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Add to SafariWhen comparing Spine vs Marionette Studio, the Slant community recommends Spine for most people. In the question“What are the best 2D skeletal animation tools?” Spine is ranked 1st while Marionette Studio is ranked 11th. The most important reason people chose Spine is:
Spine provides integrated modules for 14 major engines including GameMaker Studio, Cocos2Dx, LOVE, MonoGame, Unity, XNA, Flash, HTML 5, libgdx, Corona, and more. Generic runtime libraries are also available for C, C++, Objective C, C#, JavaScript, Lua and ActionScript 3. Dozens of third party libraries support additional targets.
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Integration libraries support most engines
Spine provides integrated modules for 14 major engines including GameMaker Studio, Cocos2Dx, LOVE, MonoGame, Unity, XNA, Flash, HTML 5, libgdx, Corona, and more. Generic runtime libraries are also available for C, C++, Objective C, C#, JavaScript, Lua and ActionScript 3. Dozens of third party libraries support additional targets.
Pro Simplified UI allows for an easy learning curve
No-nonsense workflow allows you to create your artwork in programs much better suited for the task like Illustrator and Inkscape for example, while Spine itself focuses only on the important task of skeletal animation.
Pro Allows for easy use of artwork from third party programs
Spine's developers provide scripts which makes exporting artwork from third party programs much easier to do.
Pro Community-driven feature roadmap
Esoteric Software maintains public Waffle issue trackers to help plan and prioritize feature additions.
Pro Funded via Kickstarter
Spine received resounding support from Kickstarter backers, beating its pledge goal by over 5 times. A second successful Kickstarter added meshes and other important features.
Pro Price high for this product
Pro Actively maintained
Marionette Studio team is actively involved in the development of this software. There is a changelog available and a public Trello board.
Pro Cloud based solution
Projects and files can be stored in cloud and the is no need for creating backups.
Pro Animation export
Animations can be exported as image packs and using some 3rd party tools can be imported and used in Unity.
Pro Easy to use
Can be used by anyone - intuitive interface and short learning curve.
Pro Web-based software
Easy to be accessed as no software needs to be download or installed on your computer.
Cons
Con Spine Professional is expensive
Spine Essential includes nearly all features, except IK, weights, and meshes. Spine Professional is expensive, though it does give all future updates for life (Spine is updated very often).
Con Requires EVERY developer to have a license
Ever developer needs a license, not just the animator, or an overall license for the project. The license agreement is extremely restrictive.
Con Doesn't support gamemaker 2.3
Con No integration for lesser known engines
Spine does not directly support some game engines, such as Construct 2 or Clickteam Fusion.
Con It's not free
Con No integration for major game development engines
There is no integration with major game engines such as Unity, Construct 2D, Unreal, Cocos 2dx, etc.
