Official 2D Animation is out of preview for 2019.3

(Moving my question here, as the "preview"-thread where I asked the question is now closed)

Hi!

(Thanks to your post above I found the performance-mode, thank you!)

Am I correct in understanding that the 2DAnimation will be more efficient in the future? If so do you know the approximate time-frame, and will it be able to compete with the performance of Anima2D?
The reason I'm asking is because I'll (possibly) have 5~15 NPC on the screen at once, and currently 2DAnimation is too performance-heavy to use for this, while Anima2D does the task without affecting fps much.

2DAnimation is such a lovely and easy to use tool though, and I would prefer using it as it's also native to Unity now. So If it will be efficient enough in the future to handle this well I'd love to know, then I will fix my animations in 2DAnimation and wait for the efficiency to come

 

Is there any update on allowing other formats for the "Multiple Sprite Single Character rigging" or for setting up the character yourself with a flat file? The Photoshop format requirement is still causing me not to use this in production.

 

Due to the change in the status of the 2D animation package and the closing of the forum preview branches, I will ask my question again here in the new branch, since the answer is important to me. And my past comments with related questions go "to the background," along with those closed forum threads.

-Are there any plans to expand the functionality of the PSD Importer to work with Adobe Illustrator?
As an artist drawing in a vector and not using Photoshop in my work, it’s very important to know, for me

Here is the original comment about the situation with the layer identifiers in Illustrator and how this excludes the possibility of working with Adobe Illustrator and the current version of the 2D animation package
I’m not sure whether to duplicate the whole comment here, let there be a link:
#414
Leo-Yaik answered me, but since I managed to ask several questions, his solution probably suited several of them, and there was no citation in his answer - I’m not sure I understood what question the answer related to...

Therefore, I asked a clarifying question, the answer to which has not yet been. And then you closed the branch in which I asked him...

Original post - here:
#418

A small quote from that comment, to make it clear why I am so worried - my workflow is completely dependent on the possibility of fully working interaction with Illustrator.
And description of the script for AI that I use to simplify working with characters and simplifies the export of .psd and import to the PSD importer:

Here is a link to the video in which I tried to briefly show the main features of my script:
-Switching "skins", variations of objects: hands, feet, head. Just select from dropdown lists, without clicking on many-many smallest icons of Illustrator's Palette of Layers!
-Create a new object from the selected. The name of the layer contains the name of the body part, the "skin" and the variation of the body part
-Creating a file prepared for export, and export to psd.

As you can see, there is already much that will make it more convenient to work with many drawings of various characters. Although of course the script is still very "raw" and not very stable, but nonetheless...

P.S. Sorry for my "pidgin english" and Google-translate...

 

could you add CLOTHES or WIND effect support? to deform clothes, scarfes, flags and so on with the wind?

 

Is there a way to dynamically add the PSB files to the scene via C#? I'm having a hard time implementing the PSB game object with all the bones into the scene, I can very easily add it by drag and drop, but that doesn't really work with the game I'm making.

Thanks!

 

According to the manual: "

1. Add the Sprite Library component to the same GameObject, and assign the new Sprite Library Asset set up in step 3 to the Sprite Library Asset box.
   
   
2. Add the Sprite Resolver component to the same GameObject.
   " and so on...
   I have firstly rigged my character, then I did what I cited from the manual and then I switched a body part, getting Sprite has no binding... WHY? How solve it? Why doing like the manual is not working?

 

When I set sprite bones in editor script using SpriteDataAccessExtensions.SetBones, these bones are not saved to meta file and are not visible in Skinning editor. What else should I do to see the bones in Skinning editor?

 

Thank You Sir! -You can’t imagine how glad I am to hear that!

And this is absolutely not scary, I’m writing this script myself, and I can fit it practically to any requirements ...
The only situation that is practically unsolvable for me - is this one with layer identifiers that are not working in Illustrator.

But if this is somehow resolved, then everything will be just fantastically wonderful!

 

the problem is this:
I Rigged the charchter with its default skinset. Then I want to swap in at runtime another sprite taken from an asset bundle. Even when I drag another library asset into the component "library asset experimental", the resolver says "sprite has no bindings".

it shouldnt automatically swap the sprite there, like its shown into the Example package with the viking Rikr?

