Official Discontinuing Anima2D: Consider 2D Animation for skeletal animation in Unity

Tools/ideas to convert?

I'm working on a project where the company has invested years in creating animations done in Anima2d. Now, they want to update their development version to 2019 or 2020.

I'm very familiar with Unity's 2D system but only have little knowledge of Anima2D.

So, are there techniques, best practices, or tools to help convert from Anima2d to Unity's 2D?

 

Thank you for the reply, Ted!

Well I did a little test, where I brought the Anima2D examples into a 2020 project and when you run it some very strange anomalies happen to the Sprite images. Only at runtime.

I did a brief examination of the code and I can't figure out what's going on - yet.

As far as what would be nice for conversion I guess either 1) updated/fixed Anima2D source code that works with 2020 so you could have legacy anima2D working in side by side with unity, or better 2) a complete conversion system which would include the ability to read the positions of the bones and corresponding Sprite layout data from anima2D into Unity's system. I guess if I was going to do that I would need help from you as to where the data is kept for both Unity 2D and Anima2d. This would involve both systems editor scripts since that's where the conversion would be done - not at runtime. Yes?
I could probably code this with a little help from you.

 

Please make a convert tool, I have multiple characters with each multiple bone based animation using Anima2D...
(note: I did get the 1.1.8-b2 version but no specific instruction for migrating is given).
Also, I remember that in Unity Animation 2D, they were no support for sorting layer, is that fixed?

 

I am trying to follow the steps outlined above, but unfortunately there are too many details missing it seems. So far I have removed the old version of Anima2D (1.1.8) and replaced it with the 1.1.8b2 version linked above. I have installed the 2D animation package and I had the 2D sprite package installed already. My current Anima2D animations still work as expected, but now I have no clue as to how to convert these into 2D animation instead. I have tried re-importing one of my Sprite/SpriteMesh combinations but I still don't see my weights in the Skinning Editor. I'm seeing changes in the SpriteMesh file so I presume the automatic conversion of that file has worked.

I believe this step needs clarification: "You will have to manually upgrade the IK / Sprite Renderer / Sprite Skin from your prefabs." From what I have been able to guess the SpriteMeshInstance and SkinnedMeshRenderer need to be replaced with something the 2D Animation package. The documentation doesn't go into any detail on this, but my guess is that the SpriteSkin component replaces the SpriteMeshInstance and SpriteRenderer replaces the SkinnedMeshRenderer.

After replacing those two components and setting up their references to the sprite and bones the animation works, I can move the bones and my SpriteRenderer is updated accordingly. But at this point I'm even more confused, the new system appears to be working together with Anima2D since I'm still using the Bone2D class from Anima2D. I also still don't see weights or bones in the Skinning Editor, I need to use the Anima2D SpriteMesh Editor window still.

What are the remaining steps to migrate all my animations to the 2D Animation package @Sergi_Valls? I would like to get to a point where I can remove Anima2D and solely rely on the 2D Animation package.

Any information at all really. I think my post has clearly outlined the total lack of information on this topic, I've had to guess my way to most of my conclusions here and I still don't have a working conversion process that I can apply manually even.

 

As I suspected the data migration done by Anima2D 1.1.8b2 was working as expected. I was just not aware of the fact that you have to double click in the "Skinning Editor" in order to see the bones and weights. Once I did that I could see the weights and bones as expected.

Thanks a lot to @Sergi_Valls for taking the time to look at my issue directly!

For anyone visiting in the future the steps to migrate are as follows:
* Add the 2D animation package.
* Remove the current version of Anima2D
* Add the 1.1.8b2 version of Anima2D.
* Reimport all `SpriteMesh` assets. This will copy the bones and weights data into the sprites .meta file. Your data should now be compatible with the 2D Animation package.
* Open your sprites in the Sprite editor and switch to the Skinning editor using the dropdown in the top left corner.
* Double click inside the sprite area in order to confirm that your bones/weights are visible in the new system.

