Official 2D Animation Preview Packages

holy crap, this is great news.

 

The thread is about 2D animation, does that mean that we could imagine at some point it will be compatible with the future WIP SVG feature ? Because SVG is 2D too ;-)

 

When downloading a project with sprites using bones, the gameobjects lose reference to the gameobject until I go back into the bone editor, nudge it a bit, and then re-save for the references to the bones to return.

 

Why the package is missing at Unity 2018.1.0f1 and Unity 2018.2.0b2?

 

I would also be interested in knowing this. I have to guess it will be eventually.

 

Not work with AssetBundle After loading I get error:

InvalidOperationException: Invalid BoneWeight array length
UnityEngine.Experimental.U2D.Animation.SpriteSkinUtility.Deform (Unity.Collections.NativeSlice`1[T] inputVertices, Unity.Collections.NativeArray`1[T] boneWeights, UnityEngine.Matrix4x4 worldToLocalMatrix, Unity.Collections.NativeArray`1[T] bindPoses, Unity.Collections.NativeArray`1[T] transformMatrices, Unity.Collections.NativeArray`1[T] outputVertices) (at C:/Users/fciz/AppData/Local/Unity/cache/packages/staging-packages.unity.com/com.unity.2d.animation@1.0.15-preview/Runtime/SpriteSkinUtility.cs:198)
UnityEngine.Experimental.U2D.Animation.SpriteSkin.LateUpdate () (at C:/Users/fciz/AppData/Local/Unity/cache/packages/staging-packages.unity.com/com.unity.2d.animation@1.0.15-preview/Runtime/SpriteSkin.cs:206)

 

@optimise, make sure to follow the readme file. It says to manually set the manifest json, in the /packages folder. Check it here https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/2d-animation-samples
I noticed the same thing though; the package was missing from the visual aid...


Also, as for feedback, I'd really like to know of a way to tie the weights to render order. For example.. If you have a simple humanoid walking to the left or right, one arm will appear "behind" the main body, but that arm will be different based on the walk direction, Is there a good way to solve this render-order challenge?

 

This is the best example I have seen so far of how 2D Animation tool can be done. It combines the power of Spine & Live2D and probably beyond.

 

Looks awesome. Major improvement from your previous attempt. Nice!

 

Any ETA when these animation tools will be official? I am just about to start a new project and would love to use them!

 

I think it's still far from completion in terms of workflow and features.

 

I did a first tutorial on the skeletal animation process so far.
Your constructive feedback is appreciated.

 

I was really excited when 2018.1 came out with the package. I tired it out and the workflow is somewhat similar to Anima2D.
Currently I am in game development and we hit a dilemma between choosing Anima2D, the new animation package, or Spine2D for our character animation. I just need some advice when it comes to choosing between these three options since the game is starting off at an early stage and I don't want to switch from one option to another during the development phase.
I know one real advantage of Spine2D is that you can port the animation to other game engines (as long there is runtime support for it) where as Anima2D and the package are both limited to Unity. I didn't want to use Spine not because of the license fee for the pro but because the additional overhead with coding custom scripts to make Spine animations work in Unity.
On the other hand, Anima2D and 2D Animation are both integrated with the Unity Animation system, which I am in favor of, but I realize they are not exactly interchangeable (bones/mesh in sprite editor vs bones/mesh in editor view). I would prefer the sprite editor over the editor view but then the bones made in the Hierarchy has to be redefined in the sprite editor (unlike Anima2D). There should be a feature that generates bones in the sprite editor when the skinned sprites are linked to root bone (a reverse of generating bones).
So the dilemma is that, should I stick to an outdated Anima2D (no future support) or the new 2D animation package (possibly better future support for updates and features) for my character animation? If all else fail, I am going for Spine2D as a last resort.

 

An another possible advantage with Anima2D/Unity's as opposed to Spine is that it should be possible to use only some sprites packed in Unity's system as an animation, saving draw calls.

