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When comparing Spine vs SmoothMoves, the Slant community recommends Spine for most people. In the question“What are the best 2D skeletal animation tools?” Spine is ranked 1st while SmoothMoves is ranked 13th. 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 PlayMaker integration
Developers echo17 provide Playmaker action scripts for SmoothMoves.
Pro Texture swapping and tinting at runtime
Animations can be re-skinned in several ways, entirely on the fly.
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 Bone hierarchy is not collapsible
When working with a complex skeleton, the entire tree is always visible. There is no way to hide bones under their parents.
Con Unity Middleware
SmoothMoves is not a stand-alone application. It runs entirely within the Unity Editor, and is not compatible with other engines.
