Free skeletal software

E

ewlf5

Guest
Hello fellow forum members,
I was wondering if there is any free alternative for Spine to create skeletal systems in gms?
 

Nocturne

Friendly Tyrant
Forum Staff
Admin
The long and short answer is simply "no". GMS only supports Spine, and unless someone makes a clone that exports the image exactly as the Spine runtime does, then you have no other options, sorry.
 
C

Chim

Guest
The long and short answer is simply "no". GMS only supports Spine, and unless someone makes a clone that exports the image exactly as the Spine runtime does, then you have no other options, sorry.
Spine costs about 300 $ that's a bit expensive for somebody. - https://esotericsoftware.com/spine-purchase
What about Spriter? it costs about 60 $ and i see in different Forums, that a plugin exist, but with problems, is it now available? - https://brashmonkey.com/buy-spriter-pro/
 

GMWolf

aka fel666
If the Spine format isn't too crazy, I may make a very simple editor for it.
I need bone and mesh editor for another project anyways.
I'm not sure if any other existing software use the spine json format...
 

rIKmAN

Member
If the Spine format isn't too crazy, I may make a very simple editor for it.
I need bone and mesh editor for another project anyways.
I'm not sure if any other existing software use the spine json format...
Gamemaker already supports Spine, and a member of staff posted on another thread that there is a big update coming soon.
 
J

JimmyBG

Guest
Considering dragon bones and spine both export JSON, it should be fairly straight forward to make a convertor to Spine's format.
 

GMWolf

aka fel666
Gamemaker already supports Spine, and a member of staff posted on another thread that there is a big update coming soon.
I meant something to create a spine json sprite, without the spine software.
The problem is that many people don't have the money to spend on spine.
 

Mick

Member
I looked at the possibility of converting from Spriter format to Spine format but the way images are stored differ so much so it would be a serious hassle to do a conversion. DragonBones Pro however can even import Spine projects and it can export a sprite atlas like Spine, maybe it wouldn't be too hard to create a DragonBones -> Spine converter.
 
J

JimmyBG

Guest
I meant something to create a spine json sprite, without the spine software.
The problem is that many people don't have the money to spend on spine.
I looked at the possibility of converting from Spriter format to Spine format but the way images are stored differ so much so it would be a serious hassle to do a conversion. DragonBones Pro however can even import Spine projects and it can export a sprite atlas like Spine, maybe it wouldn't be too hard to create a DragonBones -> Spine converter.
Just downloaded Dragon Bones and its quite good, definitely recommend people try it out.

Only a more related note, the DB JSON doesn't vary much from the Spine JSON, I'll see if I can get it working.
 

GMWolf

aka fel666
Just downloaded Dragon Bones and its quite good, definitely recommend people try it out.

Only a more related note, the DB JSON doesn't vary much from the Spine JSON, I'll see if I can get it working.
That would be amazing!
 
M

Mylon

Guest
Good luck! My project is hoping to use bones for animation. I own Spriter already. Godotengine also supports bones (and I'm sure I could whip together a simple Godot -> spritesheet export tool), but there's no way I'm paying for Spine.
 
J

JimmyBG

Guest
Great news guys! I have a conversion tool working and ready for you to try!

Presenting... DragonBones to Spine Convertor :D


Download:
http://bit.do/dbspine


Instructions:
Simply load the two DragonBones files for your sprite and hit 'convert', then save each file.

To load a Spine sprite into GameMaker (this is not specific to the converter):
  1. All 3 files (sprite_name.json, sprite_name.atlas, texture_name.png) must be in the same directory.
  2. The .json and .atlas file must have the same name
  3. Go to 'Load Sprite' and choose the .json file (GameMaker will load the others itself)

Current Progress:

Loads Skeleton
Loads Animations - Translation, Rotation and Scale of bones
To do: mesh support (may work already, untested)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
M

Mylon

Guest
Can you add a headless mode? So I can run say.... "db2sp *.json" to convert all files in a directory?
 
J

JimmyBG

Guest
Can you add a headless mode? So I can run say.... "db2sp *.json" to convert all files in a directory?
That's a good idea, due to the limitations of GameMaker you would have to copy the files into a directory within the program's folder.
But once in there it could simply batch process all the files in the folder, as you'd like.

Perhaps have 2 folders:
db_files - where you put your DragonBones sprites
spine_files - where it outputs the Spine sprites

Does that sound reasonable?
 

Mick

Member
Does that sound reasonable?
Not that it was my question but that sounds very good! It could overwrite the destination files without asking. It would save a lot of time, not needing to browse.

Again, good job with this converter!
 

GMWolf

aka fel666
This was made with game maker?! Wow, nice! (I still have to try it out).
I guess GM does have built in json support now...
 
J

JimmyBG

Guest
First bugfix (link has been updated so please re-download)
DragonBones (and Spine?) have this little feature of not putting in any data for a variable if the value is 0.
This is done in order to reduce data stored and thus reduce file size.
So this bugfix simply added checks for the existence of all variables and using defaults of 0.

It could overwrite the destination files without asking.
Yes it could, but I can add checks and prompts in to prevent that happening by default.
This was made with game maker?! Wow, nice! (I still have to try it out).
I guess GM does have built in json support now...
Yes it is! GM isn't as limited as it once was, the inbuilt JSON encoding/decoding was the main reason I used it for this tool.
Without that I probably would have used C# .NET.
 
