Hello Tom, the Affinity designer export script is not maintained by us. Their learn section doesn't give more info either, so we can't answer this. https://affinity.serif.com/learn/

Considering Esoteric created a script / addon for Photoshop, do you all plan to develop another solution to handle the fact that Affinity doesn't allow scripting? For example, a script can be written that takes the exported spine.json file from Affinity and convert it into something that organizes the tags and groups properly. It would be much appreciated. Not everyone uses Photoshop and Affinity is starting to gain momentum.

Processing the tags in names in the JSON from Affinity is an interesting idea. One problem is that Spine doesn't manipulate your image files. It could but doesn't because it can be surprising and is better managed elsewhere. If the images have tags in the names, you'd probably want them renamed. We'd need to make it clear in the import UI that this will happen.

Another solution could be to export full frame images for each layer, then we could provide a tool that trims whitespace and imports into Spine. This would mean we'd no longer need scripts for each image editor, as long as they can write out a full frame image for each layer. One problem is that the draw order is lost. We could bring the images into Spine in the right positions, but we wouldn't know which images are on top of others. Using the file's creation date probably wouldn't help, as I'm not sure it's granular enough.

Update: We've reached out to the Affinity Designer guys and they are willing to add built-in support for tags! It's really great they are so responsive.

Nate, This is fantastic! My wife and I are working on a game and she uses Affinity. She's been having to manually organize 100+ assets for single characters after importing int to spine. She'll be stoked to hear this. Did they say anything about when this might get implemented? Also, once this lands, would spine have something that reads these tags and organizes or sets up folders?

They didn't say. I think it won't make it in their next release, 1.9, as it's too soon. Maybe the one after though!

Not sure what you mean, Spine doesn't see the tags at all. The tags are used by Photoshop/Affinity to generate the JSON.

Ah okay. So Affinity would see the tags and spit out JSON that Spine uses to organize the imported assets?

Yep!

Beautiful Thank you! Did you have an open forum post or anything I could have a look at? I want to hunt them down while they implement this!

Updated: I just saw your github README update here. I'll keep an eye out from them.

We spoke via email, not sure if they have said anything publicly.

Aye, we added the readme there to increase visibility that AD supports Spine out of the box. As soon as AD has tags, we're happy to recommend it over Photoshop!

Ha! That's great Yeah not every one wants to break the bank paying for just a name.

You mean you don't want to pay an ever-increasing amount via subscription for bug ridden Photoshop? Weird!

I now have a MacBook Pro. I don't have an Esoteric script / add-on for Photoshop. Can anyone share this with me?

Hello Olivia,
you can fetch the latest version of the script on its Github page here: https://github.com/EsotericSoftware/spine-scripts/tree/master/photoshop
or also by simply clicking on this link: https://esotericsoftware.com/spine-scripts/PhotoshopToSpine.jsx

Nate wrote

Update: We've reached out to the Affinity Designer guys and they are willing to add built-in support for tags! It's really great they are so responsive.

Any news about this? There is now build support for spine in affinity software?

No word from Affinity, sorry. My guess is that the latest PhotoshopToSpine script is a bit more complex than the last one they ported, so it got pushed into the future. AD does still support exporting Spine JSON, just not with all the tags that the PhotoshopToSpine script supports.