 

I rigged a character with its deafult HAT. Now I want to swap in other HATS taken from other asset bundles.
Am I forced to create a totally different charcher and psb file for each hat and copypaste? that would be crazy.

I want just to swap a new hat in but I get "Sprite has no bindings" I dont understand what should i Do in practice.. could you explain step by step? Thank you, it's very important for me!

 

I JUST want to swap only a single ITEM, a single weapon!
Most of modern games are based on the economy of selling weapons/gadgets, and this is critical!
I can't create a rigged prefab character for each weapon I have!!

I want to swap in a single item (an hat, a sword). Taken from a random AssetBundle.
I rigged and animated the character with a placeholder for the hat and another for the weapon.
Now I just want to swap in an hat/weapon of the same dimensions, right there.

Please could you explain how to do this? step by step. How should we do?
This is the core business of most dev studios!

 

what do you mean the same bone influences? you are omitting that then we are forced to create a prefab for each variant of the character? then copy paste the skeleton and istantiate them like:
-Mario with sword
-Mario with Axe
-Mario with bowl
and so on? that would be crazy!
and what about combinations?
-Mario with Red hat and Sword
-Mario with green hat and sword
If so, you should state this huge limitation in there...

From the documentation looks so cool an easy to swap things, instead is only if you want to swap total body charcters like winter clothes/summer clothes or some sprites that are loaded into the same PSB file, not external sprite!

This makes impossible to work with the suggested recommendation of unity, Asset Bundles, Memory mangement and so on..

I don't know if I have understood correctly, I hope to be wrong, because in that case our studio will be stucked, since we have tons of assett bundles with weapons and so on, waiting to be swapped, and we cant merge them inside each prefab. Waiting for this critical feature.

Instead if there is already a solution, Please could you explain it clearly?
Thank you very very much!

 

I was wondering how to add single sprites to swap too, and this is the solution I'm using right now:

Making the swappable sprite-image:
1. Copy the PBS-file that holds your current character-sprites.
2. Open the PBS-file.
3. Delete everything in the file EXCEPT for sprite you will want to swap out, so for example keep your weapon-sprite but delete everything else.
4. You should know have an identically sized PBS-file with only one sprite (your weapon-sprite). All your other character-images are now gone.
5. Repaint the weapon-sprite to a style you wish to be able to swap to. Make sure the repainted weapon is approximately where the original weapon-sprite was.
6. When you're happy with your repaint, save this copied PBS file and import it to unity.

Setting up your new swappable sprite-image in the Skinning Editor.
7. Open your original PBS-character-file in Unity's Skinning Editor.
8. Cope all bones of the PBS-character-file
9. Go to your new PBS-file with ONLY the weapon.
10. Now press "paste" on this file, (you'll find the button at the top of the Skinning Editor).
11. Choose to paste "Bones" only. Pasting the mesh will not work as you don't have the same number of sprites.
12. Now the bones should be in your PBS weapon-file. Now that you have the bones in your new PBS-copy you can create a new mesh for your weapon and attach it to the bones. Edit it to react as you wish to the bones here.
13. When you're happy with how the weapon reacts to the bones, hit apply.
14. This weapon will now be a swappable sprite with all your other weapons if you add it to your Sprite Swap Library :>

That's my workaround for now. Like this you can make a PBS with ONLY the image you wish to swap, so you don't need to set up a whole character every time. If I've understood correctly however they're working on a more streamlined solution, so in the future it will probably be easier. But I think this solution works fairly well right now

 

Thank you very much for the help! However this means I should rig evertyme the charcter for all the weapons/hats/accessorize! That is a crazy amount of work. And this means that when we istantiate that, there would be in memory a duplicate skeleton!

If I want to change my charcter to have a sword instead of a woodstick I have to be able to do it in 1 second!
Saving the rig I have already done! And no rig again every item for each charcter! It's insane.

I hope they can fix this in this week, it's very crucial for us, it's a core business!

 

I need to get the entire character mesh, not the individual mesh per part, to apply the shader.
Is there a way?
If possible, I would like something like SkinnedMeshCombiner like in Anima2D.

 

Hi, I have a serious issue with SpriteSkin. It doesn't have any culling implemented if it's out of cam view, and its LateUpdate is extremely expensive and honestly useless if the spriteskin is out of view.

