[DEPRECATED] Anima2D - Advanced 2D Skeletal Animation Plugin

I really like Anima2D. Its a great way to animate 2D art in Unity. Here is some of my work done with Anima2D https://goo.gl/m3TkCP

 

(response to this)

Hello I just want to check whether I understand this right but, does this mean we are not going to be seeing FFD in Anima2D ever, or just not anytime soon? As I understand it's something you guys are still working on, or did I miss some information somewhere? Sorry for the confusion, thanks

 

I dealt with mesh duplication, thank you. But now another issue.
Trying to use spring bones I've got tones of error messages.

 

Wildness is some kind of ... It looks like it's buying up the rights, the plug-ins necessary for all useful and developing before, especially to stop their development. And the authors after that can not say anything intelligible about what is happening, in addition to the standard words allowed by the agreement.
There is no native bone (and FFD!) animation in 2D, according to the roadmap - it's not developed yet, but Anima2D will now remain incomplete forever! Great...

 

Hi @sergi_mandarina
i'm in china.i can't visit the https://www.dropbox.com/s/8sbyw7cg4qvwwb7/TextureOverride.cs?dl=0 website.
can you show the script in this forum. thanks very much.

 

Any way to get dynamic lighting with Anima2D like can make Dragonbones in Untiy?

 

@Sergi_Valls thanks very mush your support.

 

I guess FFD is now off the table.

 

Hi Sergi, 2 questions:

1) After creating sprite meshes out of the sprite rects in atlas, the sprite rects IN ATLAS (not in spritemesh (Editor)) become "extruded" by few pixels. That would be okay, however sometimes i need to revert back specific sprite rect to its original state, so i delete the sprite mesh in question, that allows me to again modify the sprite rect in original atlas (as there is no connection to spritemesh anymore). However the sprite rect is left extruded, and i dont remember its original bounds. So converting to sprite mesh seems destructive to original sprite atlas - or is there a correct way to get back to an original sprite rect AFTER spritemesh has been created?

2) I've read in your previous post to use Mesh Type "Tight" and NOT "Full Rect". In my case, i have whole game in 1 huge atlas, and some of the assets, that are not character assets, need their rect at "Full Rect". Would you in such case use separate atlas for Anima2D characters? Or a separate atlas per each Anima2D character? (i think that means if the shader etc are the same for all atlases, i would get 1 extra draw call per atlas/character (possibly more due to layer order), yes? What would your general recommendation on this be? Is "Tight" necessary for Anima2D?

Thank You

 

dos that work with a 2.5D or isometric camera?

 

Sergi,

Thank you for your replies!

A) Most important is to know that i understand the nature of the extrusion, and you expained it very well. So we can count this point as answered. Anyways, the reason i sometimes have to remove/recreate existing spritemesh is that i dont have under control the creation/positioning of the sprite rects/their size, as its done in another program. So in case i need to later (after creating the meshes once) add lets say a "hat" to the atlas, or the size/gfx of existing hat chages, the sprite rect position/or size/or both may change, and i will have to remake the sprite mesh(es). Full disclosure - i am not at this point yet, its just my assumption this might interfere with the workflow - i was thinking keeping the rects (except the ones that changed) and redrawing by had the ones that changed - i was only importing only the atlas texture, not using atlas.xml file that defines the new rect positions as i did not have program for that yet - only using photoediting to manually draw my atlas - ans then using Unity's sprite editor to cut the texture - create the rects)) - however im now already using a tool that exports both texture and xml, so my previous assumption might be invalidated (as i get fresh xml with rect data any time anything changes, and i can reimport the correct rects) - sorry - this point should not be an issue now (i think! still dont know tho.... IF all the rects change their position when i repack, then i would need to recreate all the spritemeshes with their bones etc? dont know, didnt test yet!)

