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  • New skin on existing animated character

    anglais

First off, purchased Spine a few months ago and absolutely love it. Thanks for making such incredible animation software.

I have a few questions about Skins.

  1. I want to create a new Skin on a character that's already setup and animated using Bones and Meshes. I understand there's an option to Use Groups as Skins from the export feature in Photoshop, but do all of the assets (original skin and new skin) need to be in the same Photoshop file? Or can they be exported from separate Photoshop files but still saved in the same images folder.

  2. I tried doing a quick test of setting up a new Skin and applying a Skin Placeholder to a Mesh, but it doesn't animate like the original. Can I only apply new Skins to Bones?

I may have follow-up questions along the way and can also provide image examples to add more clarity to my questions. Thanks in advance to any help the community can provide.

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  1. yes they can come from different photoshop files, the ideal thing is you have the same number of pieces, positioned in a similar manner and with the same names, this way you can turn your current project into a skin, duplicate it and import the new images by replacing the paths in your new skin
    as described in this video:

See Skins - Spine User Guide for more information.

  1. To make a mesh inherit the animations of another mesh the best thing is to duplicate that first mesh as in point 1 and change the path, or, even better, make the mesh a linked mesh so it will inherit all further modifications. See Meshes - Spine User Guide: Linked meshes
    You can applicate new skins to a skeleton, bones are part of it but basically what you do is creating alternative attachments. This question confuses me a little.

Hi Erikari,

Thanks so much for your prompt response and help! Had some progress so far with your help. Successfully added a new skin to the project.

The next challenge I am having is the animations from both skins animating the same. Here's a gif as an example. Even though both skins have the exact same Mesh nodes, only the red character actually deforms. How do I achieve both skins use the same mesh deformation. You mentioned using the linked mesh method. Is this how I would get both skins to deform in the same way?

Sorry for the crude animation example, simply a test haha. Thanks again for all your help!

Yes linked meshes are the answer 🙂
It's very easy to create them (it's the button next to "duplicate" button) and once created you just replace the path, move them in the right skin placeholder and they'll both inherit one another's deformation.
If you don't mind a little tip, try also deforming meshes through bones and not directly. It will save you lots of time and it's easier to fix mistakes.

Awesome thanks so much! This really helped, sorry if this was a simple concept - I didn't fully understand how the Skin mechanic and linking meshes worked.

Here's some of the test results, swapping back and forth between the colors. Again, I truly appreciate your help today Erikari!

Man, that ghost is beating the crap out of him.

Probably the ghosts of his past deeds coming to haunt him. Library books overdue! Never tipping the server!

Your art is gorgeous by the way and you were pretty fast! I'd definitely play one of your games x)

Thanks for the kind compliments Erikari! I look forward to contributing to the community 😃

un mois plus tard
michaeljanzen a écrit

Awesome thanks so much! This really helped, sorry if this was a simple concept - I didn't fully understand how the Skin mechanic and linking meshes worked.

Here's some of the test results, swapping back and forth between the colors. Again, I truly appreciate your help today Erikari!

This is truly beautiful work!

Hi everyone!

I'm having a bit of trouble with the skins and meshes

I'm creating a new skin first, then selecting the attachment for each body part and selecting add new skin naming each new skin to match the new skin name.

This works fine on the first one.

When adding a second character I have a linked mesh so the linked mesh has to stay in the same attachment.

When doing this if I select between skin 1 and 2 the linked mesh attachment are not visible on the first skin.

If I put the linked mesh in another attachment the skins are visible but do not have any of the values of the original mesh

Can you please point me in the right direction? Many Thanks!

Hi danmasoomi 🙂
First, I think you're not adding new skins but skin placeholders. You don't have to call them to match your skin as they will stay in place with that name even if you change skin, what actually changes is the attachment you put inside a skin placeholder when a certain skin is selected, if you select a different skin the skin placeholder will be empty.

Let's talk about Linked meshes. When you have your nice mesh ready inside a skin placeholder you can click the skin placeholder button and turn your mesh into a parent skin placeholder, then a duplicate child will be created outside of the skin placeholder but in the same slot.
You should change skin at this point, put the child likend mesh in your (probably) empty skin placeholder and then change the path so that a different image of your choice will be shown.
Then if you modify one point in one, the other will follow. And this is how you're supposed to use them 🙂
You can't move it to another slot, because linked meshes only work if they're inside the same slot. If you wish to have a duplicate you can copy the mesh, but it won't be a linked mesh 🙂