Custom Animated Characters

This page is has not been started yet, but I will leave a blurb about it.

Custom Animated Characters requires Spine. This is a $379 proprietary software used to create Skeleton Animations. Note that the $69 version of the software lacks several features necessary for creating animations, you can only create basic skeletons with it, but without image (Mesh) support.

The version of the Spine runtime that is used by Monster Train 2 is 4.2. That means older animations from Monster Train 1 will not work out of the box as that used Spine 3.6, you would have to upgrade them to be usable with Spine 4.2

You may be able to get by with using DragonBones, exporting it for use in spine, but that is still not enough. Dragonbones only supports up to Spine 3.X, you would still need to find someone with a profession license to Spine to export it for Spine.Unity 4.2.

If you have a license to spine or have Spine animations exported specifically for use in the Spine 4.2 runtime, then you are able to use them in Monster Train 2. I will point to a mod by myself that has spine animations.

Once done export it as a JSON file, be sure to rename the atlas file with a .atlas.txt extension and include the .json / .png / .atlas.txt files in your mod

The important sections are the following.

Character GameObject

    {
      "id": "SpikedriverColonyCharacterArt",
      "type": "character_art",
      "extensions": {
        "character_art": {
          "sprite": "@SpikedriverColony",
          "skeleton_animations": [
            {
              "animation": "idle",
              "skeleton": "@SpikedriverColony_Idle"
            },
            {
              "animation": "hit_react",
              "skeleton": "@SpikedriverColony_HitReact"
            },
            {
              "animation": "attack",
              "skeleton": "@SpikedriverColony_Attack"
            }
          ],
          "transform": {
            "position": {
              "x": 0,
              "y": -0.60,
              "z": 0
            },
            "scale": {
              "x": 1,
              "y": 1,
              "z": 1
            }
          }
        }
      }
    }

Skeleton Animation declarations.

  "skeletons": [
    {
      "id": "SpikedriverColony_Idle",
      "atlas_path": "assets/skeletons/PLR_SpikedriverColony_Idle.atlas.txt",
      "data_path": "assets/skeletons/PLR_SpikedriverColony_Idle.json",
      "texture_paths": [ "assets/skeletons/PLR_SpikedriverColony_Idle.png" ]
    },
    {
      "id": "SpikedriverColony_HitReact",
      "atlas_path": "assets/skeletons/PLR_SpikedriverColony_HitReact.atlas.txt",
      "data_path": "assets/skeletons/PLR_SpikedriverColony_HitReact.json",
      "texture_paths": [ "assets/skeletons/PLR_SpikedriverColony_HitReact.png" ]
    },
    {
      "id": "SpikedriverColony_Attack",
      "atlas_path": "assets/skeletons/PLR_SpikedriverColony_Attack.atlas.txt",
      "data_path": "assets/skeletons/PLR_SpikedriverColony_Attack.json",
      "texture_paths": [ "assets/skeletons/PLR_SpikedriverColony_Attack.png" ]
    }
  ],