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  • [Request] Particle System in spine, pretty please?

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  • AAydin

    • Gönderi #1
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    I think spine is an attractive tool, I'm considering buying the Pro version. However the big deal breaker is the lack of a particle system, as of now Spine users have to animate each particle by hand instead of just adding an emitter that spawns them. I have read the forum and seen that Nate have said that there will be no particle system due to the maintenance debt that would come with it - namely supporting every different runtime that handles particles differently.

    I can understand that, HOWEVER..... I think you can dodge that debt entirely by labeling the feature "Experimental", adding a warning dialogue box that explains that particles only work within Spine, and are not supported for export. This would not incur any runtime maintenance debt, and would be a huge timesaver for users who want to use particles in Spine.

    In fact there are a few of us who want to use spine primarily as a stand alone tool, not for exporting to game engines. Many people out there are looking for easy and cheap ways of making animations for video, twitch, youtube, websites etc. And right now people like us are forced to hand-animate every single particle instead of just adding an emitter that farts out a bunch of particles in a specific direction with a specific transform and lifetime... It seems like you already have 90% of the features needed for a particle system, the last 10% would greatly help users, and also expand your user base beyond those who use spine as a gamedev tool.

    I am now weighing between using Spine or After Effects, and I would frankly rather support spine than to rent AE from Adobe.

    Can we get a particle system please?

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    • AAydin

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      • Nate

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      A particle system is a lot of work, even if it can't be exported to runtimes it's complex and has a lot of controls. It'd be a significant drain on resources for something that can't be exported to runtimes, and that's not great. We do want to improve Spine for cartooning and other use where the final product is video export, so maybe it fits in then.

      We do have a somewhat related feature coming soon: physics. This would let you setup "particles" and have them animated automatically. This gets you pretty close to what you want!

        • AAydin

          • Gönderi #4
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          I totally understand, it's not optimal to put resources on things that are contained in the application, but on the other hand it might help expand the user base and take Spine from game engine-adjacent development tool to a more stand-alone application. I think Spine is can serve as an alternative to the more bloated and technical applications out there that people use to make animations for video.

          I'm not trying to underestimate the work it takes to do a 2D particle system, it's indeed a sizable chunk, but to me it seems like you have already come a long way. With relative basic particle controls we would be able to achieve a lot paired with the tools that are already at our disposal. The physics update sounds interesting, but a particle system (even a basic one) would be pure gold. I will keep an eye out for the physics update though!

          Thanks for taking my suggestion into consideration

          15 gün sonra
          2 yıl sonra

          Nate

          Sorry for necroing this thread, but didn't see the purpose in creating a new thread as I specifically want to reply to your post.

          Nate it can't be exported to runtimes

          Couldn't you just bake the particles to regular bone animations/key frames, so they are just moving and rotating like they would have been hand animated? And limit particles to 25-30 at a time. Because creating smoke now, or star explosions or other stuff is so cumbersome.

          Also Unitys Particle System isn't supported in UI and never will. But Spine is supported in Unity UI, so it would make sense to spice up the UI with Spine animations and some simple particles.

          A really really simple Particle system would be more than enough, gravity, speed, size over time, rotation and life time. All baked to regular keyframes when exported. Or maybe have a "Bake" button in Spine that bakes them there. (Edit: Not meant to make it sound like a simple thing to implement, I know you guys already work hard and this would take extra time)

              • Nate

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              Baking particles is possible, but would be a lot of keys, it wouldn't be dynamic, and it is unlikely to loop well. With physics we found people hate it when things don't loop! Having even only 30 bones for particles with the 6 timelines you listed each is 180 timelines to apply for a particle effect. There could easily be multiple particle effects, not to mention other skeletons. It's really probably better not to try to force particles into skeletal animation.

              Efficient particle-like effects can be created manually with a little care. There may be workarounds for some of the tedious steps you may have encountered, such as translating along local coordinates and using key offset. Skeletal animation can be combined with frame-by-frame animation to produce great effects.

              In Spine 4.2 you can use physics for particle-like effects. See the cloud-pot example project.

                Nate

                Yeah you are probably right, and then people would complain why it's so limited etc. It was worth the try! 😛

                Nate Skeletal animation can be combined with frame-by-frame animation to produce great effects.

                I'm making a game where the game time gets changed (slow motion etc), and frame-by-frame animations look horrible during slow motion, that's why I wen't with skeletal animations and not Sprite sheets.
                They also looks weird when having high frame rates, and the skeletal animations are really smooth but the frame-by-frame FX look so cartoonish and off. But that's another issue with another solution (e.g. Shader effects)

                Nate In Spine 4.2 you can use physics for particle-like effects. See the cloud-pot example project.

                Nice, that's clever!