B) Your SkinnedMeshCombiner port is amazing! I love it! And yes, i understand now what you mean after i used it myself. So we cant batch the combined meshes together, since they are created dynamically during runtime? I understand it now, i can see each combined mesh requires 1 draw call. Or is it possible for us to tell Unity somehow that the combined meshes are using the same atlas texture, same shader, material, etc and somehow manage to batch them (in theory?). Just wondering, if there would be a theoretical hack i could perhaps investigate later on (1 draw call per combined mesh is still awesome, but maybe one day i'd like to push the performance further with many animated characters). Just a short brainstorm/opinion from your side would be awesome!

Thank you!

 

Greetings.

I don`t really know where to place this but I need some help regarding some sort of bug I found while bouncing this one character between 2 different projects. It`s a bit urgent.
View attachment 235640

And

View attachment 235641


Notice how the highlighted spots look sharply weighted on the 2nd image. The first image was imported to an empty Unity project with only the Anim 2D asset pack and the respective character images, from the 2nd image project (in which all of the weighting and boning was done in) which is a project in a Git folder which has all of the team`s assets and scripts in it, as well as Anima 2D and Ferr 2D.

Both characters have the exact same assets, bone settings, and weights.

Does anybody have any idea why this is happening or how to handle it?
I will be posting this in Unity Support and the Anima 2D thread.
Thank you in advance.

Happy developing

 

When putting your two images one over the other it seems the head bone is slightly rotated. Check the rotation of the bone in the inspector to check if theyre really in the same position



Now for my question:
Has anyone been able to use the auto weight when creating Sprite Meshes? It hasn't worked at all for me lately, at least not when there's more than one bone. Is it just with me or is it a bug of the latest version?

 

Sergi,

Thanks for your replies!

Regarding your suggestion to use Unity's Atlases - well i tried that approach (Sprite Packer), but somehow i didnt like it as much as using external tools, simply because the atlas is (from what i could see) created "under the hood", sure you can specify your own packer policy, but not seeing the atlas or having what i would consider a better control over the output, for example i experienced it put the sprites into different pages etc when it shouldn't have had done that (there are still some bugs in issue tracker regarding this bug afaik - but then again this is not as much Anima2D related).

Best regards!

 

Sergi,

I have a question. For the moment i was using 1 atlas for everything in game, including Anima2D characters. Im about to transition splitting it into 2 Atlases, one for a single character, another for the rest of stuff

My question is: When doing this kind of adjustments, do i have to COMPLETELY remake all the bones, spritemeshes and animations? Graphics are the same. Sprite rectangles are the same, but their positions will change and there is a new atlas. This is the kind of changes i am interested in - can Anima2D can handle them somewhat effortlessly, or is as much time involved, as rigging + animating the whole character again.

 

Sergi,

Awesome and thanks again!

So the transition has been successful. Here are some points for further readers ive noticed, feel free to correct me:
1) Disable your Skinned Mesh Combiner during the transition from N->N+1 atlases, it doesnt show spritemeshes correctly when they are from more than 1 atlas.
2) You will still have to re-slice/tesselate your spritemeshes (and move the new sprite shapes, as Sergi mentioned pt [3], this isnt so bad) one by one if you're about to use new atlas. Vertex copy between SpriteMesh atlases would be nice (but this needs to be only done once as long as you keep character in your new atlas).

This plug is awesome, can't wait for full unity integration in the near future!

 

Hello @Sergi_Valls ,

What is the best practice to combine a 2D IK character mesh to keep sorting layers. It seems skinned mesh combiner breaks sorting order that makes it useless when animating a 2D IK character.

Best Regards,

 

Sorry to interject, i've solved this problem on my end and am going to just post a related link (involves adding few lines of code into SkinnedMeshCombiner, or even better, if you like to do it properly, make a custom inspector for it, to have the Sorting Layer combobox and Sorting Order input box):
http://answers.unity3d.com/question...order.html?childToView=1366701#answer-1366701

 

Absolutely would send you the SkinnedMeshCombinerCustomEditor + SkinnedMeshCombiner update i've made for myself; if you ever wanted it, just let me know, tho no doubt you can do it in 5min yourself . Cheers!

