2D Animation Services for Game Developers

Spine vs After Effects - How Game Animation is Made?

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Our studio creates 2D Spine Animation and After Effects animation including 2D cinematics, cut-scenes, trailers and high-quality in-game animation. Spine and After Effects are animation workstations that animators use on industry-level projects. They’re often the leading technologies in developing games for their decisive tools, providing highly detailed motions. You can create game animations by implementing character and asset art into workstations such as Spine and After Effects and combining tools to delineate movements and angle shifts. Alternatively, you can employ frame-by-frame techniques to assemble animations. Let’s dive a bit deeper into the concept of animating with the software mentioned above.

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What is Spine Animation?

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Spine is an animation software that focuses on enabling creators to make 2D skeletal motions for video games. More precisely, the software allows a user to assign a body frame to any drawing; with Spine’s technology and AI work, the drawing’s body structure can move and change angles without needing additional frames. Many creators favor Spine for its straightforward controls and interface. The software’s light load towards the CPU is valuable for indie game developers since it can work fine on less-demanding computers. The software works by “moving” already-drawn entities. The motion occurs by distorting and compensating a drawing, generating different angles, stretches, and drawings with high fidelity.

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The Main Benefits of Spine Animation

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Spine has a good variety of tools focused on enhancing workflow. Most artists, even ones with modest experience in animating, can craft attractive motions to a fair degree with Spine. For instance, it’s highly achievable to create good-looking walk cycles by following Spine’s guided workflow. Since Spine uses skeletal animations instead of sprite sheets, it ends up generating smooth motions. The software combines regular updates and valuable features like skinning and mesh deformations. Additionally, Spine’s fluidity and intuitiveness enable users to quickly swap images per bone and keyable draw order. The software’s multiple skins provide artists with a vast array of appearances for NPCs, disregarding the need for too many animation files.

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The developers of Spine included a library of runtimes, resulting in a swift workflow for Unity and 2D Toolkit, a sprite system. In Spine, you can mix animations with a smooth crossfade. The software allows for multi-animated motions. For instance, you can set a movement where the character can jump and attack simultaneously. The switch from one animation to another always results in a swift and smooth transition. When working on the game’s code, you can use Spine’s procedural animation. For example, you can try coding for specific features, such as the character looking toward the mouse cursor’s direction.

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Where to Use Spine in Game Development

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If you plan on using Spine during your game development, ensure that all the art is ready. Since Spine builds a type of “skeleton” around characters, it needs assets such as arms, legs, hands, and head to work. Therefore, it’ll only work on fully-articulated products. It’s also vital that you develop in-game characters to have a skeletal hierarchy. So, plan the skeleton before investing in the character’s features. In Spine, you can implement each separate body part in a specific slot, considering the ideal bone. The software’s animation works rather smoothly; you’ll be able to set entire packs of actions with a few tweaks and pulls. Spine’s workflow makes it versatile.  The way it operates towards animation makes it highly suitable for in-game articulations, which are the movements while in the gameplay. Nevertheless, this doesn’t exclude Spine’s usefulness for cutscenes and trailers. Although helpful in making 2D motions for cutscenes and trailers, Spine’s most significant advantages lie in the gameplay.

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Spine Animation Essentials

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Spine specializes in skeleton animation. Therefore, the software offers an overwhelming tool library to automate articulations and general motions on 2D characters. When comparing Spine to classic animation, one can notice how the software in question introduces valuable shortcuts to a project. Spine improves the workflow by only requiring a few adjustments and pulls on the joints of a character. In this sense, you’ll be able to quickly make a walking animation by dragging and dropping a character’s articulations with the software. In addition, Spine excludes the need for page-by-page animation, whereas traditional animation requires different images for each frame.

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For example, the software’s “Paths” technology allows users to define motions using Bézier splines while assigning bones to track them. As a result, you can control various bones intuitively, making intricate motion a lot easier. Consequently, you won’t have to store too many assets and drawings while using Spine, which frees up some storage. Additionally, without the need for too many artistic investments, Spine allows game developers to save time and money, which can be applied elsewhere during the game’s development.

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In addition, Spine considers the bones’ and articulations’ arrangement through interpolation. Therefore, it’s unlikely to see unnatural movements such as leg breaks, etc. The resulting animation is always excitingly smooth and can feature slow or fast motions without quality loss. The software’s Free-Form Deformation technology allows users to deform any image by moving individual mesh vertices. Consequentially, you can stretch, bend, and bounce assets with more options than you would by using rectangular images. As a result, Spine offers a more straightforward way of animating characters in a game. It’s easier to learn and quicker to use. As with any Software, it takes a few sessions to get used to the program’s tools and line of work. Nevertheless, Spine is far from featuring rudimentary processes and can be used in modern 2D game development.

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Spine and Adobe After Effects’ Relationship in Game Development

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Spine and After Effects aren’t necessarily co-dependent; still, they match up pretty nicely when combined. Spine allows to animate any 2D object with precision. In this sense, you can have a funky-looking chest opening itself to reveal a reward only by assigning bones to it through the software’s tools. However, although you’ve drawn a funky-looking chest and used Spine to make it perform a fun motion, the entire scene might appear dry. The animation hits the spot, but it’s still not quite complete. Exporting the animation to After Effects is an efficient way to set the final details on the scene and complete the animation. After Effects have unique features that allow you to add animated elements to a scene. For instance, in the funky chest situation above, you’ll be able to add sprinkly light coming from the chest’s interior. Moreover, you can add flashy lights surrounding its golden details. As a result, you’ll get an immersive and personality-rich animation.

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Correlating Spine with After Effects is highly fruitful. During game development, both software are capable of speeding up the workflow considerably. Doing entire animations and effects through frame-by-frame techniques is rudimentary; After Effects and Spine has modern tools that allow users to create exciting scenes by swiftly dragging and pulling assets. Not only using both software in game development is recommended, but also crucial. While developing a title, it’s vital to excel in deadlines and budget. So, although pricey, Spine and After Effects are highly cost-effective, considering the extra work and time that’ll be cut out from the animating process. As a result, fixing animation issues, re-doing previous motions, adding new effects in the game, and working on updates will be swift, smooth, and precise.

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If you ever look for a competent Spine Animation studio for your game, do not hesitate to reach out to RocketBrush Studio