Take note of the label before the output path:
- When the label says
Output folder it will create the folder if doesn't exist. Desktop/export will create an export folder if it doesn't exist and put the files in it.
- When the label says
Output prefix the trailing part of the path is not a folder, it's a name. Desktop/export will write on the desktop files export_00, export_01, etc. Desktop/export/name will create an export folder if it doesn't exist and put the files in it name_00, name_01, etc. There is an exception to this, if Desktop/export/name already exists as a folder, then Spine will put the files inside that folder.
If doing a lot of exports, you may want to write a CLI script. Claude or ChatGPT is good at helping with this. It can turn hundreds of clicks into just running a script, especially when you have to do it again in the future.
It's true when exporting many animations/skins that it can be a lot of files. One solution could be to create a script that automatically moves files into folders based on their names. You'd export as normal, then run the script and it'd move each skeleton-skin-animation*.png into skeleton/skin/animation*.png. That's nice because you can customize the structure and it could work on any exports.
A Subfolders checkbox is an interesting idea and easier than making a script, which some animators aren't interested in. One issue is that the output structure is somewhat arbitrary. You want animation/skin folders while others may want skin/animation, skin/skeleton/animation or something else. A more powerful way to do it without resorting to a script is to allow placeholders in the path, like $skeleton/$skin/$animation-$frame. This would also allow using eg -00 instead of _00. We have an issue for that enhancement here:
EsotericSoftware/spine-editor761