 

I am having some trouble with binding bones to mesh in Anima 2D. Most of the parts work fine but when I try to bind one of the pieces it gives me this error. If I apply it and go back to the scene the sprite is then invisible. If I unbind the bone it then shows up again. Any help would be great.

 

Hi again)

I saw this feature somewhere but cant seem to find it: Say i have basic IDLE, FALLING, JUMPING animations on a character - and need to add variation to group of joints - like slashing sword attack - as an override for that specific group of joints - and this would be an override for the hand joints (hand animation) for all 3 animations - IDLE, FALLING, JUMPING - how can i add that using Anima2D (or was it Unity Animator sub-blend tree or something / .. cant remember)? The other joints should behave as they normally would in case of IDLE | FALLING | JUMPING animation.

UPDATE: Wait, is it the "avatar mask"? And do i need to use Mecanim with Anima2D? I'd love to see a link to a tutorial if anyone has any!

 

Hello @Sergi_Valls , @_watcher_
Sorting in SkinnedMeshCombiner's array works fine thank you.
On the other hand, I loose ability of SpriteMeshAnimation when i combine all parts. ForExample blinking eye of character, changing mouth shape etc.

Best Regards,

 

This makes sense, and i suppose the only way to prevent this is to not combine the meshes you want to animate, and then only those that you dont mind having their sorting order to be higher/lower than the combined mesh. This means eyes could be left non-combined with sorting order higher than the combined mesh-es sorting order, if no other sprite mesh that would overlap the eyes from the combined mesh is expected to be higher sorting order than the eyes. Its a conjecture, if there is other/better way it would be nice is somebody else could comment. Also it would make sense that any spritemesh excluded from the combined mesh adds minimum of +1 draw call.

UPDATE: In case the mesh in question that you need to animate does not need deformations - say the eyes - and say you have 2 sprites (eyes closed, eyes opened), then if you do not make sprite meshes out of these, but say you leave them in your shared atlas - where you would normally keep things not Anima2D related - and the sprites from this atlas are actually batched (which is awesome) - then say you take those 2 eye sprites and attach them to the bones of your character (usually this would be a head bone), and then you can activate/deactivate them in your animation (from code, or timeline) to have them closed/opened, then your bones would still move them to be in the right place, this would not produce an extra draw call since its in a shared atlas, would still have to respect sorting order though, and could not use SpriteMeshAnimation component.

 

I apologize for my ignorance, but what exactly is a simplified repro-project, and how do I go about making one to send your way?
Thank you for your support.

 

GIT, SVN, or other online REPOsitory for your project, that keeps revision history of the changes you've made. If you never used one, its a good idea to start. If you ever worked in a team, its indispensable and pretty much required.

To create a Github repo, follow this guide: https://guides.github.com/activities/hello-world/

 

Well I just went over this with our team and I`m afraid we can`t send the projects due to the fact we signed an NDA with the client... We will try to rule out any assets or scripts that are suspected to cause the problem. If its on our team`s code we should be able to send it after revision but if it has any of the client`s code in it it won`t be possible.
Thank you so much for your patience though.

 

I'm using Anima2D. I tried to reduce draw call. so I added Skinned Mesh Renderer Script on my character object. There was no problem in Scene View. But in play view, Order in layer is messed up. I think it ignores value of Order in layer, and draw images by Script Meshes Instances list order.

Is this normal? If is not, how can I fix it?

 

Hi, is it possible to modify or generate the sprite mesh in runtime? Let's say I'd like to add dynamic customizations to character's appearance, e.g. logo on shirt, custom glove, etc.. How would I do that?

 

Sergi,

correct me if im wrong, but as soon as the meshes are combined, we can not "change" (eg enable/disable parts like swap cloth pieces etc). And what you are trying to say is, that you can leave specific SpriteMeshes (like say a hat) separate (not include it in the Mesh Combine), set its Sorting order to be higher than the combined mesh (same layer for simplicity), and then enable it when you want to add a hat? But that means no "part" from the combined mesh (eg "left hand") should ever be expected to "overlap" the added hat (go "above" the hat), since it cant (it was combined and now resides at the lower order position). It also means that (if for ex we have hair, the sprite size should be smaller than the hat, otherwise it will stick from under the hat? We cant remove part of the combined mesh now, can we). Or am i missing something here? Can we do something better than this.

