[Release][Free] Unity Sprites And Bones - 2D skeleton animation

@playemgames: I will make the tutorial right away .

@Rirath:
I have no idea, how masking could be used for "moving, scaling and deforming a texture". As I understand it, a mask is an area where underlying image(s) can be seen. Everything outside the mask is hidden. I guess it could be done with render textures. But I don't own Unity Pro. Render textures really should be in Unity Free.
And thanks for the advertisement.

 

We can certainly hope render textures come to Free some day like other features (navmesh, force text assets, etc) have - I sincerely hope to be able to do Oculus Rift development with Unity Free some day. (Pro required for distorting the image.) Oculus is working closely with Unity, and I have to imagine they'll push for it. Would benefit us all.

Nothing much comes to mind for masking that'd be worth a pro only feature (or using performance heavy workarounds) though, I must admit. Just food for thought, I guess. And happy to advertise for someone who's giving such awesome tools to the community. Any luck with getting in the Asset Store? I feel like the popularity of this will explode once you are.

 

No luck with the Asset Store so far. Support is ignoring me. Probably they have no hurry to upload an asset, that could dilute the business of paid assets.

 

And here's the promised tutorial on how to use Sprites And Bones for image morphing.

 

Cool! I'll have to play around with this then

 

I found a bug with the mesh weight colours. I've uploaded a new version.

 

did you pass this asset on the asset store?

 

oh amn...this is shaping up and actually surpassing the larger assets that does this! Cant applaude u enough! I have some characters im gonna give it a go now, i was basicly waiting for some deformation and here we are!

Great job man, one of my top 3 assets now!

 

I tried. But there's some bug in the Asset Store Tools. And Support has to offer any solution, yet.

@Kelde: Thanks, man. I hope you enjoy it.

 

I have a problem with your asset. When I create a mesh from a sprite it does not apply any skin information, so it can't be used with Skin2D, I get an error where it says that mesh has no skinning information.
Anyhow the tool is great and easy to use, great work!

 

The mesh needs to be added to the Mesh Filter of the Skin2D component. Also you need a skeleton assigned to the Skeleton field in the Skin2D component. Pressing the 'Calculate weights' button combines the mesh with the Skin2D component.

This is all described in detail in this tutorial: http://vimeo.com/83922532.

 

Thank you for your answer
I did everything like in your tutorial, but I still have problems. On your prefab mesh there are uv,colors and skin properties and with that one it works just fine. But when I make a mesh from a sprite in Unity it only generates a mesh with uv and colors and no skin. When I add the mesh to the Mesh Filter of the Skin2D component, Unity gives me an error that mesh is lacking a skinning or blendshape information and I can't do anything. I also added the skeleton in Skin2D which is a parent of skeleton. Also when I add the mesh it is black and not pink as it should be when everything is fine

 

The bones also need unique names for the weight calculation to work. Or you missed a step somewhere.

It's difficult to find the problem, without seeing your project. If you can't find a solution, you'll have to make some screenshots or upload your project somewhere, so I can have a look.

Are there any error messages in the console window?

 

Here is the error in the console window: SkinnedMeshRenderer requires a mesh with skinning or blendshape information.
UnityEditor.DockArea:OnGUI()
And here is the mesh I created from image http://speedy.sh/zCK4F/New-UnityEngine.Mesh.asset
The problem is in the mesh, everything other works fine

 

I was unable to import this asset file. Could you please zip the whole project and upload it?
Also could you describe, how you created the mesh. Preferably step by step.

 

Well I created the mesh according to your tutorial, I added the sprite file to the scene, then Window->Sprites->CreateMesh, seleted the sprite then Generate Polygon and Create Mesh and that's it. Skin2D requires the mesh to be skinned right? Well my isn't. Maybe I'm missing some steps, or I should skin newly created mesh in order to work. I deleted the project, but if you need it I will gladly do it again. Maybe I need to skin the mesh in Blender and then import it to Unity, I don't know. In your tutorial you are working on a skinned mesh

 

http://speedy.sh/HtzCK/New-Unity-Project.zip here is the project, there are a bunch other stuff there, load k.unity scene, it's there

 

It's pretty lame that Unity has not approved this for the asset store/offered feedback on why it's not approved...

 

There's something I've forgotten to mention in the tutorial. To create the mesh from the sprite, the sprite must be readable. In the Project window select the sprite and change 'Texture type' to 'Advanced'. Then check 'Read/Write enabled'. Now recreate the mesh. There should have been an error message. I'm surprised, that it created an empty Asset instead. I will have a look at this, to provide a better message.