Now that the data is migrated you can update your prefabs as follows:
* Replace `SkinnedMeshRenderer` with `SpriteRenderer` and set the sprite reference.
* Replace `SpriteMeshInstance` components with `SpriteSkin` and set the Root bone reference.
* Remove `Bone2D` components.

 

Thank you all for this discussion.

@codegasm - Your remark about the double click in the Skinning Editor is priceless. Really appreciated! Also, your steps. Nice!

@Sergi_Valls and @Ted_Wilkman thank you for your continued input.

PS: I still think we [ well, you (Unity)?! ] could make a little automation script, if you desired.

 

i need anima2d somuch , i hate unity , 2018 till aboove ,somuch errorrs

 

Hey guys

We migrated from 2018.4.36f -> 2020.3.26f

We had some issues with assets and sprites, but after adding the newest anima2D linked in comments above those issues seems to have been solved.

Thanks for all of this info i got a question @Sergi_Valls .

Is using Anima2D an option for the old animations, since doing the migration above seems to break our implementation, and we would need to go through multiple years of work and rebind all of the iks and bones?

As far aas i can see on 2020.3 there is no option to go to asset database v1, so is using anima2d, the latest update, ok with 2020.3? We dont seem to have any issues after the anima2d update.

 

Thanks man, we will switch to unity 2d animations, and we will try to port all of our animations, we just dont have time to do it now.

 

Does anyone have any guides, tools or tips on how to quickly convert animations from Anima2D to the 2D Animation package? Worst case scenario is an animator (person) having two projects open and re-creating animations by eye but are there any shortcuts to make this easier?

 

Tried using 1.1.8b2 and had this error

Mesh.uv is out of bounds. The supplied array needs to be the same size as the Mesh.vertices array.

UnityEngine.Mesh:set_uv (UnityEngine.Vector2[])

SkinnedMeshCombiner:Start () (at Assets/Anima2D/Examples/Scripts/SkinnedMeshCombiner.cs:110)

This happens when I load a sprite that is used for Anima2D SpriteMesh from asset bundle. The sprite is in Multiple Sprite Mode. However, it works fine when it references the sprite via Serialized Field in Monobehavior. How can we fix this?

Updated:
Found out the root cause. I'm using asset bundle variants with 1x and 2x variants (1x is regular image, 2x is higher resolution image). Currently my SpriteMesh is referencing at 1x variant sprite. Hence, Anima2D only updated the 1x sprite metadata. However, pointing it to larger sprite size (e.g. 2x variant) in existing SpriteMesh seems to break the uv mapping. My only option left is reverting this code

Code (CSharp):

1. mesh.uv = spriteMeshInstance.spriteMesh.sprite.uv;

to the older version

Code (CSharp):

1. mesh.uv = spriteMeshInstance.spriteMesh.sharedMesh.uv;

in SkinnedMeshCombiner class. Is it safe to do so?

 

Hi guys,

as I bought a new M1 Macbook and have to switch from Unity 2019 to 2021, Anima 2D isn't supported anymore. I'm willing to change to the new system, but I need to know, if I can put on a similar system to the Sprite Mesh Animations, and if there are probably some examples on how to achieve this.

My System works so that the user buys a full character-skin in the shop. Every character has an internal number from 0-41 (42 different skins). Every skin consists of 5 Parts (head, body, upper arm left, upper arm right, lower arm left, lower arm right). After the user bought the skin, he can now combine every skin he owns with each other, means he can take the head from Skin1, body from Skin 2, arms from other skins and so on. I don't have like "sub skins" from a character, I just have full skins that are all combinable with each other.

My old system worked so that I have a Sprite Mesh for every body part and just change the AnimationNumber in the Sprite Mesh Animation. How will I achieve the same with the new Animation system?

Also: I have two sprite atlases 2x4096 x 4096 (20 skins in one atlas, 22 skins in the second one). In Animat2D I had the problem, that every skin will take 5 draw calls for each body-part, no matter if the skin-sprites were in an atlas before or not. Has that changed with the new system? Cuz in the worst part, it would cost only two drawcalls, since one part can be in the first atlas and the second one in the second (just an example).

