Hi. I first tried Spine maybe 10 years ago and I hated it. I realized it is primarily a skeleton and image deformation tool but I hated it's unique workflow which I admit somewhat improved over time, but essentially stayed the same. I am rediscovering Spine again and learning it from scratch this time focused not to miss any of it's UI workflow quirks that would make me suffer later. So here's all what came up to my mind as I did that.
While Spine is primarily a skeleton and image mesh deformation tool, I like that part. But I don't see no reason for it to be exclusively that. Why just not let us animate images without quirky and often limiting bone setup. All I need is to animate transform, scale, rotation, share and alpha of any image on the scene.Without bones and without root attachment.
I see lots of people already asked for that, years ago. So, imagine having tree view with Skeleton branch, and separate Timeline branch. It doesn't have to be After Effects. rotation, transform, scale, alpha and shear would be perfect for the start.
Second thing that came up is animation path. Sure, we have path constraint. It works, but it's too much fiddling just with simple path. When you animate transform X from point A to point B, isn't that already some sort of a path. We don't see it but it is. Reveal this path and make it bezier so we can adjust it as we like
That's it for now I will write about this things as I work.
I am 50y old graphic designer with more than 30 years of experience with background in graphic design, motion graphics, 3D and 2D animation, and gaming design.
