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Hello,

I would like to share with you all a way to duplicate a skin along with all of its mesh animations. It's a work around for not being able to copy and paste mesh animations from one mesh to another mesh that was copied from it.

The reason I need to do this:
I am working on a game where we use skins for different costumes. We do a lot of mesh animations within each skin. Sometimes I want to create a new skin that reuses certain parts from previous skins. It's easy enough to duplicate the entire skin, but there's no way to easily copy the mesh animations over.

The way to do this:
I have found a work around for this. It is quite ... obtuse. I will try my best to explain it. I would love to get feedback on this method. If there is a better way to achieve the same goal, please let me know. And if not, well I hope this information is of some use to other members.

Here goes.

Goal: To duplicate a skin with mesh animations included. The result is two identical skins with identical mesh animations. You can then go into the new duplicated skin and start editing that into a new costume.

How to do this:
-Create a file with the skin that you want to duplicate. I will call this File1.
-In file 01, select the skin that you want to duplicate (lets call it "Skin"). Duplicate it. This will result in "Skin2"
-You'll notice that Skin2 is the same as Skin. However, no animations will carry over. And there's no way to copy and paste them over from one skin to the other. But don't worry, there is a way!
-Save File1
-Resave and rename it into File2
-In File2, erase Skin2
-Rename Skin to Skin2
-Save File2
-Go back to File1
-Select

Spine

Import Project

select File2

import: animation

OK

select the animation that you want to duplicate

It will automatically create a new animation with the number "2" appended at the end (I will refer to this as "filename+2")
-Hit OK
-The animation that you couldn't previously copy and paste into Skin2 will now be there as "filename+2".
-Copy the animation from "filename+2" and paste it into the original animation.
-Delete the newly created "filename+2"
-the original animation will now have mesh animations for both Skin and Skin2
-rinse and repeat for as many animations as necessary
-Eventually Skin2 will have all the same animations as Skin
-You can then go into Skin2 and edit it into a new skin, which will have some pieces and animations that are exactly the same as Skin (for instance in my case I was able to reuse a swishing ponytail for different helmets)

My head is spinning having written all that. I know it will be hard to read and follow without me sitting next to you showing you all this. But I hope it made some sense.

I hope this is of some help to other folks using SPINE (which is GREAT by the way, I love it!).
If you know of a better way to achieve this same goal, please let me know.

CHEERS!

Hello richmond,

i have Unity asset
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/41338

now i want to replace animation with new character

but when i'm trying to import or create skin placeholder it create scaling issue.

like my asset character drawing is smaller then my character.

my skype : vikibaba0204
plz help me
Thanks
vivek

21 days later

I love Spine so very much but dealing with skins as meshes is a huge pain in workflow, to the point it's just sometimes worth having multiple rigs with different images.

If you want to use the same mesh as skin placeholders, you have to basically trick Spine into thinking it's the same images (by using the find and replace tool for another directory) which is pretty sucky. Then, if you happen to duplicate a skin that has animated vertices, it just doesn't copy those animations unless you do some crazy work arounds.

Ideally, meshes and images should feel like the same flow to the user, although I'm sure it's complicated. With all that said, I do want to end on a high note and praise Spine for everything else it does so wonderfully. It's probably my favorite piece of software right now and they've done an excellent job.

Wow didn't know this works. I assumed it wouldn't. If this works then why doesn't the duplicate skin keyframes duplicate onto new skin?

BinaryCats wrote

Wow didn't know this works. I assumed it wouldn't. If this works then why doesn't the duplicate skin keyframes duplicate onto new skin?

Exactly, I tried this a few times and it worked.

12 days later

I think that skin cloning tool should do its job right - completely clone skin including all mesh animations.
Current implementation is quite ugly.

I am also using the duplicate and change path trick to get the same mesh. Afterwards I export the json and copy and rename the animation. Its realy time consuming and has a lot of error potential. An implementation in the program itself would be awesome 🙂

Wolatje wrote

I am also using the duplicate and change path trick to get the same mesh. Afterwards I export the json and copy and rename the animation. Its realy time consuming and has a lot of error potential. An implementation in the program itself would be awesome 🙂

Upping this one so Nate can see it!

16 days later

ok, there is really no proper way to duplicate a mesh for an other skin? I even have the same image I just have changed the colors, so it should be able to use the same skin. I really hope this will be changed soon.

@aiat_game @[deleted]
I hope you already read the recent blog post: http://esotericsoftware.com/blog/Language-support-linked-meshes

For meshes, there's a new button next to Duplicate that creates a Linked Mesh. A linked mesh is a new kind of attachment that just mirrors the mesh it was created from (its "source mesh"). But you can change the path, and move it to another skin as long as it stays in the same slot. And if you leave the Inherit FFD checkbox checked, it will share the FFD animation with its source mesh.

Image removed due to the lack of support for HTTPS. | Show Anyway

It hasn't been ported to the other runtimes yet (only spine-libgdx has it for now) but it's already in the editor.

Pharan wrote

@aiat_game @[deleted]
I hope you already read the recent blog post: http://esotericsoftware.com/blog/Language-support-linked-meshes

For meshes, there's a new button next to Duplicate that creates a Linked Mesh. A linked mesh is a new kind of attachment that just mirrors the mesh it was created from (its "source mesh"). But you can change the path, and move it to another skin as long as it stays in the same slot. And if you leave the Inherit FFD checkbox checked, it will share the FFD animation with its source mesh.

Image removed due to the lack of support for HTTPS. | Show Anyway

It hasn't been ported to the other runtimes yet (only spine-libgdx has it for now) but it's already in the editor.

Awesome, I hope you get it into other runtimes soon, this is pretty huge and useful!