Export images from multiple project

Motion

Hi,
we have characters organized by multiple projects where each project is a character standing in different position. In Spine version 2, we exported the json(s), and with texture packer the atlas file of all the projects and it was working fine. The goal is to have multiple Json files, but only one Atlas file.

Images are stored in folders ./Images/, with multiple sub directories.

After update to spine 3, this functionality doesn't seem to work. It loses the complete path of sub directories. (Libgdx runtime)

I took a look in Json, and the structure seems modified.

In version 2 it was exporting something like:

{"Hips":{"path":"Images/PoseUpRight/Standing/Hips","x":2.74,"y":6.39,"rotation":-90,"width":44,"height":23}

While in version 3 its exporting:

{"name":"Hips","bone":"Hips","attachment":"Hips"}]

Difference is "Images/PoseUpRight/Standing/Hips" and "Hips"

Project structure:

Thanks

Can we get any support on this issue? It passed more than a week without any explanation.
Currently we are blocked with our development because of this issue. Version 3 doesn't work and we are unable to rollback to version 2 because spine crashes during opening of the project.

Pharan

That seems to be acting correctly.

You just need to set your Images node to the correct path.
Then all attachment paths in your skeleton can then be relative to it.

So if you want your attachment path to be:
"Images/PoseUpRight/Standing/Hips"

Your Images node path should be
""

You may need to use the find and replace tool. But since you only have 6 attachments, you can just copy the original path and paste it into each Attachment path.

I'm not sure if there was an automated path-extraction process that was included in Spine 3.0 that caused this to happen. I'll point the other people in the team in your direction.

Motion

Could you please explain in which file I should replace the attachment path, and which attribute.

We tried to replace in atlas file, but it was not working correctly, since it needs the whole path.

One thing to pay attention. The names of images in different folders are same.

For example:
Images/PoseUpRight/Standing/Hips
Images/PoseRight/Standing/Hips
...

So there are 2 images named "Hips" in different folders packed together in same atlas.

And this means that in atlas the name should be with whole path.

Pharan

Yeah, what I explained was just a process of returning it back to its original settings because it seems to have changed.
It's not an automatic process. But you seem to know what you need.

If your hip attachment needs the path Images/PoseUpRight/Standing/Hips, type that in.
But before that works, you need to remove the images path ./Images/PoseUpRight/Standing/ from the Images node.
Otherwise, Spine editor will think the path is Images/PoseUpRight/Standing/Images/PoseUpRight/Standing/Hips and not be able to find your images.

Again, I'm not sure if whoever worked on your skeletons changed the image paths, or if Spine itself did that automatically and incorrectly when you upgraded the project to 3.0

Nate

I don't believe there was a change from Spine 2 to 3 regarding image paths. To be sure, have you read this?
Images - Spine User Guide
There is very little magic. Spine finds images using imagesPath + attachmentName (or imagesPath + attachmentPath if the attachment has a path set). At runtime AtlasAttachmentLoader finds regions in the atlas using attachmentName or attachmentPath. The texture packer creates an atlas with regions that have names relative to the input folder (discarding paths if Combine subdirectories is true).

If you want one atlas, you need to make sure the region names in the atlas are unique. If you have these images:

Images/PoseUpRight/Standing/Hips.png
Images/PoseRight/Standing/Hips.png

To make the image names unique you need to use an images path of Images/, which would result in two unique region names:

PoseUpRight/Standing/Hips
PoseRight/Standing/Hips

These names are what you need to use for your attachment names after you change your images path.

You would also run the texture packer (separately from exporting your skeleton data, since you want 1 atlas for multiple skeletons) using the Images folder as the input folder. This ensures the names in your atlas match your attachment names.

Another way to do it is writing some code using the AttachmentLoader. Eg, copy or edit AtlasAttachmentLoader to know the name of the skeleton it is loading. Then instead of using atlas.findRegion(path) you can find the region using that extra knowledge, eg atlas.findRegion(skeletonName + "/" + path) (or whatever makes sense for your setup).

Motion

Exactly, I was expecting that if the image path in image node is :Images/PoseUpRight/Standing/ then the attachment key would be Images/PoseUpRight/Standing/+ attachmentName. But in fact when I export I get just attachmentName without imagesPath.

Here is an example of exported .json. The whole path is mentioned only in "skeleton" node by name "images"... And according to the documentation this attribute is not used.

What I did now is changed from:

"skins":{
    "default":{
       "Hips":{
          "Hips":{
             "x":14.14,
             "y":8.71,
             "rotation":90,
             "width":59,
             "height":54
          }
       },

to:

"skins":{
    "default":{
       "Hips":{
          "Images/PoseUpRight/Standing/Hips":{
             "x":14.14,
             "y":8.71,
             "rotation":90,
             "width":59,
             "height":54
          }
       },

and in libdx runtime it doesn't trow an error, however I cannot say it is working since we have to change the whole project which is large.

Could you please validate this Json file to see if it exported correctly?

One way would be to use "skeleton"->"image" attribute, and write custom loader, but again, if in the future it will be modified by newer versions it would break our project.