Hope to read your answers soon, thank you guys!

 

I'm just curious what is the relationship between buying a new macbook and Unity versions? Does last version of Unity that supports Anima2D not run on your Mac? Or did you just not think to look in the downloads archive for that version? https://unity3d.com/get-unity/download/archive

 

M1 Mac has a novel CPU based on ARM architecture (as opposed to x86-64 ie Intel and AMD). Since it's a new thing (for Desktop at least), only newer Unity versions support it which I assume is the problem in this case.

 

Yes, it's exactly how @PanthenEye says, Unity 2019 isn't supported on the new M1-Macs, Silicon Versions start with Unity 2021 I think. And Anima2d, which I have used since I started making my game for animation, also isn't supported on any higher Unity Version then 2019.4. So I have to redo all animations + everything that was related to code for swapping sprites :/. Also I don't know what will happen, when I switch to Unity 2021, how much redoing all the other stuff will cost time-wise, I'm totally desperate and it's really stressful, I'm wasting half of my time since the 5 years of development in just updating stuff that isn't supported anymore.

 

Well, this is part of game dev. Tech advances and changes so much even in "just" 5 years. Some would say you need to work faster But if you are a solo dev, I get it.

We have a game "frozen" to 2018.4 for exactly the same reasons you do (Anima2D). It's been released for over a year though. We won't be ditching any dev hardware that supports 2018.4 until we consider that game dead and unsupported.

NOTE: Have you tried running your project version of Unity with Rosetta? https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT211861

 

Anima2D working with Unity 2020/2021?:
Anima2D is working for us with the latest Unity 2020.3 LTS and I think we also did a test with 2021 and it was working as well. We might have modified the code slightly to get it to work with newer APIs, I can't recall it's been a while since we upgraded from 2018 LTS. We're running both M1 (2021) and Intel (2020) versions of Unity.

Regarding the conversion and upgrade to 2D Animation:
Whenever an Anima Bone2D component exists in the character's object hierarchy, it will corrupt the display of all the bones in the new 2D Animation system. All bones, even those in a different Sprite Skin child will need to be deleted.

When Bone2D component exists (left) and once deleted (right):

 

OH? I am very intrigued by how you made it stay functional

 

I don't think I did much to get it working. What issues are you having with it when you upgrade? Make sure you are using the latest version of Anima2D before upgrading to Unity 2020.

 

Are there any plans to bring the remaining features of Anima2d into 2d animation? Spring bones and mesh renderers in particular.

 

SpringBones was not really part of Anima2D, but was an example script. It shouldn't be too hard to port that script to the 2D animation System, you can just make it act on the Sprite Skin and Transform instead of being dependent on Bone2D components. Another way to do it would be to use Unity's 2D physics system (using joints and RigidBody2D).

Not sure what you mean by Mesh Renderers, the 2D animation system uses the SpriteRenderer component now and the mesh data is stored in the Sprite meta files. Anima2D version 1.1.8b2 will automatically convert the old mesh/bone data to this new meta-based format.

 

Doing the conversion was pretty trivial(and that's in fact what I did) but it seems silly that there is no included solution for such a basic feature. I figured that the original script's being off of a defunct Japanese blog was why it wasn't distributed anymore, but is a strange thing not to have.

Also, unity's 2d physics doesn't work well at all with animation.

I know that. This isn't always ideal, though; being able to use a proper skinned mesh renderer is useful. There are a lot of tools that work with skinned mesh renderers that don't work with sprites.

 

This is, in particular, using 2d physics joints to add secondary motion to 2d rigged characters. 2d physics works just fine in general, but I've had a devil of a time with attaching joints to animated characters, even when the actual attached bodies had no keyframes(the usual caveat for attaching joints to 3d bodies). Joints disconnecting or vibrating before going flying, etc. I'm sure that there is a way to do it, but I found it easier to use faked physics for that type of interaction as a general rule.

