13 VFX Animation Techniques in Spine for 2D Animators

1. Align Sequence Attachment To Any Surface

When importing a sequence into Spine, remember it can still be converted to a mesh. A meshed sequence is a powerful tool, allowing us to deform it and align it to any surface, giving the Spine 2D animation a unique look

Download the project and see for yourself!

2. Cut Out Sequence Attachments

Create Sequence Attachment

Convert it to mesh

Align on the section where you want to create cutout

Edit the mesh and cut out the part that falls outside

3. A Small Blurry Circle To Optimize VFX

Animate stretching small circle to make hard edges pop out and feel more believable

4. Make Glows Flow Using A Small Circle

Align multiple small circles along the object and animate them fading in and out with a slight delay

5. Shine Flow with textures

6. Sandwich Slots Create Masks

Check the video for detailed tutorial. Note this technique works only on opaque pixels

7. Duplicate To Enrich the VFX

After duplicating several copies of the VFX, consider offsetting their animation, changing their size or rotation, flipping them, deforming their meshes, and adjusting their color and blending

8. Use Small Sequences To Compose Bigger VFX

When adding a new sequence to Spine, maximize its value by reusing it as much as possible

9. Spinning Particles In Perspective

This technique applies not only to particles but everything in spine, So simple but brings your animations to new dimensions

 Check the tutorial below

10. Animate Particles In A Group

Animating each particle individually can produce impressive results, but it greatly increases the animator's workload and the CPU's computational demands due to the numerous timelines involved. Instead, consider creating clusters of particles and animating only the parent bones. By disabling scale inheritance, you ensure that particles do not inherit the parent's scale, so scaling the cluster affects only the spacing between particles, not their size

11. Deform VFX to achieve something different

Feel free to deform the meshes of the sequence attachments. It can be really surprising what you can achieve with that

12. Star 2D Animation in Spine

Think smarter and plan ahead when working with VFX. Finding the best solution can save you a lot of time. Check out this tutorial to see the easiest method I found for animating stars in the night sky

13. Cracks With Meshes Expand

Having one image you can generate multiple versions of attachments using meshes functionality to deform or cut out