State of Skeleton2d in Godot (Bone/2d Rigging/Cutout Animations)

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Hey Y’all,

I was looking into bone animation/2d rigging solutions for an upcoming hobby project, so far the census seems to be in favor of Spine but it also costs $369 which don’t get me wrong is wild for some hobby projects. They have an essentials version which while cheaper lacks a lot of the features which seems crucial and also feels like godot can already do the stuff for free that you get from their essential version. I also found dragonbones which seems discontinued and spriter pro. Spriter Pro creator has been saying the v2 is coming for like the last 5 years so idk about that also saw a few reviews saying the app stopped working altogether. Also, they usually come with a separate build of godot itself which I don’t like. Spine’s official solutions is they give you a custom build of godot itself which is a big iffy in my opinion but idk where the community stands on this take.

So that brings us to how far can you actually go with just godot’s Skeleton2d in v4?

Like I have tried some basic animations with it and it seems you have to do a lot of extra work but you can get the job done. But this topic also lacks in terms of content out there it seems like the godot community as a whole don’t focus on Bone/2d Rigging/Cutout Animations much or at least doesn’t seem too vocal about it.

If you have done some animations in the past or present with the Skeleton2d I would love to hear your feedback on it and also if you could share some screen grabs would love to see those,

or if you are using another tool instead of the built-in Skeleton2d (paid or free) which one are you using?

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I would like to revive this topic. I’m anxious to hear anything at all about other’s experiences with 2D animation in Godot, particularly skeletal animation but also cutout animations. I’ve gotten reasonably proficient with cutouts but I’d like to move up to the next level with skeletal 2D animations. @qriouskoder: are you still animating in Godot? What are you using now?

I’ve been playing with Spine runtime for Godot, which I found surprisingly difficult to even get to run at all. I’m on a Mac, it may well be simpler on PC. Anyway, I ran through all the examples, which are quite impressive but I have concerns:

  1. Godot editor crashes on exit after running any project with the Spine runtime. Anyone else seeing this?

  2. The spine example scenes use custom resources but they aren’t too useful to me as a user. I can’t tell what animations are in any given SpineSprite node, unless they are mentioned in the script. And I can’t play any animations in the editor, is that right?

  3. Of course, requiring a custom editor build to make it work is worrisome. Of course, nobody wants to be stuck at a particular version of the Godot engine, should the Spine support dry up.

So, at this point, I’m ready to give the Godot skeletal 2D system another try. I tried it before I did cutout stuff but it seemed pretty cumbersome and the docs for it weren’t as clear and complete as other parts of the engine. I see a relatively new video on YouTube about it, so I’m ready to give it another go.