 

This is probably a silly question but what's the way to get a single reference to the material on a SpriteMeshInstance rather than a shared material? I'm trying to do a simple shader color transition but it's affecting EVERY mesh with the shader at once (rather than one at a time).

 

I want apply 3D rotation animations similar to what happen on mario paper combined with anima 2D but the sprite don't rotate like the sprite component of the unity does. what can i do to be able to apply 3d rotation on the anim2D?

 

i have one question also and sorry for ,my im very new with 2d just started .
i have one question for now that i cant find any documentation or any tuto and i dont even if its possible
the question is :
I have an image png image and there is a character inside that i want to animate with skeleton but i have to slice the hand arms legs body parts so is it possible to cut the body parts of this character on this image and then use this part to animate it
thank you very much

 

Hello Sergi.

I'm having an issue when baking animations. Everytime I disable the IKs after baking, the feet move very erratically.
Tried in both simple and complex animations, it's always messed up when I disable the IKs.

Edit:
I noticed it's every other baked frame that gets messed up. One is right, the next one is out of place, and the next one is right again (and so on).

Any ideas what the cause might be?

SOLVED:

It was caused by the animations being in "Legacy". Unchecking it and baking them worked perfectly.


Thank you, keep up the great work.

 

Hi,

Is there anyway to have the Unity SpriteMask work with Anima2d? We purchased a plugin which works, but we would rather use the native stuff if we can. The issue being that SpriteMask seems to only work with SpriteRenderer, and Anima2d creates spritemeshes.

 

Sorry, I just want to be clear about what you want me to do. That would go on the parent gameobject which should mask all child gameobjects? Will that work with both sprites and spritemeshes, or only spritemeshes? Or have I misunderstood completely?

By the way, thanks for the reply. I told our artist to hold off on masking until I find out if we should use a 3rd party or something built in ... so this is much appreciated. The less 3rd party assets that go into game and combine together the safer it is to manage over time ...

 

Hello, we are using anima2d to develop a game.
Our artist made a character and exported it piece by piece (not as an atlas). Then the character was imported in unity, was made into sprite mesh and animated.
Later on we figured that having the character's each individual part in a separate png takes to much space, so I assigned a packing tag for each png and turned on the Sprite packer.
The sprites are now packed into an atlas and it looks like the meshes in the scene are using the packed textures. I know this because one of the texture has another piece bleeding into its texture as seen in the attached image. (with packing turned off that bleed is not present)


Now for the problem. When i make an android build with a simple scene (just the guy in the image), both the atlas and the individual png files are added to the build. This is obviously a big issue. We need to save space.

I've attached another image with the build log illustrating the issue


I spent several days trying to figure this out. One of the things I tried was to take the individual png files and use an external tool to make an atlas from them (i made sure to keep their dimensions in the atlas, even the empty space) Then imported the atlas in unity, wrote a script to slice the items to their precise dimensions as before and then tried to input these new sprites in the existing sprite mesh. Sadly this did not work. It looks like anima2d tries to keep the previous sprite meta data and puts the vertices at 0,0 even though the sprite is sliced at the correct location.



I also tried to use the sprite atlas (the new packing system in 2017.1). No luck as well. Still same problem.
At some point I though this is caused by the reference to the sprite in the sprite mesh. So I modified the code so that the sprite mesh takes a sprite atlas and then i would select the sprite from the atlas (i modified some editor files to make this work). sadly the entire anima codebase is too large and failed in my attempt.

I really don't want to loose the days the artist put in to bring in all these characters and animate them.
Is there a solution to use some sort of packing and keep all that has been done?

PS. tried this using unity 5.6.2f1 and unity 2017.1.0f3. Current anima version is 1.1.2

 

Can I copy and assign the skeleton to another character, in order to have two characters with the same animation? I am trying to follow the tutorials, but I can't figure out how to make it work.
Thanks