Some features Spine is actually missing.

SSuperneutrino · 27 Jan

Hi. I first tried Spine maybe 10 years ago and I hated it. I realized it is primarily a skeleton and image deformation tool but I hated it's unique workflow which I admit somewhat improved over time, but essentially stayed the same. I am rediscovering Spine again and learning it from scratch this time focused not to miss any of it's UI workflow quirks that would make me suffer later. So here's all what came up to my mind as I did that.

While Spine is primarily a skeleton and image mesh deformation tool, I like that part. But I don't see no reason for it to be exclusively that. Why just not let us animate images without quirky and often limiting bone setup. All I need is to animate transform, scale, rotation, share and alpha of any image on the scene.Without bones and without root attachment.

I see lots of people already asked for that, years ago. So, imagine having tree view with Skeleton branch, and separate Timeline branch. It doesn't have to be After Effects. rotation, transform, scale, alpha and shear would be perfect for the start.

Second thing that came up is animation path. Sure, we have path constraint. It works, but it's too much fiddling just with simple path. When you animate transform X from point A to point B, isn't that already some sort of a path. We don't see it but it is. Reveal this path and make it bezier so we can adjust it as we like

That's it for now I will write about this things as I work.
I am 50y old graphic designer with more than 30 years of experience with background in graphic design, motion graphics, 3D and 2D animation, and gaming design.

Spinebot · 27 Jan

Spine is primarily designed for skeletal animation, which involves using bones to animate images and meshes. While it excels in this area, it does not currently support animating images without bones, as you suggested. The workflow is centered around using bones for transformations like scale, rotation, and translation. As for animation paths, Spine does have path constraints, but they require some setup and are not as straightforward as simply revealing and adjusting a path directly. Your suggestions for a more flexible animation system without bones and more intuitive path editing are interesting and could potentially enhance the software's capabilities for users who prefer a different workflow.

Erika · 27 Jan

About your first request, if you turn you images into meshes, you may directly animate those, maybe with the help of the mesh tools view, as it lets you have more comfortable selections which you can rotate, translate, etc. with ease:
https://esotericsoftware.com/spine-mesh-tools
The pain point of this are the easing, and the performance. For the easing, the way the mesh information is stored, it would always have your vertices aim for a straight trajectory of interpolation between the first key you set and the next one, thus making bones animations superior in what can be achieved, with less keys and work to get the results one may aim for.
As for performance, if you're aiming to create videos you can ignore this, but if you aim to create something feasable for videogames, then you may want to read this:
http://esotericsoftware.com/blog/Mesh-weight-workflows#Deform-keys-are-the-devil

As for your second suggestion, I hugely agree, I'd love to have that too, and it has this enhancement tracked here: EsotericSoftware/spine-editor177
I'll add your +1 there.