2D Character Animation for Unity
I was experimenting with some 2D character animation software to see what I can achieve in the Unity game engine. I did some research on Spine… looks great, but it’s too expensive to experiment with. Below are drawings and animation made using Dragonbones, which is a free/open source alternative to Spine.
Dragonbones seems like a great tool for rigging and animating a 2D character, but I had some trouble getting the character to work the way I wanted it to in Unity. I might be missing something, but it seems like the only way to control a Dragonbones GameObject in Unity is with code. I’m not much of a programmer, so I rely on Unity’s built in Animator component and animation controllers to do a lot of the work with character movement.
I decided to rebuild the character and animations directly in Unity using a free plugin called, Anima2D. My experience with it was great. I was able to do everything I could in Dragonbones, plus Anima2D seems to have some unique features like spring bones which came in handy for making the cape function dynamically in response to the character’s movements. Building and animating the character directly in Unity is also a major time saver. I can make changes to the animations and rigging on the fly!
