Using translations between Animation/Setup Mode

worksofheart

Hi Esoteric!

For our current project, I'm taking the deep dive into learning Spine, and have come across a few issues that I'd like to adress. I'm quite a beginner in terms of getting to know the software, and would love to figure out how to solve these issues or learn a better workflow because of it.

When dragging (new) attachments to existing slots, I have to scroll through the entire list of bones, attachments and skins to select them, and then scroll all the way back up to be able to put them in a slot. I have to do this one-by-one. Is there a way to have (for example) a separate view for the attachments so I can easily drag the attachments from one window to another? It takes a lot of time just to attach a few new attachments. I'd love to know how you would approach such a situation.
We have been using a specific (T-)pose in our setup phase, from which we animate all our animations. See the attached image: Sometimes I want to adjust an attachment's position (while keeping the bone the same) in the animated's pose, because the Setup pose is not always sufficient enough to predict how the attachment will end up in the final animation. Let's say I want to change the position of the fist's attachment image (while keeping the bone the same). I now have to switch back to Setup mode, try to remember something like, 'Slightly to the left and higher up the bone,' and then switch back and forth between the Setup view and Animate view to see if it works.
How can I translate an attachment in the Animate view without moving the bones?
When adding a new attachment to a slot, why does the new attachment suddenly appears as 'default' in some animations, even ones I previously made without that attachment? After adding an attachment, I now have to manually go back to all my previously made animations and switch off the attachment back to the old one.

Oh, and as a p.s.: I e-mailed you around july (I think it was), asking if you were working on the multiple-skins-preview functionality. At the time you mentioned you would publish this around september. Any update on the progress of this functionality? Thanks a lot!

Thanks a lot for your time!

Erika

you can press P after you selected the attachment in the viewport to quickly reparent anything, in the case of slots, you could probably filter the tree to let you see only attachments and slots. you could also select all the new attachments first, then parent them to the correct bones, then move them to the correct slots inside the bones to make you scroll less.

And here, at 2:03 there's an example of quickly parenting new attachments (with their slots) to the various bones:

why are you keeping the limbs so distant in setup pose?
Usually it would be a pose closer to the idle position, although it's not a given, it's the first time I see them so far apart.
To answer you, if the position of an attachment is ok in most of the animations, but not in certain other ones, since what you do in setup pose influences all the animations because they're relative to it, the best thing to do is add a new bone and parent the mischievous attachment to it, or turn the attachment into a mesh and adjust it for said animation, but the first option is better if you don't actually need deformations.
because, as said above, Animate mode is relative to the Setup pose, therefore if in setup pose you change e.g. some happy eyes with angry eyes, your eyes in all the animations that didn't explicitly key the eyes to be happy instead of angry, will show the latter. Simply reactivate the original attachment after adding the new one (in our case, happy eyes) to have everything back to normal.
I found this issue to be similar to what you asked: Allow multiple skins to be active at once · #17 · EsotericSoftware/spine-editor the preview view is still in the process of getting enhanced, I think you can follow it to get updates.

worksofheart

Hi Erikari! Thanks for your quick reply!

1.) Ah, apologies, I read your reply too quickly and thought that the 'p' shortcut was a way of toggling those attachments on and off - but I was wrong! That shortcut works wonders, and we love it already! (The show attachments option is still a bit long to scroll through, but 'p' is amazing!😛)

2.) We use quite complex animations. Drawing a character in an idle pose is not really an option for us. I attached an image to show a sample of another pose we're working on. While our default pose might be in idle and from the front, we use a lot of twists and turns in combat moves. This means our animated skeletons look totally different (flipped IK joints, different poses, different parts from front/back) from the idle pose, and we needed a neutral-as-possible pose for our Setup.

3.) Thanks for the reply! I'll start thinking of ways how to best implement that in our workflow.

4.) Ah nice, I will keep a check on that one!