Exporting problem

Zsolt

(I already posted this ages ago but got no official support.. So again.)

Hey guys!

We have this weird problem with exporting. Sometimes some of the exported values does not correspond with the keyframed values. Here I have an example. In spine I set the scale to 1.05 at frame 13 (time 0.43) and in the exported .json it says 2.134. Do you have any guess why this is happening?
We have very much trouble with the implementation of the exported .json files for some reason 🙁 Everything works and looks fine in Spine, but the implemented version is messed up big time.

Best regards,
Zs

mfedorov

Vanganous: Parent bone scale?

Zsolt

The parent bone is not animated and having x.1 y.1 scale. Anyhow it is a serious issue as in spine the whole thing looks how i want it to look and the exported data makes my brain hurt.

Nate

You have Parent selected in the Axes panel.

Zsolt

Well. It is the same with World, Parent or Local. Anyhow we managed to understand the problem.
The bone was already scaled down in the setup mode. What Spine exports is not actually the parameters of the bones, but the amount of change that needs to be added or subtracted. So if my rig has a bone with a scale of 0.49, going to animate mode and setting a keyframe will be written as 1 under the animation section of the .json. Same with rotation. If my rig has a bone with rotation on 30, setting a keyframe to 40 will be exported as +10 (I guess). This is actually logical and really good as it is not influencing the rig itself and it can be applied to other rigs too.
The problem with this is that debugging or searching for the source of a problem in the .json or implementation is very difficult.
Maybe there could be a switch in Spine to change the way values are displayed in animate mode, so either the total amount or the amount of change is displayed (either 40 or +10 based on the rotation example above). I hope you get what i mean. It is early in the morning here and my senses might be still asleep 😛

Please ask if i failed to explain this things 🙂

Thank You!

Nate

World, Parent, Local axes will show different values in Spine.

Aye, the values in the JSON are relative to the setup pose. I don't think searching by value makes a lot of sense, better to search other ways, eg find the animation, timeline, then the key in question.

Zsolt

Searching in the JSON and not in spine. Having buncha keyframes makes search hardcore as it is. Anyways it is not about the search. In the .json there are other values than in spine. The relative values should be reachable from spine (that is a professional software), so happenings become more easily trackable after exporting.

Anyways in animate mode it would be clearer to have for example rotation on 0 on the bones that are in the setup position. Even if in setup mode it is on 321.24. Than, if you need to go back to the setup pose at the end of an animation, you just type 0 for a buch of bones and there you have it. 🙂

We had many problems till we figured that every bone in spine has to have scale exactly and precisely on 1 in both axis. Otherwise the exported relative values implemented with cocos2d will mess up our peaceful lives. 🙂 So now we have the images scaled down and those grumpy bones left alone with scale values on 1 in setup mode.
If you have not mentioned in your documentation, please do not hesitate to tell the unsuspecting users to try hard to keep scale values on 1 while rigging, so they will not become bold early when they implement their stuph 😛