Optimizing Spine Animations for Mobile Game Performance – Tips

mimi001

I'm working on a 2D mobile game using Unity and Spine for character animations. The workflow has been smooth overall, but I’ve noticed some performance drops when multiple animated characters are on screen at the same time — especially on mid-range Android devices.
I've already tried a few things like:
Reducing texture resolution
Merging atlas files
Disabling unnecessary mesh deformation
But the gains are still limited. So I’d really appreciate it if anyone could share:

Best practices for optimizing Spine skeletons in Unity?

When should I consider using SkeletonGraphic instead of SkeletonAnimation?

Has anyone compared Spine performance versus traditional sprite sheets in Unity?
I believe many of us working on mobile titles face similar challenges, so if we can gather some tried-and-tested solutions, I’d be happy to compile them into a summary for future reference.
Thanks in advance for your time and insights!

I'm testing these optimizations on a few projects that we plan to release, where performance on lower-end devices really matters. If anyone’s doing something similar, happy to connect and exchange ideas!

Spinebot

To optimize Spine animations for mobile game performance, consider the following best practices:

Optimize Skeletons: Reduce the number of bones, vertices, and constraints in your skeletons. Avoid using clipping polygons and unnecessary mesh deformations. Use a texture atlas to minimize texture binds and draw calls, as these can significantly impact performance on mobile devices.
SkeletonGraphic vs. SkeletonAnimation: Use SkeletonGraphic for UI elements as it integrates better with Unity's UI system, while SkeletonAnimation is more suitable for 3D space and non-UI elements. Choose based on your specific use case and performance needs.
Spine vs. Sprite Sheets: Spine animations can be more efficient than traditional sprite sheets as they allow for more dynamic and flexible animations with fewer assets. However, sprite sheets might be more performant in scenarios with many static or simple animations due to reduced computational overhead.

For more detailed performance tips, you can refer to the Spine Metrics User Guide and the Spine-Unity Performance FAQ section. Testing on your target devices is crucial to identify specific bottlenecks and optimize accordingly.

Nate

The first step before you optimize anything is to determine the bottlenecks. What is limiting performance? Is it draw calls? Then focus on batching. Is it CPU usage? Then dig deeper to find what is using the most CPU.

Our general advice to performance is on the metrics page that Spinebot linked.

mimi001

Thanks for the detailed tips! We recently optimized a few Spine animations for a 2D Android title, and reducing mesh complexity along with batching made a noticeable difference. Great to see others sharing practical insights!

Harald

@mimi001 Unfortunately Spinebot listed an outdated URL for the spine-unity section, the correct one is the Performance FAQ section here. I've updated the URL in the posting above as well.