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You can now create 2D animations in Dragon Bones, a free software for 2D animations. It is a bit like Spine, but free! It can export to “Spine JSON” format, compatible with Spine (almost – it required a tiny trivial fix on the engine side). See how to export to Dragon Bones guide.
I think, it is better to implement a DragonBones (free) importer rather than leaning on Spine (paid) export,
because personally I’ve tried some exports, but unfortunately most of them fail to load data, mainly images.
Thanks for your attention.
Hi!
The implementation of Dragon Bones-specific JSON format is started, but it’s not that advanced.
Using Spine JSON format to transfer data from Dragon Bones to CGE so far seemed more effective. It also means that we can support both Dragon Bones and Spine, focusing on one format. That is why I advise it on https://castle-engine.io/creating_data_dragon_bones.php .
But this all can change!, depending on users’ needs 🙂 Do you have an example Dragon Bones file that is problematic to transfer to CGE (using both Dragon Bones JSON and Spine JSON formats, and their support in CGE)? Please submit it as engine issue on https://github.com/castle-engine/castle-engine/issues and I’ll investigate the best solution.
Castle Game Engine has it’s own Spine runtime instead of relying on official Spine runtime so you don’t have to pay for any license fee in order to use Spine format in your game. Beside based on my past experience DragonBones (at least the editor) has some shady practices and forces users to login to save their work.
As far as I know, official Spine runtimes are free and even open-source, https://github.com/EsotericSoftware/spine-runtimes . In case of Spine, you pay for Essential/Professional/Enterprise version, which is necessary to be able to export to Spine JSON, https://esotericsoftware.com/spine-purchase . This applies to Castle Game Engine as well as any other engine.
I haven’t used Dragon Bones much, as I cannot comment about that.
Anyway, the key point still stands — if you have some file that is difficult to export, please submit it to https://github.com/castle-engine/castle-engine/issues . We’ll investigate the best way:)
@michalis: Yes official Spine runtimes are open source, but they are not free if you want to publish your games. You need to own a Spine license (at least Essential) in order to use the official runtime in your games, even if you make those animations in DragonBones and export to Spine format. In case of Castle Game Engine, since it didn’t use the official runtimes, the above restrictions do not apply to games made in Castle Game Engine.
See this reply from Nate on Game Maker forum for details: https://forum.yoyogames.com/index.php?threads/free-skeletal-software.7793/page-2#post-70104
@TrungLe: Ah, thank you — I didn’t know that the Spine license is also necessary to use Spine runtimes in Unity and other engines.
Yes, Castle Game Engine has it’s own code — so you can use Dragon Bones with Castle Game Engine for free (even when going through Spine JSON format).
Well, I have problems exporting DragonBones 5.6 to Spine in general. Doesn’t work. Spine 2.1 or 3.3. Not on Windows, not on Mac. And Spine itself is now on 4.x or something. Soooo….
Please describe in more details how it fails. “Doesn’t work” is too short 🙂 What input do you have, what do you press and where, and what is the error message.
If you ask about moving the data from Dragon Bones to Spine — this is not the right place to ask, I’m afraid. We’re Castle Game Engine, an engine that supports rendering and animating models in Spine JSON format (whether it is exported from Spine or Dragon Bones). We support Spine JSON as produced by practically all Spine versions (including 2.x, 3.x, 4.x).
If the models exported from Dragon Bones (using Spine JSON format) don’t work in Castle Game Engine — then this is something we can fix 🙂
Note that Dragon Bones doesn’t seem to available anymore. The downloads from https://dragonbones.github.io/en/download.html don’t work. That is also why we removed Dragon Bones mentions from CGE website.
I wanted to say that I search for a game engine that support dragonbones.json as it is. The Dragonbones Spine Exporter doesn’t work. So I can’t export to Spine, not on Windows and not on Mac. Yes I know that’s not available as download anymore, but I really don’t care. I always like to work with stuff that isn’t the default/mainstream solution…
I understand the sentiment, but we cannot support an authoring tool (Dragon Bones) that cannot even be downloaded 🙂 I mean I literally cannot test Dragon Bones export now, because I lost my old downloads of it and it seems I can’t download it anymore.
We need the Dragon Bones to become “alive” again (new release, downloads working) to consider supporting Dragon Bones-specific JSON export. Otherwise, it is not only impossible to test, it would also not be used by too many people.
As for Spine JSON, we support it. You didn’t clarify how “The Dragonbones Spine Exporter doesn’t work.”, I need more information to advise something for this — if there’s some error from Dragon Bones when exporting to Spine JSON format, clarify what it is, what happens, what message do you get. If it seems like an error on Dragon Bones — contact the Dragon Bones developers. Again, I understand you want to use Dragon Bones, but if it has problems (export to Spine JSON fails) and it is impossible to download, then I’m afraid we cannot help with this from the Castle Game Engine side. You need to contact Dragon Bones developers.
Regards,
Michalis
Regarding the Spine Export: I am tired of repeating me all the time: I got NO message, it just doesn’t work. There is nothing, no error no pop-up. Nothing. On any system. I hope I am clear enough for you. Anyway, I have other game engines that support dragonbones natively (i.e. Cocos Creator 3.8) and Godot has extensions (Godot 3 has one and Godot 4 has also another), Haxeflixel has also an addon, so has the Haxe language itself. Unity, too… (I think LibGDX has one, also RPGMaker. also Kotlin KorGE has implemented a Dragbones Extension, too. So I have no need to contact the (Egret) DragonBones devs. Because this is not possible anymore. And I am good with Dragonbones either way. There is a lot of sourcecode for this on GitHub, I have the full .ts implementation for CocosCreator and Soywiz (KorGE Engine) translated a javascript source to Kotlin. But I have no idea how to do that in Pascal. So if it is not possible, then it is not possible. Bummer. But it is what it is.
You are clear -> now. In your 2 previous messages all you said was “Spine Exporter doesn’t work”. That’s why I was asking for details.
And, in general, this is a bug of Dragon Bones that I would recommend to submit Dragon Bones devs. If you have any contact to them. If they would fix it, you would be able to use CGE Spine JSON support together with Dragon Bones. (And if there’s no way to contact Dragon Bones developers, and software is not maintained anymore, then it’s a problem of Dragon Bones…)
As for other engines: I’m aware some have Dragon Bones-specific format handling. I guess this was implemented back when it was possible to download Dragon Bones.
To be clear, it is possible to implement Dragon Bones-specific format in CGE.
But I was speaking above about my priorities. If you’re interested in doing it yourself or if someone else wants to contribute this — sure. You can register a new format, specifically for Dragon Bones, in CGE ( https://castle-engine.io/wp/2024/05/19/models-can-be-saved-to-x3d-or-stl-now-soon-to-gltf-too-new-engine-api-to-register-custom-model-formats-that-can-be-loaded-saved-proper-handling-of-duplicate-node-names-in-gltf-on-conversion-to-x3d/ ), and implement all handling of it, reading Dragon Bones files into X3D files. The existing Spine JSON format reader may serve as an inspiration.
Naturally this is quite some work. So if you’re looking for a ready Dragon Bones-specific format handling, then this indeed doesn’t exist in Castle Game Engine now. And it’s not on my roadmap, since as we said in this thread that 1. Dragon Bones cannot be downloaded and 2. it is not possible to contact its developers. This means the software is not actively maintained and usage will likely decline.
To be clear, I’d be happy to see the trend change. If Dragon Bones development will be active, if downloads will work, then I’d be happy to consider implementing Dragon Bones-specific format in CGE. But also then they’ll likely fix Dragon Bones -> Spine export.