Will this feature be in Spine one day? Im making animations in other cutout software and im using deforming heavily to get rid of ugly cutout animation effect, when its possible to deform body parts then you can easily fix disconnected joints between separate body parts and bend one picture of entire arm in elbow nicely instead of having 2 separate pieces.

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Some of my character animations can be seen here:
http://bwwd.deviantart.com/gallery/

Most of these animations are not possible to do in spine because it doesnt deform body parts, would be great to have ability to freely deform body part but not only by squeezing rectangle but freely deform it to form flexed muscle for example or bent elbow from one entire arm body part.
Im sure everyone hates when this happens( look at disconnected thigh areas, nightmare of cutout animation):

This can be easily solved by allowing thigh body part to deform on top so you could manually move it back into place repairing the gap without moving bone or entire thigh, thats what im doing in my animations and i often use one full arm or full leg body part not split into 2, so im deforming it in elbow and it doesnt look so much like cutout, deformation feature would improve spine greatly cause now its kinda simple cutout animation tool.
Deformation of body parts is essential for animation cause it creates dynamic movement, otherwise animations are very stiff, squeeze and stretch are basic techniques that improve animations, i hope such feature will be implemented in spine, its really essential.

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No need to explain the benefits. Free-form deformation was a planned feature and Kickstarter stretch goal that didn't get reached.

As for actually making it into the system anyway (someday), Esoteric says it's still possible but it's still to be decided. Either way, all the other basic features are still being built so if ever it will, it might be a vague while.

People do want it though. I sure do. :p

ugh... 20k $ for implementing such basic feature , im not sure what to think , first goal was half of it, even then it would probably be simple rectangle squeeze. I was very optimistic about spine but now im kinda sceptical after seeing goal after goal after goal.

First I'd like to say, very nice animations!
Unfortunately FFD isn't a basic feature to implement, it complicates things a great deal which is why it was far more costly than the rest on the Kickstarter. Development time on it to make it powerful enough and at the same time easy to use would be costly. With that said, I can tell you it's one of the features I've been bugging Nate about the most (and I have no plans of giving up on the bugging). We have to be realistic though and if we decide to implement it, it won't be before everything else on our list is in. We do have stretch and squash in though, that is accomplished by simple scaling of the rectangles (not sure if you noticed that by your post).

FFD has to work both in the editor and efficiently in all the runtimes.

Most stretch goals on Kickstarter don't have much meat, but Spine's stretch goals contain an enormous amount of value. I've been killing myself to get it done for more than 4 months and there are still multiple months of work left. It's easy to think a feature would be "simple" when you aren't the one that needs to make it a reality. 🙂

Well things look different when you have funding but i hope it gets implemented , too bad its at the very end tho cause it impacts quality of end product greatly.

7 days later

Hmm...

As the dude who actually did the animation you are making an example of, I'd say that running anim is far for completed. The spine is not even animated, and with a few drawing and bone placement tweaks, the cut out issue could be decreased... a lot.

As a programmer, I bet that FFD might be a nightmare thing to do, since you now have to deal with meshes & volume & vertexs. Isn't just doing simple rotating or moving anymore.

The product is actually great. But the missing picture here is that not everyone is capable of doing proper, carefully crafted, animations. 50% of that people, won't even use scaling, 70% wont use tweening, and 90% wont use FFD.

People who can animate, and know techniques n' stuff, will only take advantage of those. And, personally, even tho I'm experienced, under a time constraint, not sure if I'd use FFD, since it would take more time. Way more. Of course, from an artistic point of view, it is totally needed, but this is a tool for games. A few of those are about things in motion, and end user won't even have a clue whether it uses FFD or not, as long as it looks just right.

Wowsies, wrote more than I thought. Cheers :sun:

Free-form deformation is difficult to implement.
But I respectfully disagree with your analysis and opinions, sir.

Pharan wrote

Free-form deformation is difficult to implement.
But I respectfully disagree with your analysis and opinions, sir.

Okies! Care to expand, in a friendly way? 🙂

a month later

wow so now i know why theres shitty animated games, because of lazy people. :love: crap attitude cause your work is forever, you wont do the same game twice :no:

@bwwd watch your language please or your access to this forum will be removed. With that said. Here's a tweet I made a couple of days ago, we haven't announced the details yet, we will soon.

Despite not making the Free Form Deformation stretch goal in our @kickstarter we can now announce that it WILL make it into #Spine.

Well theres no easy way to deal with people who drag you and slow down, i dont like it and im glad deformation will be implemented even if it wont be used by lazies, car wipers arent used all the time but all cars have them so...
Im not really into forum that much, just wanted to suggest deformation and its importance in animation, its just answer that some devs tdont have time and make lazy animating jobs for purpose is just begging for revenge from hell .