Hi, I'm new to Spine and my team is considering to use it in our next project. We're on a tight schedule so we hope the learning curve isn't too steep.
It is a 2D side-view interactive story.
Our primary use of Spine would be to animate the main character (mainly common animation such as walking, idle, simple interactions) and NPCs. It would be great (just because we're really in a hurry if we could just reskin the skeleton to use the same animations for the NPCs as well.
We're using the latest unity stable version, and we'll be using the latest Spine Unity runtimes version.
I have a few questions before actually choosing to buy all the required licenses. Could you please shed some light on this points?
1) We're hiring an animator to use Spine, but we still don't know which version is he going to use, and if he's going to work on Mac or Windows. Should I, the lead developer and programmer buy a license of Spine or can I use his runtimes and license to make the project work?
2) Is Spine really cross platform and mobile friendly? I have to produce both Android and iOS version of the same game.
3) Does spine support third party shaders? I need to have lit sprites, and I was using 2DFX from the Unity Asset Store (https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/42566) which applies a script to the sprite to apply useful FX like blur, flaming, fading, and extended blend modes. Bump mapped materials could be an option.
4) Do I and the animator need to have the same license? I only need the runtimes. Do the runtimes work appropriately if the animator provides me a Spine animation built with exclusive Pro feature?
5) Is the Spine export format for Unity the same, if the animator uses a Mac and the main project with the runtimes is working on a PC? Are they compatible?
6) Are there any known issues about using the latest Unity build 5.4.2f2 and the currently non beta version of Spine?
7) Should I and the animator use the same Spine version, Unity version, OS version to be able to cooperate without issues? Can we still use different OS when importing/exporting?
8) Can I do animation blending and flipping?
9) If I flip a Spine animation, are the normals of the sprite going to be reversed as well (undesirable effect), or should I use negative X scaling as I do for single faced sprites?
10) Is Spine ready to be used with common Unity animation systems like Animations, state animations and Mecanim? I'm using a third party asset for animation handling (Platformer Pro). Will Spine runtimes automatically blend from one animation state to another?
11) We'd like to have nicely looking turning animation with Spine. Or something like the humanlike player turning toward the background (his back facing the player) to interact with something. We'd love to make this kind of smoothly and with a fluid motion. Is it possible with Spine? What's the best practice to be able to do that?
12) Does Spine support for localized blends (morphs), or override part of the bone animations, such those needed to make the main character open and close his mouth, thus making him speak while animating the body with different animations and blends?
13) Can we switch the "skin" of the animation at runtime, thus allowing us to use the same animation system for both the main character and all NPCs?
Thanks for your time