Spine + Unity without the runtime

Whistler

Because I'm not absolutely sure I'm on track with all things, this post is a combination of a request for information, a request for advice and probably also a feature request. As background, I've used Spine longer than I have Unity, but recently started planning a project to implement in Unity. I'm now looking at my options for the best workflow and tooling.

It seems Unity is pushing very hard in the 2D department, which I think is extremely welcome. The 2D sprite stuff is great and the 2D animation package seems very promising as well. With this, I have come to the impression that the actual Spine Unity runtime is becoming less of a thing, because you get tools to do skeletal animation through standard conventions.

There are some considerable benefits to using the Unity 2D packages. To name a couple of examples, doing cutscenes and specialised one off animations is a lot more convenient if everything is "native", having access to all the sprites present in skeletons can be useful and having the Unity devs push the performance of shaders is probably something hard to match.

So my question: Are there any tools or options simply for importing rigging and animations from Spine into Unity and creating standard unity 2D package assets from them (sprites, sprite rigging in the style of the Unity PSD importer, animation clips)? Are these planned?

I realise some Spine functionality simply is not there, but it probably will some day. Also there's the option of complementing the 2D packages with some additional functionality instead of trying to maintain a competing system.

To me the point of Spine has always come down to two things: First, make the animation tool experience the best it can be and second, make all the best tools available (skin deformation, clipping...). This could mean backing down a bit on the second point, but that might be the price to pay for staying relevant in the first.

Nate

Whistler wrote
doing cutscenes and specialised one off animations is a lot more convenient if everything is "native", having access to all the sprites present in skeletons can be useful and having the Unity devs push the performance of shaders is probably something hard to match.

FWIW, you can also access everything in the skeleton through spine-unity. Performance is not usually an issue with spine-unity and you can use Unity's built-in shaders with spine-unity (with some caveats). For simple or one-off animations, sure it might make sense to use a solution built-in to your game toolkit. Just be sure you don't discount how important it is to have nice workflows.

Whistler wrote
Are there any tools or options simply for importing rigging and animations from Spine into Unity and creating standard unity 2D package assets from them (sprites, sprite rigging in the style of the Unity PSD importer, animation clips)? Are these planned?

We have lots of plans for Spine and I would not like to see Spine's evolution limited to what can be supported natively in Unity. spine-unity works well and can support all Spine features, so we do not have plans to implement tools that convert to the native Unity system with a loss of features.

Whistler wrote
I realise some Spine functionality simply is not there, but it probably will some day.

It is unlikely Unity will ever be able to natively support all Spine features due to architectural differences.

Unity is a black box and that can make it difficult or awkward to work with. It can also simply be a dead end when the functionality needed is not available or is broken due to bugs in Unity. spine-unity helps to mitigate some of that and gives us a lot of power and freedom in what we can do.

Whistler wrote
Also there's the option of complementing the 2D packages with some additional functionality instead of trying to maintain a competing system.

While spine-unity and the Unity 2D APIs have some overlap, spine-unity strives to be interoperable with Unity's systems as much as possible. I think this is achievable without using the native Unity system and focusing our efforts on that will be most productive.

Skeletal animation was possible before Spine existed and today there are alternatives to Spine, but not with the same advantages. As you mentioned, one of Spine's strengths is the usability of the tool to build animations. Other strengths are the animation features provided and the workflows for modifying and iterating on your animations, bringing them into the runtime, and manipulating them there. While it may seem an alternative can replace some of these pieces, the devil is in the details and there are always pros and cons. I feel Spine's real strength comes from all the pieces working together.