Spine vs Spriter

[Mr. Stimpson]

Has anyone used both software and compiled a list of pros and cons as it pertains to comparing the two products? I don't have any experience in animation, but I'm looking to pick one of these up for personal use. Because of the superb quality of animations in Freehold Games project Sproggiwood (using Spriter), and the work Derek Laufman has shown for his upcoming title Bullet Age (using Spine) I'm really up in the air about the two. What one has the most documentation floating around the web and do either of them have a helpful community (that's a loaded question)?

Thanks for your time in advance.

[CursedToast]

Hi Mr. Stimpson,

Great question and thanks for asking!

Obviously I'm going to be biased when I say I would pick Spriter.

For what it's worth, I was messing around with Spine when I decided to take the plunge on Spriter because of its much more attractive (and realistic/consumer friendly) price point. Within 4 hours of my purchase, I reached out to the team and within a couple of days I officially became involved. I was a paying customer not too long ago.

Spriter's price point is one of it's strongest legs it stands on. If you want the full feature set of Spine you're looking at $289.00. Spriter is $59.99 (full price) but currently is on sale for $47.99.

Many of the features the $289.00 version of Spine has Spriter has. Deformation, a feature Spine has, is currently experimental with Spriter and is actually the first thing being wrapped up very soon!

Spriter also has pixel art mode, which preserves every pixel if you're working with retro-styled art.

We also give away our free Essentials art packs which you can find out more about here:
http://steamcommunity.com/games/332360/announcements/detail/128678894409407713

Personally, I, and many other users, find Spriter a lot easier to get in and get stuff done. Spine has a steeper learning curve. That's fully of opinion of course.

Spriter does more than just bone animation. Spine seems to be based fully on bone animation, which is fine. It's a good piece of software, we won't bash it any day. Spriter offers being able to do animations just with sprite pieces, offers features like sound and lip-sync and there's a load of other cool features on the roadmap coming really soon.

Spriter had a slower 1.0 launch (which is how Spine was born), but now that 1.0 is out of the way (which has far more features than initially promised in our single Kickstarter campaign) we can focus on adding these new and exciting things and polishing things up.

One of the big things we're going to be working on soon is more official support for external engines as well.

Basically, over time, Spriter's going to evolve into more than what it is now. It's already more than just bone animation.

If there's any detailed questions you have, please let me know. You can ask me here on the forums, or you're welcome to add me on Steam. I'm more than happy to oblige.

Here's to hoping some other folks can pop in as well and leave their thoughts :)

Cheers,
Nathanial

[Matt [Linux]]

@Nathanial....

SOLD :)

Where are the Essential Art packs kept on Mac?? I cannot seem to find them :(

Great job on this software btw

What is your role exactly?

[CursedToast]

Hi amzzz,
I responded to your thread earlier. It turns out, for some reason the Mac update including the Essentials wasn't pushed live. I fixed that. Restart Steam and an update should install. They'll be in:
<Steam Installation Directory>/SteamApps/common/Spriter/Art Packs/Essentials

Cheers,
Nathanial

[Mr. Stimpson]

@Nathanial
First and foremost, thank you for you response. A couple more questions and I think I have enough information to go on.

> Is there a version of Spriter that doesn't use Steam for distribution, and is it updated as frequently as the Steam version?
> How well does Spriter interface with Unity3D? Is the mesh and animation data that's generated with Spriter compatible without the need of another piece of software to facilitate the transition?
> Does Spriter handle porting animations into sprite sheets?
> Is there any pertinent information someone who intends to use Spriter with Unity3Dnshould know about Spriter? Such as workflow concerns, compatibility issues, etc.

Sorry if these questions are all over the place. I'm a programmer first and artist three hundred and thirty seventh (learning all aspects of game development by yourself is so much fun...). Thanks again and good luck with your project.

[CursedToast]

Hi,
Yes, there is. As soon as there's an update of Spriter I push it live on Steam though. So, unlike some software on Steam, Spriter for Steam is going to be as up-to-date as the non-Steam version.

There's no animation data - yet. Spriter2Unity lets you drop an scml project into unity to convert it to a native Unity animation at the moment.

Could you clarify what you mean by "porting" animations into sprite sheets? It can certainly export any animations to sprite sheets.

Here's a thread with more information about Spriter2Unity and a good place to ask questions:
http://brashmonkey.com/forum/index.php?/topic/3365-spriter-for-unity-43-updated-integrated/

I understand what you mean about being a programmer first. I'm the same way. That's one reason I love Spriter :)

Cheers,
Nathanial

[Mr. Stimpson]

Export was the word I was looking for. And the rest of your post was the information I was looking for. Thanks for your time, Nathanial.

[Dark1ll3R]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Nathanial:

There's no animation data - yet. Spriter2Unity lets you drop an scml project into unity to convert it to a native Unity animation at the moment.

One of the main advantages of Spine is that you can make smooth animations with reduced file size, because you only use a picture for all the limbs at once rather than hundreds of frames.

If I'm not mistaken, you're saying Spriter allows for this too, only in a different format, right?

Also, Spine allows for different skins for the same character(For example, you can have interchangeable pieces of armor in your character, resulting in hundreds of combinations with a small file size), and I wonder how flexible Spriter is when it comes to this.

It is true that Spriter has a much more attractive price point for the features it provides, but I feel a lot of people use Spine due to the relatively easy integration with Unity.

[CursedToast]

Yeah, Spriter uses a very similar format. This reduces the memory usage over traditional sprite sheets by a LOT. Animations are also a lot more smooth.

And of course; you can reuse animation data to make completely new characters both in-engine and in Spriter itself.

Spriter has Spriter2Unity and now that 1.0 is out of the way we're able to put a lot of focus on working with engine developers to get official 1st party Spriter support.

[sri_the_creater]

I used Spriter for making some effects.

Spriter has various features. But free-form transformation have not available. It is necessary.

But without free-form transformation and/or skin weight. I can not make a smooth clothes animation. I still have to draw clothes frame by frame.

It okay if you make animation for a rigid body like robots, crabs, insects. But it is not good for animate a soft body.

http://steamcommunity.com/app/332360/discussions/0/530646715633092109/
I still wait for a free-form transformation.

Beside Spriter and Spine, There is the other one 2D animation tool for games production. It is Creature.
http://creature.kestrelmoon.com/purchase.html
It is a lot cheaper than Spine. You can use skin weight with only 99$.

[Matt [Linux]]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Nathanial:

Yeah, Spriter uses a very similar format. This reduces the memory usage over traditional sprite sheets by a LOT. Animations are also a lot more smooth.

And of course; you can reuse animation data to make completely new characters both in-engine and in Spriter itself.

Spriter has Spriter2Unity and now that 1.0 is out of the way we're able to put a lot of focus on working with engine developers to get official 1st party Spriter support.

could you do something for LibGDX?

I use LibGDX and would love to use the full features of Spriter.