Project workflow and setup

NNeOreo · 5 feb

Hi guys, I've just started learning spine and I'm trying to figure out the workflow and the best way to organize assets. I have been working in After Effects for years, so I'm using AE logic to deal with some issues, which probably isn't the best in certain cases. Right now I am making animations for a GUI with many different elements, which will be later exported and sent to our Pixi dev.

1.
I have a skeleton with all my assets and a couple of animations. The issue I have is, when I open an animation, where I just want to animate one button, I can also see all other assets. Right now I have dealt with this with going into Animation mode and turning off all the attachments and makes a keyframe at the beginning of the animation. I'm guessing there has to be a better way of filtering out assets that are not needed for certain animation, because when I export the button animation, the atlas will still contain all other images. Not to mention that the animation timeline looks cluttered because unused assets have attachment keys on them.
2.
When I'm in the setup mode, everything looks cluttered. I have some images for animating in and out some GFX. I have a comet animation with a few bones within a "pre-comp" bone (AE logic) that fades in and out. If I turn of the visibility on the "pre-comp" bone all it's children are still visible, which in this case I don't want. Is there a way to turn on and off the main parent bone and all it's children at the same time?

Most tutorials I've seen are focused on rigging and animation one thing, but I haven't found one that would explain how to set up a project with "multiple things" that occupy the same space, but aren't necessarily connected. So I've been asking myself if I need to create a new skeleton/project for every asset in the game, but that doesn't sound like a logical approach. So any advice or links explaining this would be very helpful.

Spinebot · 5 feb

To address your concerns about organizing assets and animations in Spine, here are some suggestions:

Filtering Assets for Specific Animations: Instead of manually turning off attachments and creating keyframes, consider using skins to manage visibility. Skins allow you to group attachments and switch between them easily, which can help reduce clutter in your animation timeline. Additionally, you can use the visibility dot in the tree view to quickly hide or show attachments without affecting the animation keys. This approach will also help in exporting only the necessary assets for each animation, reducing the size of your atlas.
Managing Visibility of Parent and Child Bones: To hide a parent bone and all its children, you can use the visibility dot in the tree view. Right-clicking the visibility dot of a bone will toggle the visibility of the bone and all its children. This is similar to the "pre-comp" logic in After Effects, allowing you to manage complex hierarchies more efficiently.

For projects with multiple elements that aren't necessarily connected, it's often best to use a single skeleton with multiple skins or animations, rather than creating separate skeletons for each asset. This approach keeps your project organized and allows for easier management of shared resources like bones and animations.

Misaki · 5 feb

NeOreo Welcome to the Spine forum!

Regarding #1, the first thing to consider is that the state of the setup mode affects all animations. If it would be complicated to add a button to hide the image for each button, it might be better to hide all images in setup mode and then show them in animation. Or using skins as suggested by Spinebot is not a bad idea.

Regarding #2, I think it would be good to switch the display state by right-clicking as suggested by Spinebot for this, but I think that might be a good idea to use skins for that. Skins can store not only image attachments but also bones, so that the bones are visible only when that a certain skin is applied. See the following section of the user guide for more information on this:
https://esotericsoftware.com/spine-skins#Skin-bones

However, that while it is possible to combine multiple skins, Spine does not have the ability to save a set of skin combinations, so if you create skins for each element that must be combined to get the look you want, the export process may become more complicated. Keep in mind that it is best not to create skins for every small element.

I hope this will help you.

NNeOreo · 5 feb

Misaki Thanks for the tips! For a newbie these helped a lot.

After reading Spinebot suggestions I immediately started linking bones to skins, but now I see your point why creating skins for every small element isn't the best idea.

And embarrassingly, I didn't know about the right click on the hide icon, I tried all the alt, shit, ctrl + click combinations haha. But that's exactly what I was looking for.

Misaki · 6 feb

NeOreo Glad you found them helpful!
If you have any further questions, please feel free to post them in this forum. Questions posted in the forum can also be referenced by other users, so it may help someone else who is struggling with a similar problem.