In Spine you have to pack all textures used for a particular rig together. Usually you can achieve a very good 1 draw call, but if that character has been sanwiched in other Unity sprites that is on an another sprite sheet it can't batch the call together. For example you might have 2 characters in the same sprite where in Spine it would be a separated project and packed into a different sheet.

 

Hello guys,

It's a little off topic but the 2D animation package is out of the Development road map,
we need to be worried or be happy about it?

 

Same concern here. Can't help but worry that this is quietly being side-lined like so many other features previously. Looks like the repo hasn't had an update in over 40 days: https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/2d-animation-samples/commits/master

This is particularly surprising since it was one of the main features advertised in the 2018.1 release:
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2018/05/02/2018-1-is-now-available/#2danimation

The real issue is that Unity has already stated that Anima2D will be phased out, so it doesn't seem wise for me to start using it on my new project. This all makes it hard to tell what Unity recommends 2D games to be using for animation at this point.

 

You can try out Unity Sprites and Bones, I am working on a new version that can be updated from the old one with some nice new features. I plan on releasing it soon under a new name and will be open source just as Unity Sprites and Bones is. My plan is once the new animation system Unity is rolling out is mature enough, I can create some conversion system over to the native system. Right now though everything I need for 2D animation (outside of onion skinning) is in this set of tools, so you can try it out if you like. It's been in development for over 4 years and I have shared my contributions for it openly, I just like making tools available for other devs to make great games with. So if you want something that works with Unity natively, has skinning, bones, FFD, custom mesh creation and is free this would be it for now. I know ColossalPaul and Sergi_Valls are working hard at making these tools great, but it may be a while before they are production ready.

If you need a game done soon, or in the near future, use tools that are out there that have been tried and tested in the wild with the features you need. If you are testing to see if this set of tools Unity is developing is right for a future project, or want to contribute to the creation of set of tools by providing feedback, then keep posting here to let them know what you want. It's a good way to see Unity drive forward with the tools they are making since it shows interest.

 

The new input system and nested prefabs, to name a few.

Gotcha, my mistake. I'd assumed this was more like the Post Processing and SRP repos etc.

Good to know!

 

Sounds cool, I'll check it out!

 

Hi @ColossalPaul, I want to ask how much progress has been done for this 2D animation package internally? Does the package slowly become like the example at post #59 or it is still long way to go? https://forum.unity.com/threads/2d-animation-preview-packages.521778/page-2#post-3486936

 

@ColossalPaul, thanks for replying.
1) In short what I really want to see this 2D Animation package happening is it will have the ability of Spine + Live2D. With the same tool, I can easily create and tweak both 2D Portrait animation and usual 2D animation. After creating animation, u can define and set parameter for each part that u want to animate. Then u use the parameter to create fixed animation or call it from code to do dynamic animation. See: a) http://tiny.cc/afzzty b) http://tiny.cc/tgzzty c) http://tiny.cc/eizzty

Anyway looking forward the next big update of the package.

2) Have you guys start working on converting 2D Animation package code to ECS and Job system?

 

Considering you are not making money on it and releasing it open source, and later you want to create some conversion system for easier migration anyway, what about joining forces with Unity 2D Animation team, and helping them to make integrated tool even better? Would be nice if there were more people involved so the project can progress faster.

 

Let's just say I am not out of the loop I have my own projects that use my own tool as well, so I am focused on getting that working solid first, but I'm here when they need me. At the end of the code clean up, and just testing now with my animations and my animator friend that is helping out. Once it passes the bug tests I'll release. Shouldn't be long now.

 

Can't wait to check it out!

 

This looks promising, but it really sucks that anima2d is no longer being improved upon.

Been using Spine primarily and then went to anima2d..

Will keep an eye on 2d animation, but am afraid to jump on board until it's more stable. BTW is that the official name for it?

