Hello everyone,
We had hoped to post this announcement along with the latest build, but there's still a bit more to do before it's ready.
However we can update you on the progress of Spriter 2 and a couple of other relevant details about the upcoming builds. First, I will be moving home and office to a new city in July. Unfortunately, this means after the upcoming build, we don't know when update builds will be released until after the move. On a happier note, there is not that much left to do before Spriter 2 is out of alpha, and onto a feature complete beta. There may be some minor features added during the beta, but it will essentially be version 1.0 aside from bug fixes, documentation, runtime implementations, and non-Windows OS's.
We still won't be giving an ETA today, but these are the remaining features before the beta. Each feature may take longer than one 2 week release cycle, and won't necessary be released in this order, but it should be easy to follow progress until the beta from here on out:
- Image swapping (in progress)
- Linking deformers
- Hierarchical deformation
- Sub-Entities
- Miscellaneous workflow and UX enhancements (smaller, simpler features that will be quick to implement)
1. Image swapping This is what will be included in the release I'm currently working on. Image swapping will work somewhat like it does in Spriter Pro with the pop-up image selection bar, but much more customizable. For instance, if you have 3 frames for a head turn to the right , you will be able to create the full 5 frame left to right head turn, mirroring and positioning each frame, and then placing them on the selection bar in whatever order makes sense to animate with:
2. Linking deformers Currently, you can add a single quad or bezier patch deformer to one or more images. This feature will allow deformers to share their control points allowing you to link one or more deformers together to deform objects of arbitrary complexity, simulate perspective, etc.
3. Hierarchical deformation Currently a deformer can be the child of a single bone, this feature will explore how far this can be enhanced. The goal will be allow defomers to be the children of strokes or multiple bones. We will also explore the feasibility of whether we can make deformers be children of other deformers.
4. Sub-Entities This will be an enhanced version of the experimental that was in Spriter Pro. It will allow you to create sub-animations that can be controlled from within other animations. For instance, you could animate a head turn using multiple images, deformers, alpha fading, etc, and then tie it to a single slider that can be used to turn your head at any time. Unlike Spriter Pro, the inner-workings of this and related features are part of the DNA of how Spriter 2 was designed under the hood, so the workflow should feel seamless by 1.0. This was originally going to be an Alchemist-only feature, but since things have been delayed by so much longer than anyone anticipated, we wanted to give something back to everyone who's been so patient all this time.
5. Miscellaneous workflow and UX enhancements These are several smaller features, enhancements, and just the final touches to other features that are needed to flesh out the program and make it feel complete and easy to use. There are several, but some examples are:
- Export options such as trimming, etc to flesh out the export to image/video feature
- Ui missing for any feature that currently requires a keyboard shortcut
- Better timeline visibility options to filter to current to the current selection, be able to arbitrarily expand the timeline size, etc
- One last pass on the save format to mark it as final. We also want to separate the format into editor-specific and runtime sections to make it possible to save even smaller saves for runtimes, while maintaining the ability to have feature rich saves of future editor states.
Once again we want to thank everyone for your support and patience. We're on the home stretch now. We hope that you enjoy the final product and our vision for how easy and fun a powerful 2d animation program can be. There is more planned for after 1.0, but we'll save that for after its release.