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

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!!

Well, I think it must be New Keyboard time - wiping out the hotkey didnt solve it, but unplugging the entire keyboard did! (Just for the record I've got an additional Mac monitor and Keyboard running off my PC laptop and it's the Mac Keyboard that is the problem. I dunno if this also might have any bearing on things)

Thankyou for the help, Nate.

I've got my windows minimising and maximising seemingly spontaneously - timeline, tree, graph etc - they all keep flying up to the little view shortcuts in the upper right hand corner, than out from them again, seeingly without me doing anything to cause it (it often happens while im scrolling through the timeline). It tends to happen several times in a row and really disrupts whatever I am doing at the time.

Anyone else had anything similar, or have any ideas what might be causing this?

(I'm on Spine 3.8.99 Prof and am not having these issues elsewhere.
(...had to crop the gif quite a bit as the contents of the file cant be shared. But it hopefully gives an idea what is going on)

Erikari - thankyou - that seems to have worked fine!
(Honestly - what am i like? :upsidedown: : )

Thankyou for your help!

Hi Guys - we just got a similar error when trying to export with what (I think...?) are default settings:

The _Error:

We then tried deleting some attachments that were flipped with scaling in case that was causing it (tho it has never done so before), and a particularly big attachment (though only to the tune of 455px though!

After doing that, we received a different error:

We are using 3.8.84 and have never had this issue before

_cheers for any info!

Hello! (sorry for the delay in replying, I missed this).

I was using the .png extension to auto-generate pngs from Photoshop as I was working, which is really handy for updating image assets on the fly, especially if you point Spine's image path back to that folder.
( https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/generate-assets-layers.html ).

I stopped doing that anyway once I started using the PhotoshopToSpine plugin as the naming was getting kind of confusing (ie: [merge] prefixes on a folder, on top of the .png extension, that sort of thing). There's definitely some interesting pipeline potential there, but i think the .png trouble put the nail in the coffin for now at least....

Ah, thankyou Nate - that is perfectly obvious now you've pointed it out! :$

Hi Folks - I'm just settling down to try and squash/stretch rig, but have been defeated at the first hurdle, as when I create a path - one side of the handles seems to go off to infinity and beyond!

I've tried deleting the knot then creating again, closing the path, closing the scene, drawing it in a fresh scene, restarting the computer.. but without much luck.
It seems to be happening with every path I draw! Any tips?

Well, coming at this somewhat late as only just started looking at Spine - but coming from a games background (mobile in particular), yep, I can definitely see the case for reducing unique skeletons!!

But could blending be utilised in code, to mix some anims up a little ingame..? Maybe just as simple as bending your elderly man over more more during his walkcycle? (if they've got bandwidth for 20 skeletons i'd imagine they might have some bandwidth for blending anims?). I know it's not the perfect answer for any perfectionist - ie: Animator! - but a few small tweaks in code could go a long way..

Hello, Everyone - greetings!! :handshake: (Newbie here!)

I'm having an issue I can't seem to resolve (and a couple more questions but i'll leave those for now):

I'm using the PhotoshopToSpine script (really handy!!) to import two skins into Spine.
Everything works as expected with these once imported ...except.. as soon as I check the box to change an attachment to a mesh, the image disappears in the viewport, and 'missing' placeholder comes up instead.

I keep double-checking the paths to the image files, but they seem okay...?

If I don't import the json, and just navigate to the same image file via the tree, its fine when I try to turn an image into a mesh.

So presumably this has something to do with the json import...?

Or have I missed something obvious about paths?

Any help appreciated!

Finally realised what was causing the problem. In Photoshop, i'd added '.png' to the layer names, so that pngs would also auto-generate from Photoshop.

As soon as I removed these and re-exported again with the script, it worked fine - phew!