Okay so that makes things clear. It seems I was confused about the Spine API for packing. I had thought it only worked for a single material/texture packing for one character only, but it seems your saying I can pack multiple. (I shoulda experimented with that)
Ah right the draw order of stuff does make a difference for calls. Damn I forgot about that. I guess it is just more optimal then to pack everything into a single texture per character (unless I can find a way to pack all sprites and the template sprites into some sort of mega atlas to reduce calls down into just 1)
In theory I imagine it is possible to do that too if it was needed. I could generate a single atlas for all shared characters I think and reduce draw calls for large amounts.
Tho in my case I don't think its too necessary, Ill stick with a generated atlas per character for now.
One last question, spine allows you to have meshes link to other meshes in the editor. This is great for having cloth type deformations apply to anything that copies that mesh.
Since I'm using placeholders and generating at runtime, does the api support converting sprites into linked meshes? I tried looking it up and at least at the time it seemed a bit all over the place as to what specifically the api was and or what you even can do (all these forum posts dated back a few years) I remember a youtube video talking about how it was possible in v5 but not v4, but the api was different then so I'm not entirely sure where to start.
Most of my sprites plan to be animated a bunch using linked meshes to make the characters more life like so its definitely a big part of what I'd need.
Alright thank you for taking the time to help me. Sorry for the constant misunderstandings! You and the entire team are amazing as usual!
