Hello! Long story short, we’re making a 2D side scrolling game where the main character is a dragon! I’m planning to use Anima2D to rig the body but I’m stuck on what to do with the wings! It’s obviously not going to feel very natural with rigging so I figured perhaps I can hand-draw the animation of the wings as frames and rig only the body. Is it possible to do this and sync these animations as one? If so, how? And can I have tips? Thank you!
Hi and welcome,
I’m curious, what makes you think that wings are not going to feel natural, if animated manually with a rig? Did you try this and it failed or what happened? Just wondering, as people animate dragons all the time in 2D/3D and there’s tons of neat and good looking ones out there. I think it’s more likely if you glue two different techniques together, it is more likely the result will look out of place and not really good.
If you can control both of your animations from code, you can then syncronize them.
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I am currently preparing the sprites so I can’t say I’ve tried it, but here’s the wing I’ve got! While I can understand it would look good with a 3D model and a rig, I’m having troubles imagining how the folds and the side view of the wing while flying would look if I tried to rig a 2D image of an extended wing.
Probably depends on the art style/camera angle you choose. Is your game going to be viewed from a top-down angle? (just guessing based on your wing sketch.)
Oftentimes you have to limit the range of movement in the animation when you’re doing a 2D game, but I think it’s just a benefit. Of course don’t expect to do (at least easily) some complex setup that somehow magically makes it possible to move the wing like a real wing, for example. Figure out the range of movement you need and then you can probably find the solution what you actually need to do?
I think it’s also a good idea to check existing good looking 2D games with animated characters (that use Spine etc.) and then see how they’ve worked around some of the limitations.
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And if it’s possible to use sprite switching like with Spine, then you could swap sprites for the wing when it changes drastically - one example being having the top-surface seen instead of the underside.
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Well I suppose the problem mainly comes from the angle, It’s going to be a side scroller, I figured I would need to draw it at that angle first to do the bones… But I’ll try to do something and/or check out examples like you said before attempting to mix up different animation styles. If it really is possible to have sprite switching, then it might solve most of my problems! Thank you for your time, I really appreciate it!
Just so I’m not causing any unnecessary confusion, I’m not sure if sprite switching works with Anima, but a few tools (like Spine) do support sprite switching.
Btw, have you evaluated that 2D Animation package you can download from Package Manager. It’s not the same as Anima2D.
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Oh, I don’t think I have, I am pretty new to Unity so I just searched and found Anima2D and felt like it would be my best shot! I’ll make sure to check it out now though!
Ok, it’s always good to check your options before starting a new endeavor like a game.
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