So I tried implementing my own culling for it by disabling either the component or the gameobject, and reenabling when the object comes into view and encountered another issue: after reenabling SpriteSkin, it is no longer skinning the sprite to the bone!! it remains in its default position, broken!

I'm using 2D Animation v 3.1.1 with Burst installed. The Animator has Culling Mode set to Cull Completely, and SpriteSkin should use that setting as well to stop doing useless LateUpdate() stuff.

What's going on?

Later edit: interestingly enabling experimental gets rid of this issue, but I shouldn't have to implement my own culling for this

 

I would love to use bone-animation for some of my UI-images. Will this be possible in the future, to use 2Danimation with bones on UI? Or is it already possible somehow?

Thanks so much in advance!

 

@Leo-Yaik Please could you answer? When the simple Swap IN of a single sprite will be possible? Rigging all the charcter is simply not feasible for our studio. We are stopped in development waiting for this crucial update, our business is based on selling character assets in assetBundles we need to swap them into a placeholder at runtime without having to do anything else. Please read what I wrote above and what @HuldaGnodima suggested even if is not feasible for production.
When will this problem be tackled?
Thank you very much!

 

During installation, I get an error with no information – an empty window.

 

We have several Asset Bundles with several Weapons and Hats in them.

We have the main character already animated with all its animations(attack, run..), we have animated it using a Placeholder Sprite (200px*200px) for the Weapon, and another Placeholder Sprite as hat.

Now, I would like via code, Get a given Weapon/Hat from an asset bundle and swap it there in place of the placeholder.
But When I do it now, it says "Sprite has no Binding poses"...

Thank you very much for the help, We completely stopped our work for this problem...

 

Don't think it's the best solution but you should be able to animate "UI" sprites like you would do characters and have an invisible UI element ontop that receives the click, of course this is not gonna be so accurate.

 

Hi , recently I got into trying out the new 2D Animation feature and I'd like to ask the more experienced fellas here on how they would resolve the 2 key issues I'm facing because I don't have the intuition or the knowledge to even understand what is possible and what is not, let alone how to achieve it.

My case: I have a samurai asset I've drawn in photoshop - it stands facing foward (left arm behind the body , right arm in front, same for the legs). The samurai has a sheath, with a sword on his front side.
I need to create 3 sets of animations:

1. standard movement animations (run jump etc) where the sword is tucked into the sheath and his hands are free - this is simple and already sorta done
2. set of attack animations where he holds the sword with both his hands - the sword is outside of the sheath
3. an animation for the pulling out the sword and pushing it back into it (with 1 hand)

so my first key issue is , how do i remove the sword from the sheath, and attach its' bone to the hand/ hands , then remove the attachment to the hand and return the attachment to the hip bone during animation? I feel like that's something to be done in the rigging phase but then I create problems for other animations.

second issue is that i want him to pull out the sword with 1 hand but then grab it with the second as well - so that requires multiple detaching and attaching of bones as far as i understand the issue, so it's more of the same (same can be said for the sheathing of the sword).

Lastly, I'd like some of his attacks to make him turn around himself - as in spin slash (around Y axis in 2D) , is there even a way for that? or do I need to create multiple sprites for him, facing different directions around the axis , rig each, and do a sprite swap for the whole character ? if so, why not just do a spritesheet to begin with?

Thanks to whoever answers

 

Hi, I will report that I managed to get along with the bug, which I reported here.
On the player, a GameObject "SpriteSkinManager" seems to be instantiated automatically, but is destroyed at scene unloading.
So, I put the object into DontDestroyOnLoad, and it worked!

The modified code:

Code (CSharp):

1.  
2. IEnumerator _()
3. {
4.     foreach (var obj in SceneManager.GetActiveScene().GetRootGameObjects())
5.     {
6.         if (obj.name == "SpriteSkinManager")
7.         {
8.             DontDestroyOnLoad(obj);
9.         }
10.     }
11.     yield return SceneManager.UnloadSceneAsync(1);
12.     yield return SceneManager.LoadSceneAsync(1, LoadSceneMode.Additive);
13.     SceneManager.SetActiveScene(SceneManager.GetSceneAt(1));
14. }
15.  

But, I'm not sure if this solution is safe.
I'm looking forward to official fix on this.

 

Thank you very much for the quick fix!

