At this point, this pertains to Spine version 3.7.17-beta trial. I downloaded it a couple nights ago to test it for possible use in a project. The demo character works great (as is expected), but I need to run through the setup/animation process with another character closer to what I may be using in the near future. Specifically, I'm looking at a significant focus on facial animation.

To that end I set up a simple layered test PSD and imported it into Spine with no problem. Layer 1 is a headless body, Layer 2 is the head, Layers 3 and 4 are eyebrows. My goal is to have bones control head tilt, eyebrows, and mouth distortion.

I've watched several tutorials, following along and adapting the steps to my character. The process was essentially the same in all the tutorials. I got as far as setting up a skeleton, turning the various parts to meshes, adding custom verts, and weighting them to bones. This is where I repeatedly hit a brick wall.

I selected, moved, and rotated the bones, but none of the meshes followed. At one point the verts somehow moved randomly (like across the face and down, and variations thereof), distorting the entire head.

After a slightly more successful total redo, I was able to go into Animate mode and get the head moving. I set a few keyframes, ONLY on bone Rotation. In between these keyframes the head shrank and grew, as if Scale was also keyed. (I checked for keys on the mesh itself. There were none.) The eyebrows stayed behind in space despite supposedly being weighted 100% to their own bones, which moved in relation to the head bone.

User error is always possible, but it's honestly hard to reconcile against the amount of information I looked up and followed as closely as I could. It feels like bugginess to me, as if I were doing something that's not handled by the trial version. To put it in perspective, I'm a game industry veteran of 20+ years. I've used many tools and techniques and know my way around the logic of art/animation tools fairly well, and I'm fairly stumped.

While I'm at it, I might as well voice my disappointment at the lack of a Save function in the trial version. I feel it has been a detriment to my research, as it forces me to do everything at once or leave the software open to continue later, rather than having a file to work on as time permits. It would also be handy in cases like mine, where I might figure something out by comparing different files I've worked on. Technically, the UI and functionality of Spine aren't all that hard to figure out. A timed, 2 week trial with full functionality including Save might be more effective in convincing me that Spine is the way to go. Hell, throw in a watermark for added piracy discouragement if you have to!

In discussing all this with a friend, he even brought up the possibility that the lack of a Save function could somehow propagate into the other issues I've been having. Not sure about that, but it's interesting to note that the auto-save option is still available in the configuration menu.