I got some feedback today. They asked me to try it again with a new version of the Asset Store Tool. Sadly it still doesn't work.

 

Yes, I already did that with the import settings. I'm close to get it work. I'm having some problems with calculating weights, but I will manage somehow. I think that the problem was with the bones influence, when I enlarged them weights were relatively good calculated, probably that is the problem
Thank you very much for your help and your wonderful tool. I will keep you updated if I manage to do it right

 

The size of the influence is the important part here, indeed. See that you cover the whole mesh.

 

That was the problem, I didn't have the whole mesh covered with influence, so when calculating weights some parts of the mesh weren't created. Thank you again very much and good luck with the Asset Store

 

I'm glad we could clear this up.

I'm still trying to add some kind of weight painting. But it's a lot more difficult than I expected.

 

After almost giving up on it, I finally made some good progress with the weight painting. Maybe I can finish this up next weekend.

My work is currently taking a toll on my productivity in my spare time. I really could use some help in developing Sprites And Bones. (Hint, Hint)

 

Thanks for keeping at it. Hope you find some help (well out of my league, I'm afraid), though since you're already seemingly eclipsing many of the paid packages out there, good help may be hard to find. Unity and its community leans somewhat toward monetized assets, in my experience, save a few good open source projects and the Unity Wiki. I guess in part because the store just makes it so easy.

You may want to put the call out in a few more community spots, like Reddit's /r/gamedev and /r/unity3d.

 

At this point I would be happy for any kind of help I can get. If you're no programmer, you could help with testing or creating documentation. I really could use a nicer introductory tutorial.
Thanks anyway for your promotion of Sprites And Bones on reddit and your constant encouragement. It makes a difference.

 

Anything wrong with charging? I'd pay

 

There are several problems with that. First of all I would get problems with the tax collector. I don't believe I would earn enough, to justify the trouble I'd get from that. Also I don't need the money. I'm earning a good salary.
I'm doing this mostly for the fun of it. When people would start paying for Sprites And Bones, it would stop being fun and instead turn into work. The last thing I need is more work.
Programming Sprites And Bones provides most of the fun on its own. But I have reached mostly what I intended to do. In order to keep this being fun, I need at few people at least, who use Sprites And Bones actively and give me feedback, bug reports and feature wishes. Contributors would be even better. Otherwise sooner or later (rather sooner) I will loose interest and start something else.
Sprites And Bones is the biggest and best open source project I have done so far. I'd really hate to see it die ignominiously.

 

Those are all very understandable and relate-able reasons! I'll be doing some small work with it over the next week I think and will give you feedback! Unfortunately my plate is spread way to thin to be able to contribute other than sending bug reports and feature requests. Maybe in the future that will change.

 

I"m currently brainstorming a few updates I could reasonably make to this. It would be a fun way to learn about writing Unity extensions. I'm thinking of some simple stuff to help improve workflow such as automatically creating an ik helper for a given limb and possibly setting the right bones and parents to the appropriate sprites.

 

Hi there,

First of all, great software! Keep up the good work!

I've played around with Sprites and Bones for a while and noticed that it's very picky about where I need to click in order to successfully select a bone. The current handles require one to really hit those 1px small lines of a handle. As far as I know this a limitation of the UnityEditor API. Still, I think it would be much better for a good workflow to have handles that are easier to select (maybe using custom sprites?).

EDIT:
Whoops, forgot to report a bug that I found while trying to use the Tab-Key to toggle between Edit and Pose mode. Using the checkmark in the Inspector panel works just fine, but when I use the Tab-Key the mode does not change (blue bones stay blue, for example). The checkmark is toggled in the Inspector panel but it doesn't seem to have an effect.

 

This is indeed a problem, with the way Unity gizmos work. I have no idea, how to fix this. If you've watched my tutorials, you might have seen, that I always select bones in the hierarchy .

Yet another problem with Unity. The Tab key will only work, if you click on the skeleton beforehand. If any other control has the focus, nothing happens. Unity doesn't seem to support global keyboard shortcuts. So again I can't do any thing about it.

Thanks for reporting it though.

 

Perfect solution for 2D skeletal animation, really thank you for giving it absolutely free! I see only one problem with it: when I scale the skeleton only sprites scaled but not bones so it create a lot of chaos inside skeleton and doesn't work at all. Have you plan to fix it?

