Animating?

  • #80, by bonesTuesday, 21. February 2017, 02:06 7 years ago
    3D objects have to be .x format I believe - can't tell you any more than that as I stay away from the 3D side of the engine. You should be able to load exported Spine files into 3D characters tab or into the 3D object path box thing in properties tab of scene objects - again unconfirmed as I don't own Spine. Too expensive for me.
    I got it to work! I downloaded the free Spine viewer to test the exported spine file from the Esoteric Software site (http://esotericsoftware.com/spine-skeleton-viewer) and loaded up the Spine file that I exported in Dragonbones.

    At first the graphic elements wouldn't show up in there either, but after some quick testing I discovered I had to move the assets to the same folder as the JSON file, and it works!!!

    Visionaire is a bit crash-prone when playing these animations in the editor - after changing the animation center, it seemed quite stable, though, and Visionaire plays all the animations in the editor as well.

    It looks awesome. I have the giant fire demon from Dragonbones running absolutely smooth in the minimum test setup game (with the mars background). A small issue with the mouse offset remains at this point: at the right of this screen the position where the user clicks and the position the character moves to are off.

    Spine test demo project files download: http://estructor.altervista.org/Dragonbones_test.zip
    (updated the file: I uploaded the wrong one before.)

    Anyway, it seems we now have a FREE option to import Spine-based cut-out animated characters into Visionaire!!! Dragonbones! http://dragonbones.com/en/
    (With the caveat that Dragonbones must be online to export to Spine, and we have to login for this service.)


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  • #81, by bonesTuesday, 21. February 2017, 02:13 7 years ago
    By the way, one more advantage of Dragonbones and importing these animations: objects can also be animated with Dragonbones - which means it is possible to have complex background and foreground animated 2d elements mitigating the cost of introducing file-size heavy animation files into our games.

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  • #82, by MachtnixTuesday, 21. February 2017, 02:51 7 years ago
    (With the caveat that Dragonbones must be online to export to Spine, and we have to login for this service.)
    Why that? Only once (to activate or such neverending shit) or ever you want to export?
    I would work offline if I work...  smile

    But after all it's a great solution. I will test the viewer next days. Thx for find out.

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  • #83, by bonesTuesday, 21. February 2017, 04:00 7 years ago
    (With the caveat that Dragonbones must be online to export to Spine, and we have to login for this service.)
    Why that? Only once (to activate or such neverending shit) or ever you want to export?
    I would work offline if I work...  smile

    But after all it's a great solution. I will test the viewer next days. Thx for find out.

    Dragonbones works off-line, but when you want to export to the Spine JSON format it requires you to login and be online. No idea why this is so - probably a licensing issue.

    There are a number of other caveats in Visionaire: I don't think the animations can be controlled very well in the editor itself, and it may require Lua. Not sure.

    I believe Simon implemented this first version?

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  • #84, by ke4Tuesday, 21. February 2017, 14:01 7 years ago
    Can you please exaplain to me how does this actually work?

    You have a Json file with a character that contains all the animations? In that case everytime you need/create a new animation you need to export the whole Json bundle?

    How do you then play animations in Visionaire? I suppose you can't do it through the classic action part. Some Lua commands?

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  • #85, by afrlmeTuesday, 21. February 2017, 15:25 7 years ago
    Can you please exaplain to me how does this actually work?

    You have a Json file with a character that contains all the animations? In that case everytime you need/create a new animation you need to export the whole Json bundle?

    How do you then play animations in Visionaire? I suppose you can't do it through the classic action part. Some Lua commands?
    If you link a spine json file thing the properties tab for the currently selected animation has a dropdown menu that lets you specify an animation associated with the linked json file. Check out the example project bones provided - in 4.2.5 (doesn't seem to work in 5 beta).

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  • #86, by bonesTuesday, 21. February 2017, 16:19 7 years ago
    Can you please exaplain to me how does this actually work?

    You have a Json file with a character that contains all the animations? In that case everytime you need/create a new animation you need to export the whole Json bundle?

