Hello and welcome on our forum 🙂
Spine Essential includes all the basic features necessary for skeletal animation. It is a great starting point for beginners as it provides a significant jump from not using Spine at all to creating animations. Essential includes features like basic bone manipulation, keyframing, and simple animations. Here are some animations created with Spine Essential: Gamasutra article.
Spine Professional adds advanced features such as meshes, constraints, and more complex tools. These features can be very powerful but might be overwhelming for beginners. It is recommended to start with Spine Essential to master the basics before moving on to the advanced features in Spine Professional.
For beginners, Spine Essential allows you to focus on learning the core principles of animation without getting distracted by the more complex features. Once you are comfortable with the basics, you can consider upgrading to Spine Professional to take advantage of the additional tools and features.
On the purchase page, there is a table that compares the features of both versions, which can help you understand the specific differences in detail (if you hover with your cursor, a popover shows additional information). Additionally, you can try the Professional version using the trial, which allows you to explore all the features without the ability to save your projects. This can give you a good sense of what each version offers before making a purchase.
For more information on learning Spine, you can refer to the Spine User Guide and the Spine videos.
