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Add to SafariWhen comparing Spine vs DragonBones Pro, the Slant community recommends Spine for most people. In the question“What are the best 2D skeletal animation tools?” Spine is ranked 1st while DragonBones Pro is ranked 2nd. 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 Animation weight
This is a very useful feature because you can make a walk animation that you can simply change the animation weight to see the character start running, because it will increase the scale of the movement of the bones in the animation. This will increase the hand and the leg swing as you increase the animation weight and the character, making it appear as though it is running.
Pro Switch sprites
Can easily switch sprites in between the animations like switching clothes and other multiple behaviors.
Pro Completely programmable animations
Watching and moving can be programed depending upon certain events.
Pro Animation speed changing, bone scaling, switching postures
Size as well as animation speed can be easily changed during an animation.
Pro Multiresolution with texture scale
Can easily export to different texture sizes to target multiple resolution platforms.
Pro Color transform, changeable Z-Order
Can easily change the Z-Order of a sprite during an animation and can also change the color mask on a sprite, in between an animation.
Pro Animation reuse/clone
Create once and use the same animation for different characters just by simply cloning the same animation for the new characters.
Pro Nesting skeleton, timeline tween
You can nest skeletons and change the timeline of the animation in between the animations in order to make some cool effects.
Pro Flash Pro extension, WYSWYG
There is an extension available for Adobe Flash users, which gives a WYSWYG design window inside of flash.
Pro Open source
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 Almost no documentation
Con Not developed anymore
Publisher/ Developer dropped support for the software and left it in the dark. Use Spine instead.
Con Deceptive pricing
It's not "free" if you can't save, and tutorials cost money.