 

I know how developers feel when some unknown dude asks about ETA for something, but i need to ask because i am sitting right at the start of a huge production pipeline for a project, is there any ETA for multi sprite support? because if not, i have to get puppet2D or try any other software like spriter or spine for doing the animations and i prefer to use internal tools if i can get them without spending more money than needed.
thanks for your understanding

 

It's maybe a little janky, but I've been combining my sprites into as few new sprites as possible, then animating those and combining them with timeline. I'm hoping/expecting that will transition well to the phase 2 multi-sprite support. Puppet is probably a better option except for the facts that a) it will hopefully be supplanted by this new stuff and b) it assumes bipedal and I didn't see any obvious or non-obvious way to do anything else with it. Spriter (my primary animation tool since it was in beta) is only useful for doing spritesheets or, if you're adventurous, animations using the spriter-unity plugin, which isn't a Playabe, so you'd have to write the code for that if you wanted to use it with Timeline.

 

the problem in my case, is that i am sitting at the very first days of starting the production pipeline and at the end of the R&D period for game with so many levels, so the moment i start something, i have to go till the end as i am.
for spriter, well, i used their importer, it actually puts keyframes into animation editor. i'm not gonna use time line for this project. for puppet 2d, oh well, i may have only few non bipedals and that can be done in spriter.
the reason i asked is that if this project would come into multi sprite handling soon, then i let go of using puppet2d

 

I'm loving the implementation so far.

I've used Maya and Spine to make a lot of titles. If you can make something with Spine's skin and sprite switching simplicity, but with Maya's Graph editor, all wrapped up in Unity I will be a very happy animator. Spine falls down badly on it's lack of curve editing, which Maya excels at.

I'm not sure if this has been mentioned yet, but in the Bone Editor, can you either add some custom brush presets, or make it remember the last used values. I'm refining vertex positions and their weights, moving back and forth between the test animated mesh and the bones editor and every time I want to paint a weight the brush resets to size 25, hardness 1 and step 20. Its getting frustrating fast

To be clear here, the workflow that I would like is to be able to scrub my test animation and adjust my weights and/or vertices, without the Bones Editor resetting every time I hit Apply on my changes. Its a workflow that relies on small, incremental tweaks to get just the result that I want.

 

Hi,

Feedback from one of our artists who has looked into the tool:

The workflow that I need is to be able to scrub my test animation and adjust my weights and/or vertices on the fly, without the Bones Editor resetting every time I hit Apply. Its a workflow that relies on small, incremental tweaks to get just the result that I want. I'm refining vertex positions and their weights, moving back and forth between the test animated mesh and the bones editor and every time I want to paint a weight the brush resets to size 25, hardness 1 and step 20.


It would help to add some custom brush presets.

Painting weights in the Scene view would be an ideal workflow, so that its not necessary to use a separate editor. Maya's Paint Skin Weights is a good example.

The ngSkinTools plugin is a great example of how to use layers to make complex weighting more manageable.

When I select a bone in the hierarchy, it should highlight it's channel in the Animation window. Its currently necessary to scroll through many, similarly named nodes to find the one that you need.

 

Not sure where to post or submit bugs to this package but here it goes:
- Adding a different material when we have a gameobject with Sprite Skin, results in immediate crash. (I was trying to use a Sprite Diffuse material)
- Making a prefab of something with Sprite Skin doesn't work, when placing the prefab in the scene, the component lost all its bones references.

Let me know if you need extra info.

Cheers,
Artur

 

This tool is a big help, loving the sprite deformation. Thank you for this.

Will it be possible to set the bones and animations at runtime from a JSON file?
My goal is to release game levels without users needing to update the app.

 

Can you please work with the vector graphics team on releasing a public triangulator package? Pretty please? There are so many internal, editor-only or otherwise inaccessible triangulators in unity now: your TriangleNet, LibTessDotNet in the vector graphics package, the one used for sprites, and I bet 2d colliders use another one. I would kill for an official public triangulator in Unity.