Well, there are a LOT of tools that work with skinned meshes that do not work with skinned sprites- from unity's own preview window to stuff like blendshapes, the Deform library, unity cloth, and importing/exporting with software outside of unity. The sprite meshes just aren't really compatible with anything- including most of unity's own tools, and they are also more difficult to manipulate via script(though a lot of that is the documentation perhaps).

 

I don't know if it would even count as 'bugs' because I am not sure what the 'correct' behavior really is- just that even with interpolation on the physics objects the results are very loose at best and very vibrate-y at worst.

Very quick example with some hinge jointed rigidbidies(which work just fine attached to a moving object that isn't attached to an animator)

Like I said, bug might be the wrong word, but it doesn't work terribly well. A basic spring bone setup(either the anima2d one or any of several other methods that don't use built-in physics) often takes a lot less work to set up and works better for 2d. Of course, by the same token full physics simulation is often not needed, either. In fact, unless the secondary motion needs to react to gameplay I usually bake it to animation anyway(and unity physics2d also can react strangely to being recorded using the unity recorder.)

These are all important, for sure, and I think that several of those should even be listed more prominently.

 

I know- that's why I said it isn't a bug, but rather that the systems don't work well together(and I'm also not saying that they should)- I was initially replying to @tessellation above where they suggested using the 2d physics system for secondary motion on a 2d character, and was explaining why I don't do that and why simple approximated physics like springbones are useful.

(Though I have been told that the 3d physics system handles similar setups much better.)

The example I showed was using a kinematic rigidbody as the connected body.

 

@PBKitty
Sometimes animators (the people) create keyframes for things that are just redundant and unnecessary (eg: objects that aren't even being animated). For example they select everything and then click the "create keyframe" button that makes initial keyframes for all the selected objects. So then you have Animation fighting to control the same object as the physics. Deleting such redundant keyframes might be the solution to what you describe.

 

Who is the 'they' you are talking about? I am the animator for the example I showed, and the animation was not created the way you describe. In particular, the object that is used to attach the dynamic rigidbodies is kinematic and has no keyframes on it at all. If there were, it would be very obvious, because the attached bodies would be completely freaking out rather than just slightly freaking out.

That seems really out of the blue to just say 'you are animating badly and that is causing your problems.'

Most of the time when you see animations with absurd keyframes like you describe that is either from importing animations, baking dynamics, or following a very bad tutorial. Still, those are still valid animations and certainly no worse than you'll see in 3d animation or especially motion capture.

Even if you were correct, that would still not change that the 2d physics system isn't working well with the animation system.

But you are incorrect.

 

@PBKitty yeah, I'm not looking for a fight. If the setup I described doesn't apply to you, then it doesn't apply to you. It may still be helpful bit of info for someone else happening onto this thread. Have good day.

 

That's good to know; like I said I mostly use 2d so was going off of what others have said there.

My example was using a kinematic body(with interpolation).

Anyway, all I was saying is that a simplified system like spring bones(damped oscillators), verlet solvers, etc. work better in a scenario like this, and that isn't necessarily an unexpected thing. Obviously it would be nice if you could just attach joints willy nilly to an animated object and have it work without difficulties, but I very rarely need the full power of the physics system anyway if all I want is a bit of jiggle.

 

So you're... agreeing with me, right...?

 

Thanks for the detailed steps! But it seems Anima2D is removed everywhere, I can't find it to download. Would be great if you can reupload this version. Thanks a lot!

 

I don't know if you guys are using Unity IAP, but with Google Billing V4 you can't use Unity 2019 anymore. So still investing time into Anima2d (if having a mobile-store with Android on it) is for nothing.

 

Okay, I must call back what I've said. When I had to update to Unity 2019, I had to change some lines of code - I don't know anymore which lines it was, but somehow, everything works as usual on Unity 2021? How can this be? I mean my whole animations are still working normal?

 

Is there any way we could DIFF your Anima classes against mine? Please DM me.