Hi, everyone

We're doing UE4 2d project called Luscus and we're using Spine for all the ingame animations. So far we're loving it as it covers all our needs (though integration with UE4 itself could be improved). But so war there's no UMG integration and we can't deliver all these sweet moving pictures to UI layer.

So we wanted to ask are there any plans for making a UMG component for UE4?

Thank you in advance for your answers

InnerChild wrote

UMG will not work with Spine because of how Spine creates the render. In fact UMG does not support paper2D flipbook animations neither.

You have 4 options:
Export Spine animation as spritesheet and create a material with a flipbook node to play the animation.
Mix a 3dwidget with your Spine Renderer inside a Blueprint.
Capture the Spine animation in a texture target and send it to UMG via material
Create/Modify a slate to render 3d objects on UMG.

Thank you for your answer, we'll investigate these options. Although we were hoping for a native integration, mainly because there is a plugin that actually adds the Flipbook play to UMG (no materials support so far, but still).

InnerChild wrote

If you are looking for a flipbook solution, you can use this
Unreal Engine 4 Flipbooks Materials - YouTube

and set the material domain to UI

Thank you for the link. I've tried this solution earlier, it won't do - max texture is 8k x 8k and we have a 32 frames FullHD flipbook, so it's kinda heavy

InnerChild wrote

Then try a 3d widget.
Or render texture

Thanks, we're currently evaluating another skeletal based software that has UMG solution, so we'll see how it goes

It's Creature (there's a discussion thread about it somewhere on the forum). They have rolled out a UMG integration about a month ago, it's in beta, but seems to be working pretty good. So far we're not a huge fans of the software itself because of many reasons. But UI animations in UE4 are an absolute must for us to have, so we're torn in between right now.

Our animators love Spine and have experience with it going way back from KS days, but so far there were no words from Spine team on UMG integration and that's a kinda bummer...

badlogic wrote

Sorry, I've totally missed your post. I've added an issue to the tracker here [ue4] Add UMG support · #1047

It seems that I can paint a procedural mesh in a widget implementation, so there shouldn't be any technical hurdles (apart from maybe tint black support, which requires an additional vertex attribute). I'm afraid I won't get to this before the new year.

You said UE4 integration could be improved overall. Please let us know what you think could be done better!

Sorry, missed your post also - noticed it after replying to InnerChild). Thank you very much for addressing this feature, it's a really important one for us (and for the UE4 2d community as well). If you can deliver even a prototype in a separate branch - that would be really helpful as it would give us understanding of whether we'll be able to use Spine for all of our needs.

As for the overall improvements:
1) animations dropdown list - I'm not sure, but you had something like this coming up in the next plugin versions, but I'll still add this: it would be cool if all text fields for animations would be replaced with dropdowns that could be listed in the array or a similar format with validation and so on.

2) blend overrides - it's quite handy when you can override animations blend time just for one particular case when using "Set animation" node, right in the node itself.

3) latest plugin version gives us UE4 editor crash when importing JSON (no issues with .skel though)

4) we are not sure if this one is a plugin issue or else, but we're getting something like "LODs not loading properly" issue in editor and cooked build (see attachment)

badlogic wrote

Thanks for a robust answer
1) Ok, just please mind that there's a team out there somewhere waiting for this feature like nothing else

2) Sure, done. [UE4] Blend overrides for "Set animation" node · #1049

3) We'll check it out in 4.18, as we have just migrated. Prior to that it was 4.17, so the crash definitely was there

4) Unfortunately we don't, but we can send you the full one. Also, the issue could be fixed for editor for one session if I load the "problem" characters via BP>Viewport first. If I select data and atlas file for the buggy character then he's loaded ok in viewport and ok in game, but after editor restart the issue is back and i have to do these steps anew

badlogic wrote

4) Oki, hit me up at contact@esotericsoftware.com.

Sent you a mail

InnerChild wrote

About the drop down we were working on it using Custom K2 node but we have frozen our project with spine until it gets more features.

Can you please drop some details here on the custom nodes? We're about to make some crutch-ish solution for this stuff for now But we hope guys will get the UE4 plugin in the proper shape soon