Esoteric Software

[chrismweb]

Hey, while I was starting out with Spine, I put together some things I thought would be useful to have at some point in the future, to speed up the workflow:

• Hot keys to quickly move forward and backwards a frame (Flash uses '<' and '>' keys, or rather ',' and '.')
• Being able to use the arrow keys to do minor positioning of the selected object (bone or image)
• Being able to have a bone or image selected, hit the 'delete' key to delete it (and delete the slot if there are no other images in it)
• A list of hot keys (I figured out move, scale, rotate- but maybe even a tool tip, showing the key, when hovered over them would be nice too)
• Toggle for auto (animation)keys- so you don't have to push 'K' to add all keys, it does it when you do something
• A way of selecting/opening a image folder, instead of using the project folder

Overall the program is great, and has a ton of extras I'm glad are there, but hadn't been expecting (being able to highlight multiple bones, and use them as a IK chain), and probably stuff I haven't discovered yet

[Nate]

The tooltips already list the hotkeys, but of course this doesn't replace documentation. Also there are some hotkeys that don't have UI buttons (undo, redo, etc). Auto keying sounds nice, but you WILL mess up your animations and be sad. We might add it anyway. You can set a path for the images by clicking the Images node in the tree. All the other features you mentioned are on our list.

[chrismweb]

Do you guys have a list of hot keys anywhere? (and are there any currently to move back and forth by 1 frame?)

I didn't even realize there were tooltips- they behave a little strange. They take 5 seconds before they appear the first time, but once they have appeared, then they appear to display normally (almost instantly when hovering over buttons).

Maybe you can decrease the delay on the tooltips appearing to something in the range of 1.5 seconds, or almost instantly, if there are no negatives? I've been using it for awhile, and had figured there were no tooltips, because I've never seen them appear through normal use.

So far:
'v' - translate
'x' - scale
'c' - rotate
'b' = pose

'w' - move to next key frame
's' - move to prev key frame
'd' - play (I am used to using enter' for playing an animation)

I also agree with a previous post that it would make more sense to have the buttons ordered 'translate-rotation-scale' instead of scale in the middle -adds extra time if you're changing using the buttons a lot.

[chrismweb]

Also, another thing I noticed is that when you type in a value (for translate/rotate, ect) and press enter, it sets the value, but leaves the text box selected, so you have to click somewhere else, and unselect your part.

So if you change a rotation, press enter, and then 'k' to set the value for the frame, it types in the box.

Summary: It would make more sense after entering something in a textbox and hitting enter for it to no longer have the text box selected.

[chrismweb]

Also- if you add images to the directory, is there any way to update it in spine, or do you just have to close, and re-open the program?

[Søren]

You can make tooltips pop up instantly by pressing F1.

As soon as these pretty hectic first days after the Kickstarter are over I'll get working on some more documentation and have the hotkeys in there.

Thanks for the heads up on the text box not deselecting.

There is a refresh button if you click the images node, but images should refresh automatically. If they don't that's a bug we need to fix.

[Nate]

For now this might help:

*Key all changed SRTs, slot images, and slot colors. (L)
*Key SR or T for current tool. (k)
*Key all SRT for selection. (ctrl+k)
Switch tool:
*scale (x)
*rotate (c)
*translate (v)
*pose (b)
*Deselect (space, escape)
*Play forward/stop (d, right arrow)
*Play backward/stop (a, left arrow)
*Jump to start (q)
*Jump to last key (e)
*Next key (w, up arrow)
*Previous key (s, down arrow)
*Next frame (r)
*Previous frame (f)
*Toggle repeat (ctrl+r)
*Undo (ctrl+z)
*Redo (shift+ctrl+z, ctrl+y)
*Show tooltip without delay (F1)

Will fix hitting enter after typing a value.

[Nushio]

Another feature request:
A list of Recently opened projects.

I <3 this software already, but keep switching between my new spine animation and the examples, so the recently opened one would be awesome :-)