Despite the fact that Dragon Bones has not been updated for a long time, it is still the best free software for 2D bone animation. You can learn all the basics in it, and then if you want to do animation professionally, you can easily switch to the Spine, but it was much better if the developers of Dragon Bones released an update that would meet modern requirements, even if it was paid $ 20-40, I think many were ready would pay, Spine s really an expensive tool for beginners, especially if you start doing animation and there is no understanding whether you can make money from it or it will remain a hobby.
I've been using dragonbones for 3 years now. This is a very good comparison video and justifies the cost for Spine. Aside what dragonbones lacks for engine integration it's still surprisingly strong when you just need to create sprite sheets for any engine.
Right now, Dragonbones unity implementation had last commit 2 years old. And Spine unity implementation had last commit 22 hours ago. At this point, Dragonbones runtime is abandonware.
When no new change is needed and it's fine without any updates then there is no need of any updates. Some is paid so it gets frequent updates. Here is an example. You have a shop with no income will you keep running it? That is your answer. In the end pick up your own poison. People making animations with Dragon bones professionally for long time now.
@@KalponicGames Dragonbones have a big problem with "mesh" because it's cause blur effect on images... so, I think in that point the software "needs" to fix this bug. And, of course, can have a new improvements... but I agree with "Re Mora"... it's look like a abandonware... it's usefull, but I think still need updates.
@@KalponicGames unity constantly introduces massive changes (and bugs) with every big release, which forces spine developers to adapt to them even if they have nothing more to add. I'll be VERY surprised if Dragonbones is coded in such a magical way that it needs no such adaptations whatsoever. So it can be pretty deadly poison, unless you are prepared to fix their runtime by yourself.
This is a very comprehensive video, thank you. I've been using Dragonbones for a few months now, and I really like it, but some of those Spine features are exactly what I need, and I never even knew it.
I wanted to try game animation, but don't have money for Spine and I was a little suspicious if there's a point of spending time in free DragonBones. However it looks like DB is still a decent and I can't wait to try it out. Thank you very much for interesting video c:
Awesome video, I've been thinking about purchasing Spine for awhile now but I've recently discovered a similar rigging structured 2D animation software called Moho and now I'm conflicted which one to go with. It would be awesome if you could compare the two!
I'm currently working on a game, and I use dragonbones, and have no problem with unity it's working like a charm yes he doesn't have constraints but if you do things a la old school you can achieve the result you want, personally I prefer deforming the mesh manualy, there is more freedome and at least im not limited to the constraints limitations Oh and thnx for the video
DragonBones offset lifehack - just copy your cycle to 3 parts and then work on middle one, and you can offset keys you want, but its work if you will render it as sequence, i dont know how programmers will add your animation to engine xd
Soo... The part in 11:22 is kind of giving me the impression, that you can export a project from Dragonbones into Spine and use the best features of both. That would be pretty sweet considering all the time saved avoiding the tedious parts 😅
Thanks a lot for this great comparison. I'm in the process in settling for an affordable and usable 2d animation software and wondered how spine would compare to live 2d (which I try to avoid because of the lack of a perpetual software license). And the of course alternatives like Adobe Animate or Synfig Studio. However, thanks again for this comparison and all these great tutorials in your channel!
If your looking into just 2d animations for web for even mini show or ads, take a look at Moho. The Debut version costs as much as Spine ESS but has *almost* all the Spine PRO features. Spine is WAAAAAY too expensive.
Agreed, the price of Spine is beyond the reach of many artist. I think that while this review was good, the wait given to Free -vs- $300 was quite skewed.
great vid! I am really just looking into things as a newb, I dont mind paying for a software but I think dragonbones being free will allow me to mess around with this sort of thing to see if this is something I really want to do
the only small thing i want to ask is do both programs creates animations in gifs? excuse my silly question but im just a small artist and not good at making codes or games ( i might work with someone in the future.) , i hope i hear from you soon- and want to try your games owo
It's actually better than GIFs: they both create a small configuration file that stores the animation data. It saves a lot of disk space and RAM, improving the game performance. But if you need a GIF or a sequence of frames (like PNGs), they both can do that too.
@@ThinkCitric glad to know that! Oh by the way how you manage to get dragonbones? Because when I tried to download it it kept giving me errors. I'm very stuck qwq
@@RoxasPikachu Yeah, they've moved it to another link, and didn't update the website for some reason. :/ This one worked for me: docs.egret.com/dragonbones/en
It looks to me like this software was designed mostly to make the transfer from psd to spine easier and it became it's own software after a while. Much like how blender started as a video editing software and was slowly updated to do 3d software manipulation towards the end of the original studios life
i tried to instal dragonbones, but no use because some problem of adobe air, it says "initial content could not be found for this application, try re-installing or contacting the publisher for assistance". is anibody can help to solve my problem?
