• Runtimes

  • Does the Spine timeline set preferences in Unity?

The Devs I'm working with are insisting that my timeline playback settings in Spine are setting the default Unity behavior of the animations. So if I have my timeline in Spine set to looping, they say it sets all the animations to loop by default. If I have my timeline not set to looping, they don't loop.

I don't know if I believe this. It really doesn't make sense- obviously Unity should set the function, not Spine. I am assuming they're missing a setting in the runtimes or in Unity itself.

Can anyone confirm this for me or let me know where to point them? I need them to be able to set this on their end.

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@anna Could you please describe what exactly you and your devs mean by "timeline playback settings in Spine"? And what by "it sets all the animations to loop by default"?

In general however, there is no Spine Preferences setting which affects whether timeline or timeline clips are looping or not. So I wonder how your devs get to this assumption. You could tell them that they shall provide the necessary reproduction steps, where changing whatever Spine-related settings affects looping behaviour of other clips or timelines.

  • anna replied to this.

    Harald
    They mean literally the loop playback setting on the timeline (screenshot they sent me attached). I can't see why that would ever effect anything outside of Spine, but they say that when they turn it off and export from Spine it's off in Unity, when they turn it on it's on in Unity.

    I really can't see how that would be the case, I've scoured the JSON and the export settings for anything that would indicate that that information is being exported and I can't find anything, but they're insistent that that's what happened.

      @Harald
      They're saying that the Spine export, driven by that timeline toggle, is controlling this setting in Unity.


      "#p109939

      Another Dev took these steps to verify that it is, in fact, impossible for Spine to set that behavior in Unity. These are the steps he took:

      1.) Check out the cat source and open in Spine4.
      2.) Export settings, one export folder with loop checked, and one folder with loop unchecked.
      3.) Verification using Bitwise compare of exact match of exports.
      Conclusion: The playback button in the Spine editor is not an export setting and Spine exports have no such value. When you import spine files they are loop agnostic and any such setting is determined via C# code. Your developers are responsible for loop control via code.

      Can you confirm that this analysis makes sense? Dev A is still not entirely convinced.

        AnnaB

        Conclusion: The playback button in the Spine editor is not an export setting and Spine exports have no such value. When you import spine files they are loop agnostic and any such setting is determined via C# code. Your developers are responsible for loop control via code.

        That's true.

        Can you confirm that this analysis makes sense? Dev A is still not entirely convinced.

        You may want to show your developer the documentations that explain what is written in skeleton data. As those documentations state, whether or not to loop the animation is not written in the exported JSON or binary format file:
        http://esotericsoftware.com/spine-json-format
        http://esotericsoftware.com/spine-binary-format

        The apply method determines whether to loop or not:
        http://esotericsoftware.com/spine-api-reference#Animation-apply

          Thanks so much for confirming, I really appreciate your help.

          AnnaB Can you confirm that this analysis makes sense? Dev A is still not entirely convinced.

          That's hilarious given that your team already confirmed binary equality of the exported files. 😃
          A preview playback setting would never influence exported files, that would be terrible design.

          Your unconvinced dev should first learn how to use the spine-unity runtime before blaming others:
          https://esotericsoftware.com/spine-unity#Setting-Animations
          And in general he should read the documentation:
          https://esotericsoftware.com/spine-unity
          http://esotericsoftware.com/spine-api-reference

          And it's also highly recommended to have a look at the example scenes in Spine Examples/Getting Started if he does not yet know how to set animations. There is even a 20 minute video available about the example scenes:

            @anna In case your devs have any complaints about your skeleton exports in the future, you can tell them that we would prefer to directly talk to them here on the forum instead of letting you do their job.

            He's finally conceded- after insisting he repro himself. That was after the other Devs analysis AND your confirmation of the analysis. Exhausting!