    How do you then play animations in Visionaire? I suppose you can't do it through the classic action part. Some Lua commands?
    Steps:
    1. create animation in Dragonbones or open the fire demon character in the welcome screen. A character/object in Dragonbones can have as many unique animations as you like.
    2. file-->export | Spine | Data version: version 3 | Image Type: Images
    3. open the exported folder, and move the PNG files to the same location as the JSON file. Both the JSON file and all the character parts must be in the SAME folder, otherwise Visionaire cannot load up the graphics.
    4. open a character in Visionaire.
    5. Outfit Properties: select/create an outfit, and load up the JSON file in the 3D model file option. You must change the file type to "All Files" to be able to do this.
    6. switch back to the Outfits tab, and select or create an animation state under the outfit of your choice.
    7. switch to the properties screen of the animation (cog wheels) and click on the "3D Model Animation" option to select one of the Dragonbones' generated animations. The list of animations you created in Dragonbones will populate this list.
    8. Keep doing this for all the required walk and standing animations. Change the center point if needed.
    9. to test the animations, drag the timeline, or play the animations. Initially the animation will seem broken, but playing it will work.

    It works with objects as well, but those cannot be positioned it seems.

    Unfortunately, some issues still prevent us from using this great animation option in Visionaire. I mention these here: http://www.visionaire-studio.net/forum/thread/visionaire-5-p...!/18/#40834

    I hope the developers will opt to integrate the Dragonbones JSON animation format instead, or will implement both options (Dragonbones JSON and Spine JSON). (And include automatic cross-fades for the animations!) That would open up a whole new world of animation for Visionaire users. Spine is just too expensive, and Dragonbones does the exact same thing for free.

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  • #87, by GlenfxTuesday, 21. February 2017, 16:30 7 years ago
    @Bones,
    thank you so much for sharing your findings, I didn't realize dragonbones had a spine export (I was using an old version 4, I never saw it before so I don't know if that one is a new feature in version 5).
    So it works quite well and easy, though it would be really great if visionaire has the dragonbones compatibility too since registering into a Chinese page and having the online server do the conversion to spine (which appears to be) is kind of odd and I don't trust outside web apps having or handling my file assets.

    I just noticed in the export features in dragonbones you should only use the "images" option and not the atlas or it wont show the character, and like you said, you need to move those image files where the Json file is.


    @ke4, (edit Bones seems to have covered this while I was writing haha)

    Yes, the Json file holds the animation list you create in dragonbones and you set them up from the pull down list in visionaire, it's quite simple. To load the Json file just go to the outfit properties and on the 3D model file tab look for the Json file, you won't see it so you need to change the filter that sais "model files recommended" to "all files *.*"
    Then on the character animations you go to properties and on the 3D Model animation pull down list select which animation you want to use.

    The cool thing is that the root bone is set as the center so you dont need to match centers in visionaire.

    Oh, and it doesnt work in V5, someone should add that one into the fix/add list.



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  • #88, by ke4Tuesday, 21. February 2017, 16:40 7 years ago
    Thank you guys for the answers! smile It's simpler than i thought.

    Is it possible to manipulate the animations during the runtime then? Changing some parts of the character for example setting a different t-shirt.

    Does it run more smoothly? I know that classic animations can get heavy and laggy if they are large or have a lot of frames.

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  • #89, by bonesTuesday, 21. February 2017, 16:50 7 years ago
    Simon just explained to me that objects can be placed with the 'place images and animations' tool, so that fixes one thing.

    But they do not seem to want to stay put, and scroll with the screen.

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  • #90, by bonesTuesday, 21. February 2017, 16:56 7 years ago
    Thank you guys for the answers! smile It's simpler than i thought.

    Is it possible to manipulate the animations during the runtime then? Changing some parts of the character for example setting a different t-shirt.

    Does it run more smoothly? I know that classic animations can get heavy and laggy if they are large or have a lot of frames.
    I have several giant characters and objects animating on the screen, and it all runs smooth. My rig is almost 8 years old (i7 920@3.6ghz and geforce 590.

    In principle the animations should be controllable. It would be nice if the developers would give us a list of Lua commands as well. Nothing seems to be documented - I am figuring things out as I go.

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