affinity designer Another mean Snail bot ( with timelapse )

[Freid]

Hi,

Another little character using AD, frankentoon, Blender and Spine. I think it needs some shadow on the top of the tank-track.

PS ( I added a timelapse a few posts lower

 

 

[Freid]

Maybe a shadow like that :

[retrograde]

Ouch!

[jer]

Another terrific version. So mesmerizing to watch the animation: rocking motion, pointy things, lights flashing, tank treads (love the loco-motion on them, by the way!) Nice color diffusion around the lights too.

FUN STUFF! I can just hear the clank-clank-clank!

[Freid]

Thank you guys

[jer]

Fried, you have raised my interest in Spine and I see on their web site they have a basic (Essential) version for $69 and a trial. I'm a hobbyist so I disregard the Pro version for $299.

Could you please let me know if the Essential-basic version allows what you have demonstrated here with your snail robots? I think you can't save your results in the Trial version.

What format do you output from Affinity Designer for best input to Spine?

Any tricks in going from AD to Spine that you know, or gotchas?

Thanks.

[Freid]

Jer,

For that particular animation the essential version would be enough. But we bough the pro version because we wanted to deform stufff :  this feature is what they call meshes deformation. You can do that (deform 'pictures' with bones). I find Spine a bit pricey. But its a nice software, it works.

 

Spine is different than many other animation tools because it can export dynamic animations and characters (or whatever you want to anim) to several  game engines, which means no need to pre render animations, the game engine will display, start or stop animations when needed. You can find different applications which can do the same kind of dynamic animations : dragon bones, creature...

You can also do those kind of animations and prerender it with for example anime studio  or even with a 3D app like Blender. Though the rigging would be often a bit more difficult in a 3D app.

There is also a very handy addon for blender that will bring you freely all (or most) to the animations/export features of spine. (see the video)

If you're a hobbyist, learn blender, you will be able to animate almost anything, its powerful and free. But you have to learn

Voila

Ah and i used pngs part to export from AD.

Il will really soon another timelapse video to show the whole process (affinity + Spine).

 

 

[jer]

Freid, that is amazing! Thanks for such a helpful and thorough reply. Blender - free- is a great tip for starting out.

[GarryP]

jer, this isn't my area at all but have you seen Synfig? https://www.synfig.org/
It's free and open source and might be easier to learn than Blender.

[Freid]

yup, forgot this one

 

[Freid]

And voila a timelapse :

 

[Scungio]

Freid, 

 

In watching your video I did not catch the export out of Affinity Designer. I remember some time ago, I think the 1.5 beta that Serif had put in an export option for Spine? Is that what you use? I was curious how well that cuts down on set up time.

[Freid]

Oh ! Thank you Scungio, you made me learn a feature

I didnt know that export :

https://bigbad.xyz/blog/creating-spine-animations-with-affinity-designer

 

My characters were simple, so i did a manual slice exportations, but that export option would be quite handy, I knew the spine photoshop script, and i'm quite happy to see that option in AD (and even AP). i will test it as soon as i can / need. 

 

 

[Scungio]

Glad you found it Freid. I could not figure out where the spine export option was either until I stumbled upon that Big Bad Studio blog post. That continuous export option and being able to make changes in Designer and update in realtime in Spine seems like an awesome workflow. I primarily use Moho and Harmony but am interested in adding Spine soon.

 

 

[tro]

On 02/08/2017 at 2:00 PM, jer said:

Fried, you have raised my interest in Spine and I see on their web site they have a basic (Essential) version for $69 and a trial. I'm a hobbyist so I disregard the Pro version for $299.

Could you please let me know if the Essential-basic version allows what you have demonstrated here with your snail robots? I think you can't save your results in the Trial version.

What format do you output from Affinity Designer for best input to Spine?

Any tricks in going from AD to Spine that you know, or gotchas?

Thanks.

There's a free alternative to it, it's called Dragon Bones, it used to be a flash plugin and now it's a standalone software.

 

http://dragonbones.com/en/index.html

[jer]

1 hour ago, tro said:

There's a free alternative to it, it's called Dragon Bones, it used to be a flash plugin and now it's a standalone software.

 

http://dragonbones.com/en/index.html

Tro, thanks for the link. Dragon Bones looks interesting too and they seem to have a good beginner-learner assist.

[retrograde]

Nice to see another blender head in the forums, cool video and workflow. I have Dragonbones as well and it does look promising, haven't use it yet though...

[tro]

On 09/08/2017 at 0:06 PM, jer said:

Tro, thanks for the link. Dragon Bones looks interesting too and they seem to have a good beginner-learner assist.

You're welcome, buddy! I'm glad I could help.