, it's getting an update and new runtimes. No
complaints at all!

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danbolt
Spine is really neat, and they have a lot of features that enable you to make
cool animations really quickly.

I remember some of the rendering functionality stressed the Xbox 360's garbage
collector back with the XNA version. I'd be curious to hear if people have
used it with MonoGame on mobile devices.

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ngokevin
Works pretty well with in the browser with A-Frame too:
[http://joshgalvin.github.io/post/project/aframe-
spine/](http://joshgalvin.github.io/post/project/aframe-spine/)

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timmyelliot
We considered Spine. It was easy to use and enjoyable to work with. For 2D, we
ended up with Maya LT exporting to Unity, not only was Maya more versatile as
a 3D engine, I believe it ended up being more cost effective.

~~~
j2bax
I'd be interested to hear more about your experience using Maya LT for a 2D
art flow to Unity. Does your art start in Maya or are you importing from
another application?

~~~
timmyelliot
The artists used, I believe Photoshop, to create their textures, and
Illustrator for cleanup.

In Maya, textures were dropped onto planes, rigged, animated and exported via
fbx (the pipeline was very similar to how we would have done it with Spine,
with Spine exporting to JSON + Unity Runtime, while we imported the fbx
directly into Unity).

~~~
j2bax
Thanks a lot for the info. Any games that used this pipeline that you can
share?

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aschearer
Anyone have experience using this with Unity? What's the workflow like? Does
it use much memory? How does it effect the framerate?

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notbingo
Where is the button to play the animation in the trial version?

~~~
CliffyA
If you click "Setup" in the top left it will switch to animation mode and you
can play from there.

