Bone animation in 8 directions

2D
1

Hello! This is my first post and I searched a lot about it but can’t find or figure out the correct way to to the following:
I’m trying to make a simple 2D top down shooter, but I want to have different bone animations for all the 8 directions of the characters. Of course this means that I need to update a lot of sprites so the character can have different perspectives depending to the direction it wants to go.

So my question is this. How can I make a character move in 8 directions with different bone animations?
Should I update the sprites and animations?
Should I create a different object with the animations and change the object when the character is changing the direction it’s moving?
I thought about it but changing the character object every time when it’s changing the directions seems pretty wrong. I’m not sure.

Hope I was clear, my english is not the best and I’m just starting to make games (this is my 2nd game)
I don’t have problem while coding at all, so you can be as explicit as you need.

Thank you for your help and sorry if this post inflict any forum rule.

2

@mrmauusan

“Should I create a different object with the animations and change the object when the character is changing the direction it’s moving?”

You should probably explain more…

It is just guess work how your character looks. Is it really stylized top down view, or slightly tilted view and so on? So is it Hotline Miami perspective or something else. Maybe share some images.

Are you going to animate your character in 3D software, or using Unity’s tools?

Are you perhaps using Unity’s 2D Animation Package for bone animation?

And what kind of animations you are going to have?

Also, if you are using bones, then why do you say you are going to have a lot of sprites, when usually bone animation is used to reduce the need for animation frames…

Usually using the same skeleton only works in simple cases where rotating the object is enough (like directly top down view), but otherwise usually it is best to go with one skeleton for each completely different direction.