Spriter Pro News

Hello everyone. We've just released the new Spriter 2 alpha build. In this build we've introduced export to mp4, webm, gif, and sequential pngs. There are also a couple of simple quality of life additions, like Spriter 2 remembering the last used project folder and file. Behind the scenes, we've also updated the project to the latest version of Unity (2020), which won't affect your user experience for now, but will allow us to take advantage of the latest features and stability improvements.


In the interest of releasing this build with no further delays, we've decided to roll-back the bone-related changes for this release to before we began the refactoring process (which was the cause of some of the delay in this build). As such, bones are in an extremely unstable pre-alpha state, do not currently work with saving and loading, and have multiple severe game-breaking bugs. For this reason, we were going to release this build without bones, but we decided to make it so you can enable them with a keyboard shortcut in case you still wanted to play with the basic functionality shown in the previous bone video (see additional details below).


The next several builds will introduce ui, ux, and stability improvements moving Spriter 2 toward a fully functional beta. We will continue refactoring during this time in preparation for a stable 1.0, and as that process gets further along, future builds will upgrade bones to being fully usable, and reintroduce strokes.


Thanks again for your patience and support, and enjoy the new build!

[h2]0.0.0.19[/h2]

[h2]Change Log[/h2]

Additions

• Added export to MP4, WebM, Gif, and Sequential Pngs. To access the export menu, press ctrl-e while in Animation Mode. Additional options and access methods will be available in future builds.
• Added text input to project file browser
  

Changes and Enhancements

• File browser now remembers the last used directory and file
• Upgraded engine to Unity 2020
  

Bug Fixes

• Fixed bug that allowed you to create pins outside of rigging mode, resulting in unexpected behavior
• Fixed a bug that allowed you to edit pin weight in animation mode, resulting in unexpected behavior
• Fixed a bug that caused the changelog to pop-up each time Spriter 2 was launch instead of only the first time a new version was loaded
  

Known Issues

• Undo and Redo don't always function correctly with the new features
• Visual bug when dragging out new images. Sometimes image disappears momentarily
• Double entries for images in z-order
• Changes to z-order in rigging mode not reflected in animation
• Occasional visual glitches while editing animations
• Save and Load not working reliably in all situations
• Images saved from certain image editors will acquire artifacts when they have antialiased edges where the alpha isn't fully opaque or transparent. These issues aren't exclusive to Spriter 2 and will affect any game engine that doesn't preprocess them. These pre-processing functions will be introduced in a future version, and can be ignored for now.
• Dragging out more than one of the same issues doesn't function correctly.
  

To activate pre-alpha bones: Press Alt-Shift-B

Alt-click when a mesh is not selected to create a bone. When 2 bones are selected you can hold 'b' and click on a mesh to add it as a child. To adjust the curve of the ligament, right click on the middle ligament control point, and click and drag the icon that appears. As stated earlier, there are myriad issues and bugs with the bones, so they do not work with saving and loading, are easy to break and cause severe glitches, and they have various usability issues, such as the difficulty in seeing and clicking on the control points.

Hello again everyone! The latest build went up Wednesday afternoon. You can find additional info in the video and changelog below. We've decided to delay bones one more build to get them working better with the other new features introduced in this build. Bones should be working nicely with the new deformation features when the next build is ready in roughly two weeks.

We're pretty excited about what's up ahead and the state of the roadmap to 1.0. Once the bone build is released, one or two builds later we will reintroduce strokes, now using and interacting with all the new systems and features. The flexibility of all these features working together should allow for some really cool possibilities. After the stroke build, there are just three main "phases" left until a feature complete beta and 1.0. Well, really more like two and a half.

The first phase will consist of a bunch of small essential features that will flesh out the program and make it feel complete. These will be all the basic functions like multi-selection, animation management, copy/paste, delete, image/video export, etc. Also, during this phase we will be polishing the user experience, streamlining the workflow, and of course eliminating all the bugs we can find. Each build during this phase should feel like a substantial step toward 1.0.

The second phase will be implementing the last major 1.0 feature, which will be image swapping. We want image-swapping to feel easy and natural to work with as part of the larger set of deforming features, so it's not as straightforward to implement as it might seem at first. The systems that power the image-swapping will also be a big part of what powers a lot of the post 1.0 features, so this will most likely take more than one build to fully flesh out. When image swapping is ready we will be in feature complete beta. This means the program should have all the functionality of 1.0, though it may still contain bugs or minor usability issues.

Finally, the last half-phase will be any refactoring maintenance under the hood that still needs to be done. I will also take this opportunity to separate the editor portion and the runtime portion of the save format if that hasn't already been done yet. And of course, again we will squash any major known bugs before we call it 1.0. Upon 1.0 release, we will release the Mac and Linux versions as well.

Thanks again everyone for your patience during this long journey. We're nearing the home stretch.

New 0.0.0.18 features:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]


[h2] 0.0.0.18[/h2]

[h2] Change Log[/h2]

Additions

• Added a new pop-up menu item when right-clicking a mesh to choose a deformer for that mesh (pin deformation has been moved here)
  
• Added quad patch deformation
  
• Added bezier patch deformation
  
• Added the ability to add additional child meshes to any deformer (see help for additional information)
  

Changes and Enhancements

• Pin deformation no longer automatically applied to a mesh. It can now be accessed by right clicking a mesh, and accessing the deformer menu
  
• Help now supports multiple pages of information
  

Known Issues

• Undo and Redo don't always function correctly with the new features
  
• Visual bug when dragging out new images. Sometimes image disappears momentarily
  
• Visual bug when first applying a deformer to a new child.  Image sometimes shifts momentarily
  
• Double entries for images in z-order
  
• Changes to z-order in rigging mode not reflected in animation
  
• Occasional visual glitches while editing animations
  
• Save and Load not working reliably in all situations
  
• Images saved from certain image editors will acquire artifacts when they have antialiased edges where the alpha isn't fully opaque or transparent. These issues aren't exclusive to Spriter 2 and will affect any game engine that doesn't preprocess them. These pre-processing functions will be introduced in a future version, and can be ignored for now.
  
• Dragging out more than one of the same images doesn't function correctly.
  
• Changelog appears every time you open the software, instead of just the first time you open the new version

[previewyoutube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_3zVRp-Owk[/previewyoutube]

Thanks everyone for your continued patience during what proved to be a very long and often delayed Spriter 2 development process so far. Now that the research part of Spriter 2's R & D is complete we're finally able to switch to a consistent development cycle. We've released a new alpha today and there should be a new build released roughly every 2 weeks from here on out. The current build is very bare-bones with several known issues (see changelog), but each subsequent build will introduce new features, bug fixes, and/or other improvements at a regular pace until Spriter 2 reaches a stable and feature complete release.

This build introduces a new workflow with separate modes for rigging and animation. We've temporarily removed strokes for this build as we shifted over to this more final workflow paradigm. Strokes will be reintroduced in an upcoming build and able to take full advantage of the new rigging system, which will give much more control over how your image is mapped to your strokes. In the meantime, we have a bare-bones version of the new pin system, which will also be expanded in subsequent builds. Please see the ChangeLog and Help info within Spriter 2 to learn more.

Any Spriter Pro owners should be able to access the Spriter 2 Testing discussion forums where you will find more information (please ensure you're logged into the account that owns Spriter Pro)

Alchemist Kickstarter!
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
We're creating Alchemist, a procedural 2D animation and content creation expansion suite for our upcoming animation software, Spriter 2. You can get both Spriter 2 and Alchemist via this Kickstarter. There are special discounted tiers if you already own Spriter Pro/2. Please like and share!