Great video and great review. I hope you can help me with a question about a particular topic I have not found much help honestly, except for a channel named gilanimation where the guy is using Dragonbones and he's able to switch an image from an opened hand to a fist during the walk cycle of his character. Is that possible to do in Spine? I'm asking because my character is kind of similar to Samus (Metroid) and I need her to transform her arm into a laser beam while walking or running and due to the disadvantages for animation in Dragonbones I was hopping to find a feature for switching images in Spine pro, I have the version 3.8. I hope you can help me. Thanks.
Yes, absolutely, it is possible to do in Spine as well. You can attach multiple images to the same slot and easily switch between them - only one image will be displayed at the same time.
@@ThinkCitric thanks! When you say "only one image will be displayed at the same time" means that the image will be displayed in the particular frame you need? Would you be able to make a quick video to explain that? I would love that. Thanks again.
Just saw the video from Gilanimation. Looks like you can add multiple layers of images in one bone and choose which image you want to show or hide... this would be super great if spine can do this...
@@willgorut87 basically the video showed that in one bone, you can add multiple images and choose which image you want to show or hide. So for instance, if you have an open hand and a closed hand stuck to one bone, you could animate it to make whatever shows or hides in real time animation... If Spine can do this, then that would answer your question, but I assume it does since it allows you to customise the image setting with different colours as seen in your video.... but I don't know.
@@Godlimate yeah, that's exactly my point. Figure out if you can do the same in Spine. So far what I have seen about that functionality is this ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-YYt_Pg4DeP0.html like transitioning from one image to another with some sort of fading effect. I think it would be it, yet I will test it myself.
before all of that you need to compare how accessible is it to download the program, i CANT even download dragonbones because their webpage is broken so.. they automaticaly loose everything else
I used this link back then, when making this video, and it used to work for me: docs.egret.com/dragonbones/en But now it seems that the whole Egret documentation website is broken, not just the DragonBones part. I'd say it's a temporary issue, their other websites seem to be up and running.
You can make transform constraint to move bones in opposite direction in dragonbones drive.google.com/file/d/1CacMv2CFfp6f4ImBAWqY9qD98IIYnvIm/view?usp=sharing
This comparison makes it seem like you'll lose many hours over time if you use Dragonbones (DB). I was just researching because a devlog mentioned DB and I became interested. Now I know if I ever make a 2D game, Spine Pro is the best option. Good vid, very clear and concise!
Dragonbones is impossible to download, i the page seems to be broken for over 6 months, i lost my installer now im screwed, and Spine way too expensive.
@@jabourq i already sended an email 3 days ago to them but i have alot people telling me it can take months until they see it, just like the current website problem, the only way is to ask someone that has the installer.
@@Exirock I was able to find a download to 4.9 on Internet Archives thankfully. But despite it prompting for an update upon launch, it fails to update. Hopefully the website is fixed soon!
I hope it comes out soon XD otherwise I’d probably end up using both software. I feel like switching to Spine because the skin mode in Spriter crashes and well, even when I open my file, the whole skeleton is screwed up and I have to restart
I had used dragonbones a little bit, but i would always prefer to make professional level animations over amateur. So this video only convinces me to buy spine. Afterall Spine has better animation tools and the software in mind exists for the purpose of animating
Dragonbones is Chinese owned - are there any security risks? I always read on RU-vid comments that Cocos for example has some dubious privacy settings.
I still use bone a lot to this day and have introduced it to a couple people who are interested in spine but the price of buying it it’s a little frightening and they would like to at least get familiar with the program and see if they are actually really interested in the whole workflow of it before committing to buying it’s fine The price differences I feel like it’s always going to keep bones somewhat around but they haven’t been updating it if that’s what you’re referring to....
Dragonbones is dead, no more new support for new version of Unity or other Engine, the website has shut down as well. Spine is your best go, or using Anima2D for Unity can be an alternative, but the user interface sucks, a painful experience.
you said dragonbones doesn't have transform constraints, so how is this possible? ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ddXpdfIydxo.html is this an add-on? what's it called?
It's a clever use of bones hierarchy. Apparently, you can mimic some of constraints functionality, if you'll turn off child bone's inheritance of scale and rotation. Then you control the child bones by scaling or rotating the parent one. It's not like a traditional constraints feature, but you can still get very impressive results out of this.