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Hallo, most Awesome Spine Crew!

Wanted to suggest a couple of things I feel would be a big quality of life improvements for animators (the first sounds fairly straightforward, hopefully..?):

A 'master' tick-box on for Ghosting Tools that toggles everything on or off at once. I find myself having to untick about four separate things each time I want to quickly switch it off and on, and I think animators tend to toggle it a lot in one view, as they work/ test things.

Also, would be great if you could have a straightforward Motion Path under Ghosting too, for when you just have the end of an IK foot selected for example? There are many times when I dont need to see what the attachment itself is doing and am more interested in the arc of an IK point, or the up/down movement of the central hip bone etc. Sometimes ghosting of the attachments muddies the issue, and I just want to see the arc formed by a single point.

Finally, from a longstanding Game Developer point of view: Something that would be super useful is the ability to Search the Import Animation list when bringing in anims from another file. Honestly, when you are working with hundreds of animations on one character, it is sorely needed.

I have had it suggested to me to delete the anims I dont want before importing from a file, but that really isn't practical when you are working with that many animations and are having to sort through numerous folders too. I love how rock-sold the import process is otherwise, but it is definitely a point of friction when Spine is being used on a big game (And we've just finished using Spine on a big game - Fabiano will probably back me up on this one, if he's about 😉 )

Anyway just leaving these for consideration. And much appreciate all the work that goes into the Software :yes: :yes:


Oh - I forgot a final one.
(Would it be possible to increase the maximum zoom on the timeline, for when you are working 'between' keyframes with the shift-key...?)
Sorry, I'll stop now!


Just remembered another, but this is probably a big one - The Tree visible in more than one window at a time. So you can be looking at two different parts of it without scrolling. I quite often find myself wanting to be in the animation section and the skeleton section all at once ... I know there is a separate Skins and Animation window but I'm quite often looking for the full functionality of the tree versions when I am in these)

Now i'll definitely stop!!

Totally +1 on all of them, as far as I'm concerned.

If I'm using Ghosting for both Before and After (almost always in my case), any possible way to deactivate it requires at least 2 clicks in different points of the panel, which basically eliminates the possibility to quickly switch on and off without stopping to focus on the animation.


Motion Path for null bones could be a line, while for long bones it could be 2 lines (pivot and tip of the bone over time), or the same 2 spots but connected, so that the result is an area of some kind.


And yeah, the import panel has made us suffer intensely during the last moths. The main problem arised because the animations were so many, and there was no evident order applied to them. It's true it was still version 3.8.99, but I'm trying now with 4.1 and it seems to me that it... behaves differently depending on the skeleton or spine file? :bigeyed:

So here's an example:


Up here's the correct order I'd expect; first the folders are ordered, then inside of them, the animations are ordered.


While this one's a different one, coming from the same exact spine file, only different skeleton.
Looks to me it's ordering using the first letter of the animation clip, ignoring the folders.
It can be an interesting, more convenient way for some cases, but it would be great to have possibilty to change it if needed.

Otherwise, a search bar suggested by nunnerst still remains a must for very large animation lists.

Hello!
Thank you for taking the time to list your suggestions!

I've added the toggle request here:
https://github.com/EsotericSoftware/spine-editor/issues/713

Regarding ghosting motion paths, I've added your +1 to this:
https://github.com/EsotericSoftware/spine-editor/issues/177

Regarding animations, I've added an issue with both of your suggestions here:
https://github.com/EsotericSoftware/spine-editor/issues/714
(and also added mine)

Regarding the increase of the timeline zoom, usually the zoom is enough to access the in between frames that are possible to reach with Spine, could you provide a screenshot/some sort of example of why this is not enough?

Hmm about the tree, I don't see how having duplicates all doing the same thing would be really useful. As you said, we do have other views that help separate nodes of the tree into their own thing, so it's more likely and it would make more sense to add a view for a node that doesn't have it rather than having doubles of the same thing. Could you provide a practical example of how this would make a difference for your use case?

Thank you again!

8 дней спустя

Hi Erika - just wanted to say: thankyou for your reply ..and for the github request adds! I will definitely go into more detail re the use-cases for duplicate views and increased zoom when I have a moment outside of worktime! :0)


Hi Again Erika:

Re the timeline zoom - thinking further on this: I often have real trouble when trying to get keys in the same place when working between frames :detective: So maybe what I am actually wishing for is not increased zoom, but an optional 'snapping' mode for between frames too, so you can land on '0.1', '0.2', etc reliably if needed, and avoid ending up with one key 'nearly-but-not-quite' in same place as the other, and then you can never again select one key without accidentally selecting the other. That said, I know it can be done by typing in the position as well, so there are options.

The second Tree view, though: In a nutshell, I'm wanting to be able to see two different parts of a rig  - or of two separate rigs - at once, in the tree specifically. I often need to pop quickly between them, comparing and editing names/slots/setup. On a recent game we were often working on Front and Side rigs for the characters concurrently for instance and, boy, I really wished for it then. Paired Animations/ Imported skeletons, or any other situ that calls for multiple hierarchies in a scene are a usecase for this. Or just one long hierarchy. It would save a lot of scrolling time. And if you could drag stuff from one tree view into another, that would be totally magical!

Re other possible solutions: Selection Sets are more useful when I am sure I will repeatedly need to select that bone during an anim, rather than comparing different areas of rigs during setup, where you are constantly moving through different elements..
Filtering by type helps fit more stuff in the tree, but still not enough for the sort of rigs some game devs regularly work with, plus often we are wanting to see bones and slots and attachments all at once.
And while it is handy having separate windows for Animations/ Skins etc, these don't have the full functionality of the tree (I do appreciate that their intention is more to be able to swop skins/animations in Animate mode, rather than... accidentally delete stuff - 😃 !).

Have attached a screenshot of two tree views from Blender, where you can turn any window to whatever the heck you like, regardless of whether you already have one of those open. Multiple windows of pretty much any view can prove incredibly useful tbh, but particularly the Tree, given it can get very long, and contains the 'guts' of everything.  

That's not to assume this isn't complete pain in the ass to set up, programmatically speaking, especially with Expand And Scroll in the mix - to make this useful a user would definitely have it switched off in at least one tree view, and I have no idea if that is even possible!

But anyway, that is my case for it. This kind of doubles back to my request about the imported anims list in a way. Both of these really are about being able to move easier through the amount of 'stuff' Spine is called upon to carry in one scene these days. I do spend a lot of time scrolling around hierarchies/skins/constraints lists, even with the touches that have already been added to ease that.

Anyway, thanks for asking and listening 🙂

Thank you for elaborating your suggestions! I think what you have described is very reasonable.

Regarding the timeline zoom, not exactly the same idea, but there is an issue ticket to allow custom frame numbers for the timeline.
https://github.com/EsotericSoftware/spine-editor/issues/666
I think we can consider allowing custom frame numbers to floating point numbers not only integers when implementing this feature, so I have added a comment with the url of this thread on it.

Regarding the Tree view, there is a similar issue and I have added your +1 here:
https://github.com/EsotericSoftware/spine-editor/issues/322