E

ewlf5

Guest
Š‘Ń€Š°Š²Š¾ Š·Š° ŠæрŠ¾Š³Ń€Š°Š¼ŠŗŠ°Ń‚Š° Šø чŠµŃŃ‚ŠøтŠ¾ съŠµŠ“ŠøŠ½ŠµŠ½ŠøŠµ, ŠæŠøчŠ°Š³Š°.
/congratulating him about the tool and the 131th Bulgarian unification anniversary pls dont ban me/
 
Z

zendorf

Guest
Very cool JimmyBG...thanks for your efforts on this! I plan on trying this out as soon as I get my head around DragonBones.
 

SnoutUp

Member
Well, damn! This is awesome, @JimmyBG! I now have no excuses left to try out skeletal animations :)

Edit: that tool should maybe have a separate thread if it doesn't..?
 

Yal

šŸ§ *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
Yeah, this definitely deserves a special thread. :3
I'd recommend uploading it to the Marketplace too, but, well, AFAIK you can't upload tools there, so... T__T
 
J

JimmyBG

Guest
Well, damn! This is awesome, @JimmyBG! I now have no excuses left to try out skeletal animations :)
Edit: that tool should maybe have a separate thread if it doesn't..?
Yeah, this definitely deserves a special thread. :3
I'd recommend uploading it to the Marketplace too, but, well, AFAIK you can't upload tools there, so... T__T
Thanks!

I'll make a thread for it soon - probably with the next update. Didn't plan on such high traffic :p
Aiming to fix some more bugs, add mesh and IK support.

@Yal It is unfortunate that you can't upload tools to the marketplace, perhaps I'll put it on itch.io?
 

GMWolf

aka fel666
And much less purchases, bro.
I dont know if @JimmyBG plans on selling this. since he provided it fro free here.
On top of that, who would buy a tool designed to allow you to use free software rather than payed software? it kinda defeats the point of using dragonbones.
 

MusNik

Member
I dont know if @JimmyBG plans on selling this. since he provided it fro free here.
On top of that, who would buy a tool designed to allow you to use free software rather than payed software? it kinda defeats the point of using dragonbones.
Itch.io have PWYW system, in fact.
 

GMWolf

aka fel666
Itch.io have PWYW system, in fact.
Im a huge fan of PWYW actually.
Its great for software for which you cannot charge much at all for, but still would like some money for it.
what more, some studies showed that people are inclined to pay more when you ask them to pay what they think it is worth, than when you set a fixed price to what you think its worth.
Plus the people who dont want to /cant pay for it still benefit from the software, and spread the word.
 

Yal

šŸ§ *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
And much less purchases, bro.
The last time I checked out the marketplace, there was an epidemic of people doing 100%-off sales, several people stating that they've discontinued support of their assets, and a front page that hadn't been updated in several months.

I did too. Add it to the included files.
Though I don't think its a great solution.
Seconded. Still better than nothing, though.
 

Coded Games

Member
I love how this topic has completely shifted.

That aside, why not both? Upload it to the Marketplace and Itch.io (Although you'd need to check on both EULA's to make sure that's not breaking any rules). I personally only have uploaded to the marketplace and I would definitely recommend it. All of my assets are $1 and although I don't make TONS of money I make enough that the 5 minutes it took to upload them was very much worth it.
 
M

Mylon

Guest
I can't find hardly anything on Dragonbones. It doesn't seem to have much of a community around it, which is really weird. The technology is great and I'd love even a couple of sample animated figures to drop into my project and explore it's feasibility. Or maybe reach out to some artists to commission work.

I'm at the point where I think my project is close to something publishable (programming wise) but I'm going to need a ton of content.
 
G

Gil Gonzalez

Guest
Great news guys! I have a conversion tool working and ready for you to try!

Presenting... DragonBones to Spine Convertor :D


Download:
http://bit.do/dbspine


Instructions:
Simply load the two DragonBones files for your sprite and hit 'convert', then save each file.

To load a Spine sprite into GameMaker (this is not specific to the converter):
  1. All 3 files (sprite_name.json, sprite_name.atlas, texture_name.png) must be in the same directory.
  2. The .json and .atlas file must have the same name
  3. Go to 'Load Sprite' and choose the .json file (GameMaker will load the others itself)

Current Progress:

Loads Skeleton
Loads Animations - Translation, Rotation and Scale of bones
To do: mesh support (may work already, untested)

Thanks JimmyBG for your hard work in creating this tool. I have a quick question. I tried running your tool with the default dragon animation that comes with DB. I put in the two files, click convert, then when I put in either of the export files and click save, it doesn't do anything. I doesn't seem to save the output. Am I doing something wrong? I'm running this under Windows 10.
 
C

Chim

Guest
Thank you so much for this converter :)

here is my very first attempt, yes i know it looks terrible :D

 
C

CoderJoe

Guest
Dude! That is awesome! I discovered Dragon Bones about a year ago. I didn't really know how to read XML or JSON at that point so I left it alone. But I was going to do the exact same thing but turns out you already did! Great job and thanks!
 
C

CoderJoe

Guest
Okay so I'm getting a fatal error out of memory exception when trying to convert the examples. I opened task manager to see what was happening and your program would quickly jump up to around 1700 MB of memory. You might have a memory leak somewhere. I'll try some things but I'm interested in the program itself. If you are considering open source that would be greatly appreciated (no pressure though :))
 
C

CoderJoe

Guest
Hmm, it worked this time although I used a different example project. Not sure why it crashed before.
 
C

CoderJoe

Guest
i got gamemaker working but not everything looks right
upload_2016-10-10_13-15-23.png
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Bingdom

Googledom
Sorry about that. Forgot about the spoilers.
@Fel666 Is not talking about that, you are creating multiple posts unnecessarily bumping the topic. Use the edit button in your original post if you changed your mind on something. ;)

@JimmyBG Great job! Definitely needs a separate post. This may come in handy for me in the future. :)
 
Top