Also there is an extra point and some weird code in CommonDrawingUtility.DrawBox:

Code (CSharp):

1. public static void DrawBox(Rect position)
2. {
3.     Vector3[] points = new Vector3[5]; //<==
4.     int i = 0; // What's this?
5.     points[i++] = new Vector3(position.xMin, position.yMin, 0f);
6.     points[i++] = new Vector3(position.xMax, position.yMin, 0f);
7.     points[i++] = new Vector3(position.xMax, position.yMax, 0f);
8.     points[i++] = new Vector3(position.xMin, position.yMax, 0f);
9.  
10.     DrawLine(points[0], points[1]);
11.     DrawLine(points[1], points[2]);
12.     DrawLine(points[2], points[3]);
13.     DrawLine(points[3], points[0]);
14. }

 

I've made little tool that copy-pastes skin data, making sprite switching easy:

SpriteSkin Extensions Github


Btw It took me some time to realize that I had to run ISpriteEditorDataProvider.InitSpriteEditorDataProvider as for ex. SetBones threw NullPointerException inside private method that I couldn't debug in Unity. Better exception would be nice there if those apis survive Phase 1.

 

Speaking of APIs, it's only a matter of time someone creates a Spine > Unity workflow that uses this feature.

 

Hi guys,

I have stress test sample in the scene plunkahIKAnimate.
I have try this because in my iso game, I want have an army scale of 5000 units which works when I use spritesheet.
So I have create 1000 plunkahG with ECS package installed and rawly run it.

Result : 706ms passed in SpriteSkin.LateUpdate and 2 MB alloc each frame,1000 drawcalls. and unity job are not continued at all.

So, do you have plans to optimize this feature ( with full ECS maybe ? ) or that not at all for me ?
Thanks

 

After upgrading to 2018.2 I get consistent crashes by simply clicking 'Create Bones'. Is there something I can do or should I just wait for a fix?

 

Looks great !! I have been using SPINE and Flash software's for animations in my game. They are pretty smooth and lite. Can't wait to use new Unity Animation tools

 

Check out this one also

 

Hey everyone, just wanted to share some stuff I have been trying out recently with the animation package.

Instead of creating animations, I decided on creating a game tool that allows one to deform character body shapes in real time. Example as such:

I made this in just one afternoon after discussing with a team member on "same face syndrome".

I got more stuff made using the package but those are under NDA and so far its been going great using the animation package.

One thing I notice is that the latest package (1.0.16-preview) doesn't allow me to create individual 2D bones manually and is reliant on the sprite skin for the bone auto generation. Is there a reason this was removed because during 1.015, I was creating bones and aligning them nicely in scene.

 

Awesome to read about the creation of such a helpful native animation tool!
I've been animating in Maya, 3ds Max and Spine, and already saw some great suggestions in this thread which immediately popped into my head. But hopefully I can add some useful suggestions of my own:

1. Animatable FK/IK switching
2. Onion skinning/ghosting. It would be amazing if you could make a 'snapshot' at a certain frame. This way you could create ghosts at specific frames when blocking in your key poses.
3. Selection Sets, it just speeds up the workflow when you can select a bunch of bones in one go. I find the drop-down menu utilized by 3ds max very intuitive
   
   
4. Motion path animation
5. LookAt/Aim constraint
6. Clipping/Masking
   
   
7. In Spine there's this Compensate feature where you can adjust a bone without affecting its children bones or sprite, when it's active. This is nice when wanting to tweak the position of one specific bone.
8. Something similar to 3ds Max's Weight Tool, as an alternative to weight painting
   
   
9. Animatable color overlay & alpha. So you can for example animate a quick red flash when a character gets hit or have a character blink in transparency when it's recovering.
10. Tinting & blend modes. In Spine "Tint Black" enables tinting dark colors separately from the light colors. This allows for effects such as the Super Mario invincibility star flashing, a solid color silhouette, inverted colors, and more. Additional effects can be achieved when using additive, screen, or multiply blend modes.
    
    
11. IK flipping. In Spine I had a hard time flipping a character (using a negative scale), when the rig was set-up with IK legs. As you can see in the image below the feet kept facing the other direction. Haven't had a chance yet to thoroughly test, but hope this won't also be an issue with your system.