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Hoping those flood gates pour out soon 😃 I can't wait to implement this.

14 days later

Can't I just use any sprite shader with spine models, or does it have to be a shader specifically for spine?

Assuming you mean a Unity shader when you say "shader":
It doesn't have to be specifically for Spine but it does need to fit a few criteria, most of which are true for most Sprite shaders but not all.

Backface Culling is preferrably off, but this can be removed as a requirement in exchange for some some performance cost.

Depth Buffer/Z-buffer writing and reading is off. This can also be removed but you'll have frequent jagged edges visible. This will also potentially make sorting more problematic as the sorting will then (1) depend on more factors than just draw order via the engine's sorting system and (2) you have to juggle Z positions so the sprites don't become coplanar (or almost-coplanar) and cause z-fighting.

Lighting is not done through the deferred lighting because it will cause the lighting pass to overlap where the sprite pieces overlap. This is true even for SpriteRenderer. But if you have depth buffer on, this can work. The side effect of jagged-edges mentioned above will likewise apply.

AND
The premultiplied alpha setting of the shader needs to match the texture. More on that here: Premultiply Alpha
For this reason, if you packed your texture and it works with the Spine/Skeleton shader, you'll often get black edges with the built-in Sprites/Default shader. You just need to make sure you export with Premultiply alpha turned off whenever you want to use Sprites/Default.

I'm not sure which of these characteristics Magelight will fit in the end but it will likely affect what kind of shaders and sorting scheme you need to use.

a month later

Any updates? Really looking forward to testing out this tool 🙂 🙂

a month later

Is Equipman or MageLight ever going to happen? It has been 9 months of coming soon. Is this stuff abandoned?

2 months later

I guess something happened for them to shift priorities. I'll have to look for another way to light my Spine characters . . .

Pretty sure this has been abandoned at this point.

a month later
24 days later

This project is simply too good to get lost in development!

Everything about it is amazing and unique.

I don't believe you will ever find any other instances of 2d dynamic lighting and specularity working together so perfectly the way they do in this demonstration here.

The fact that you were able to create shaders that deliver highly complex lighting, but still manage to preserve a very smooth cartoonish/2d graphic style should be considered a great accomplishment that is worth completing for the runtime no matter how difficult the obstacles.

There are many of us who wouldn't mind if you even released a fraction of the features you described. Many of us just simply wish we could get our hands on that amazing demo file to experiment and play around with.

@Mitch, I believe it's worth considering (at the very least) to release a small demo file for the community - esp. if it is simply too difficult to complete the full project at the moment (considering that you may be preoccupied with more important matters).

Note that forum user ToddRivers has released a Spine-Unity-compatible Sprite shader pack : Sprite Shaders for Unity

The samples don't show the light ramp feature (For stepped-tone shading) but it's there.

2 months later

Amazing stuff!!! it really looks very good, I'm really excited to know when this is going to come out!. THANKS Mitch!

18 days later

Status? 😉 We really need this.

Please see this thread for a continuation of shader discussion for Unity. I'm locking this thread for now, Mitch can unlock it if he is ever exhumed.