 

I add scaling to the Sprites and Bones! We need to insert 2 changes:
into Bone.cs change Head property like this:

Code (csharp):

1.  
2. public Vector2 Head
3. {
4.     get
5.     {
6.         Vector3 scaleVector = new Vector2(gameObject.transform.up.x * gameObject.transform.lossyScale.x * length,
7.                                           gameObject.transform.up.y * gameObject.transform.lossyScale.y * length);
8.         return gameObject.transform.position + scaleVector;
9.     }
10. }
11.  

and into InverseKinematics.cs add this inside resolveSK2D method:

Code (csharp):

1.  
2. float scale = (b.transform.lossyScale.x + b.transform.lossyScale.y) / 2;
3. Vector3 root2tip = (tip.position + tip.up * b.length * scale - root).normalized;
4.  

instead old root2tip.

So after that we can scale skeleton object and posing/animating works ok.

Hope it helps, 'cause it's very useful for me (for mobile games with zooming for example)

 

In the interest of mutually beneficial self promotion, here's a small WIP gameplay video of one of my current projects which uses this plugin for all character animations.

WIP Thread

Webplayer Demo

www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxhlGscr03k

 

@Kiichi:
Thanks for the code snippet. If it has no unpleasent side effects, I will add it for certain.

@TheValar:
That's really nice. A game using Sprites And Bones is what I really wished for. Can I link to it on a 'Games made with' page?

 

Hrmm Could you possibly explain how you are handling that melee in your video? I have been trying to impliment melee in my 2D sidescroller but so far every tutorial I find focuses on ranged combat (IE Shooting)

 

Yes go ahead although it's not a finished product yet. I'll be sure to let you know when it's done and you can update whatever links you have.

 

For this game my solution was pretty simple. I have 3 box colliders as children of the dwarf. One above, below, and in front. They basically cover the arc of the axe attack. In the attack animation I activate/deactivate the boxes at the appropriate time and in the non combat animations I make sure they are deactivated. This is nice because if you have different animations for different weapons you can use the same colliders.

I set the colliders as triggers and then just program the interactions in the enemy's components.

If you want more explanation pm me or repost on my WIP forum, I don't want to hijack this thread.

 

I added a collider2D to my sword (which is a part of my character sprite sheet) but it doesn't move with the bone animation I made.I thought maybe creating a bone where my sword is and adding the collider2D to it ? still didn't work.

Question : How can I move my collider2D along with my sword?

Thank you very much!

 

I tried it and it works for me.

Here's how I've done it:
Create a skeleton with bones. Add the sword sprite as a child of the hand bone (drag it on the bone in the hierarchy window). Now you can add a collider component either to the bone or the sword. Both the sword and the collider will now follow the bone.

 

I added the collider to the sword(of course the sword is added as a child to the hand bone) sprite but still the collider doesn't with my animation (I didn't put a rigid body to the sword , do I need to?)

I added then the collider to the bone hand (adjusted it so that it fits with the sword) and it worked only if I have IK enabled , without it doesn't.

In this image animation is running and the collider is not , if I enable IK it does.

A little bit of help please ?

Thank you ! )

 

I made more tests and it works for me. There must be something wrong on your side.
The only thing I can think of right now, is, if you're using IK in an animation, you can't turn it off globally. Otherwise the animation will no longer work. If you need to switch IK on an off, you can animate this. Just click on the checkbox, while you're animating.

If you can't get it to work, you'll have to upload your project somewhere, and I'll have a look.

 

That would be just wonderful , but quite frankly I don't know which files of my project to upload(I'm new in unity).

Thanks for the help

 

Just pack up the whole thing.

 

http://www.fileswap.com/dl/259PGJeqRz/

If I did something wrong with the IK and hence bad animation ,or bad practices please let me know .

Thanks again !

 

The problem indeed is in the way you're using the IK.

You have two IK components on the same bone chain pointing to the same target. That won't work. If you watch my tutorial, you'll see that I use one IK component for the forearm and a second on the upper arm with its own target. The second IK is there, to have the elbow point in the right direction.

I suggest, that you use the same setup. This way you can animate the hands manually, but the arm still follows the IK target.

 

Problem solved , thanks .

 

I'm almost finished with the weight painting. But currently I'm stuck on a problem. Everything works fine, but I can't save the changed weights back to the prefab. This is rather infuriating. Does anyone know how to do this?

 

Just made a pull request. I added the ability to designate a file name when you save a pose. Just getting my feet wet

Still getting comfy with GIT so hopefully I didn't mess anything up. I did not create a new unitypackage.