 

Already released version 4.1.1? How? Where? Maybe it's in alpha 2020?
-I have nothing like that in Unity 2019.3 in the package manager ... Only 3.1.1

 

I am having a problem with the animator getting stuck in certain spots. I have all my animation ran thru a semi state machine. The code is exicuting correctly and goes to the next state but the animation sticks untill unreleased the trigger button. So a little more specific what I am doing is 2d shooter and when you push ltrigger you aim up on either way you face and if you push rtrigger you aim down either way you face. All the others transition to the others properly when switch triggers except for one. And the state does got to the correct state and it does properly change the animation flags but a still sits in the previous animation untill you let go of both trigger buttons. Any ideas?

 

Hi!!! are the any plans to implement the 2d animation to work with UI images?

 

We would also love this, so hard to mix 2d and ui at the moment

 

Hi, our studio is still going with Spine over Unity animation due to the lack of FFD (Free-form Deformation)
Is that feature planned or are we stuck with exclusively bones in the nearest future?

 

UI Images = Rect Transform + Image Component
2D Sprites = Transform + Sprite Component

That's basically the difference....

 

Hiya!

I'd like to report a bug with the Sprite Resolver

I'm very eager to use the Sprite Resolver to change sprites during runtime. In the process of setting up such a system I encountered a bug/problem. The problem is as follows:

• I've set ut my animations in 2DAnimation. My player rotates, so when I'm walking up, the "Up-sprites" of my character are turned on. When I walk left the "Side-sprites" of my character are turned on and so on. That means that my sprites toggle off and on as the player moves in different directions. This is also true for the clothes my player wears, such as skirts and pants. They will have "SkirtSide" and "SkirtUp" etc. for instance that toggle off/on.
  
  
• The problem occurs for me when I try to swap sprites during runtime and the "Sprite Resolver" and "Sprite Library" on my 2Danimation-sprites behave oddly. It seems that the Sprite Library and the Sprite Resolver contents "disappear" during runtime sometimes. Their disappearance seem to be tied to when their gameObject is toggled off but I'm not sure. I've attached a video where you can see this happen in real time in my project:
  
  
  
  (hotlink to vid if preview-video in forum is low quality)
  
  
• In the video you see:

1. Each skirt-item has both a Sprite Library and Sprite Resolver.
2. During runtime, when their respective gameObjects are turned off, the Sprite Library & Sprite Resolver content dissappear
3. When I equip my skirt, not all turn to the holografic color of the item, some stay on the default white

When I'm equipping the skirt, I'm calling the function to change the sprite to a Holo-skirt on each skirt-gameObject via the SpriteResolvers "SetCategoryAndLabel(string, string)"-function. As you can see however, it didn't change it for all of them. I thought the script-disappearance-issue might have something to do with it as it seems that the SetCategoryAndLabel doesn't work when the SpriteResolver/Sprite Library have "dissappeared".

 

Thanks for your reply, sending you a PM now.
I'm unsure how to send the project practically, but we can work it out over PM I'm sure

 

Would be good if it worked with overlay and camera, forcing world is bad, it also breaks when you want to do any kind of sorting. Not really usable, it's just another hacky workaround.

 

Hi, I'm trying to use the 2D animation package and V2 seems different from V1's tutorials. I just got started and my first question is how to reparent bones. I can't make a skelleton like I normally would because the sprite pieces are scattered all over the sheet. I would need to link the bones to the sprites, put them all into place and change bone parenting so that the random bones spread around can be linked and work properly. In V1 there was the P hotkey. I tried all the keys I heard in the tutorial and none do anything. How do you do all this in V2?

 

I am using 2019.3.5f1 and one rather glaring bug I've noticed is that the Animation Preview and mecanim animation transition preview windows don't work with imported PSB rigs! This is a rather helpful feature.

 

I saw in the video announcement of Unity 2020 beta a new (for me) version of the 2d animation package - 4.1.1
But in 2019.3, the latest version is still 3.1.1

Can we find out what is new in 4.1.1 and will it be ported to Unity 2019?
- For almost the entire 2019 year, I used Unity 2019.2 , then .3, starting with almost the earliest alpha versions - in order to use this package. And to know about everything that is happening to him.

But now I don’t want to install a new Unity beta, just because of the updated version of the package.

And there is nowhere to see information about new versions of packages and their innovations, - the Package Manager "carefully" hides everything that is not compatible with the current version of Unity ...
Which in itself is simply wrong, in my opinion.