- Edited
Curve accuracy
Hi!
The new curve editor is a great addition to an already great software!
However it could be made even better with the ability to define the accuracy of animation curves in some way.
My problem is this
For big sweeping movements in scale and position with extra slow start or end to them I usually set a start and end key and adjust the bezier handles accordingly. But the approximation of the curve makes the animation very choppy.
I know that it can be solved by adding in extra keyframes to the curve to break it up into smaller segments.
But doing that makes it harder to adjust the timing and movement since then I have to work on multiple keys to adjust the curve and if often breaks the smoothness.
So instead I have to delete those extra keys, do the adjustment on the 2 original keys and then add the extra in again when I am happy with the changes.
Possible solutions
So what I would love to see in Spine is either a way to set a greater accuracy value on a segment of a curve so that we can locally change the way the approximation is done.
Or if possible we could set some form of "floating" keys. A key that does not alter the curves path or values in any way but just floats there in time and on the curve defined by the real keyframes and acts as a way to add curve definition.
I hope to see this feature in a future update of Spine.
Keep up the great work!
Best regards
/Lars
The smoothness of the curves is a trade off for runtime memory usage and performance. Using more segments increases memory usage and decreases performance. It would be great if you could define the number of segments, but at runtime all curves use the same number of segments because that makes for a significant performance optimization. It's actually always worked this way, but with the 4.0 graph it's easier to see and the graph encourages you to use larger curves, where the issue is more prominent.
There are other possible solutions though. For a given key, we could allow you to specify how many extra keys you want between it and the next key. In the editor, we would then automatically calculate the ideal locations to place the extra keys to achieve the smoothest curve. You cannot modify these extra keys and they won't get in your way when working on your animation. When you export, the extra keys are exported as normal, so at runtime everything remains the same, just with more keys to make the curves smoother.
We'll consider this for 4.1, but it's a bit too early to make promises. I've created an issue for it:
https://github.com/EsotericSoftware/spine-editor/issues/597