Spine

3.0.5

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Unofficial Spine runtime Swift library, allows you to play animations created in the Spine app (http://esotericsoftware.com).
swift spritekit ios macos tvos watchos spine
maxgribov/Spine

What's New

Update package platforms versions

2024-09-28T22:46:34Z

To support used in codebase Identifiable protocol, package platforms versions updated.

Tests workflow

Spine

This Swift library allows you to upload characters and their animations from the Spine (ESS version) (v4.1+) to SpriteKit for platforms::

iOS macOS tvOS watchOS

Implemented almost all the functionality of the essential version of Spine app: Animation of bones, skins, animation of slots, creation of physical bodies on the basis of bounding boxes and some other. See Implemented Features for more information.

Warning: There is no implementation of Spine Pro functionality and it is not planned. There are no such features as meshes and their animations. Moreover, when trying to load a character from Spine Pro version with meshes, it will not even be displayed correctly on the screen, a lot of textures will be missing.

If you really need Spine's Pro functionality, and you don't care about SpriteKie, take a look at the official Spine iOS runtime: https://esotericsoftware.com/spine-ios

Example of working with the library: Sample project
Learn more about working with the library: Spine Wiki You can also compile the documentation in Xcode

Hero

Installing

Spine Library can be installed using Swift Package Manager.

Use the package URL to search for the URLImage package: https://github.com/maxgribov/Spine

For how-to integrate package dependencies refer to Adding Package Dependencies to Your App documentation.

Basic Usage

Assets

Files

  1. In Assets catalog create folder. (Goblins folder in example below)
  2. Create sprite atlases. (default, goblin and goblingirl sprite atlases in example below)
  3. Put images into sprite atlaces.

Note: Note that the images that are in the root folder of the Spine app project must be in the sprite atlas named default in the Xcode project.

Final result should looks something like this:

Assets

Namespace

Set Provides Namespace option enabled for the root folder and for all sprite atlases in the Xcode's attribute inspector:

Namespace

Warning: If you forget to set the namespace, later when you initialize your character images can be just not found.

JSON

Put the JSON exported from the Spine application somewhere in your project:

json

For more information about assets see Assets Wiki

Code

Somewhere at the beginning of your code, import the Spine library:

import Spine

The easiest way to load a character from a JSON file and apply skin to it is to use the appropriate Skeleton class init:

let character = try Skeleton(json: "goblins-ess", folder: "goblins", skin: "goblin")

Skeleton is a subclass of SKNode, so you can do with it whatever you can do with SKNode itself

This way you can apply the animation created in Spine to the character:

let walkAnimation = try character.action(animation: "walk")
character.run(walkAnimation)

The action(animation:) method returns an object of the SKAction class so that you can use this animation as any other object of the SKAction class

This is an example of the simplest scene in which we load our Goblin character, add it to the scene and start walk animation in an endless loop:

import SpriteKit
import Spine

class GameScene: SKScene {
    
    override func didMove(to view: SKView) {
        
        do {
            
            let character = try Skeleton(json: "goblins-ess", folder: "goblins", skin: "goblin")
            character.name = "character"
            character.position = CGPoint(x: self.size.width / 2, y: (self.size.height / 2) - 200)
            addChild(character)
            
            let walkAnimation = try character.action(animation: "walk")
            character.run(.repeatForever(walkAnimation))

        } catch {
            
            print(error)
        }
    }
}

Implemented Features

Name Model Feature Animation
Bones
- Rotation + + +
- Translation + + +
- Scale + + +
- Shear + - -
Bones extras:
- Reflect + -
- Rotation Inheritance + -
- Scale Inheritance + -
- Reflect Inheritance + -
Slots
- Attachment + + +
- Tint Color + + +/-
- Dark Tint Color + -
Skins + +
Attachments
- Region + +
- Mesh + - -
- Linked Mesh + - -
- Bounding Box + + -
- Path + - -
- Point + +
- Clipping + - -
Constraints
- IK Constraint + - -
- Transform Constraint + - -
- Path Constraint + - -
Events + + +
Draw Order + + +

Documentation

The Spine library is pretty well documented. You can find the documentation both in the source code files themselves and compile the documentation for displaying it in the Developer Documentation in Xcode.

To compile the documentation use the menu: Product > Build Documentation

Or use a shortcut: ctrl + shift + command + D

As a result, the Developer Documentation will open and you will see something like this:

Docs

System Requirements

Swift 5.0

  • iOS 8.0+
  • macOS 10.10+
  • tvOS 9.0+
  • watchOS 3.0+

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details

Useful links

Description

  • Swift Tools 5.5.0
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Dependencies

  • None
Last updated: Fri Sep 26 2025 04:10:41 GMT-0900 (Hawaii-Aleutian Daylight Time)