Hello,
I have a question regarding animations. I have different sprite sheets for different body parts. For example Sprite sheets for:
Chest,
Arms.
Legs,
Head,
Hair.
My question is how could I create my animation with them being on separate sprite sheets. Would I be able to use Defold to join these together or would I have to use an outside program to do it. If I have to use an outside program which would you recommend.
Good question,
I have that same question too, but I have just figured out half of the answer.
The first part of my answer is to have a sprite for every part of the body, or armour, or weapon, or outfit, each sprite pointing to the atlas of your spritesheet, easy.
But then, the problematic part, how do you assemble them together? 
I mean, they are assembled together already in the game object, what I mean is how do you animate them as a whole? How do I fix the arm in the shoulder, the legs in the hip, the boots in the feet, the gun in the hand, the helmet in the head, when the animation is running, jumping, falling, etc…
They all have to have the same number of frames for sure, but how to position them every frame? or is it better to have all frames the same size and transparent with the body part or accesory already positioned in the place it has to be in every frame? Wouldn’t that be a lot of wasted space?
I already have all of the sprites in an atlas as well. That was the first thing I did. Now I need to put the character together based off of my sprite sheets. I continued searching for ways to do this yesterday with no avail. I am really hoping that there is a way to do this without having to separate each individual part and make a sprite out of them already together. That would put a huge damper on what my end goal is.
Not so long ago I found a very interesting article: Inside Velocity 2X: Animation System
Where they talk about using a spritesheet like this:
It’s an interesting article, but doesn’t help me much with Defold. I have each part on it’s own separate sprite sheets. I’m not sure if you just checked the image displayed in the post or if you actually looked at the album. Piecing the correct displays together and making the different animations doing it this route doesn’t have any documentation on it from what I saw. I am hoping that it’s possible though without a third party software.
Yeah I saw but once again it’s not related to what I am trying to do. I’m using completely separate sprite sheets for each body part.
You can do it, with game objects, and animate them programmaticly, but I don’t know why you would want to do it like that, seem like a lot of extra work, for no gain. 3rd party software will do exactly what you want and Defold can import it and animate it
I wanted to do it this way to allow more customization towards personal preference. Different clothing, faces, arm color, hair style, etc. Instead of being forced into preset styles.
I’d like to be able to use the various sprite sheets to make a default animation and when players choose a different clothing or whatever it would be adjusted. Scripting this part I know how to do, but creating the animation with Defold I don’t.
Which 3rd party software would be capable of doing what I need? I’ve tinkered with Spine and Dragon Bones but those are made to adjust individual sprites not a sprite sheet.
I’m guessing you’ve read this, but just in case not
I’m pretty sure you can’t swap atlases on a sprite, but you can parent game objects to bones in a spine animation, so you’d have a single atlas, you know the sprites names, I’d just parent and un-parent as needed.
I will try it out when I get home and update after. I’ve read trough the document yes, but I will run through it again and attempt doing what you mentioned. Thank you.
I’ve no idea if this will work, I’ve not tried it myself, it’s something I thought of quick, but I’ve done a lot with DragonBones and parenting, and I know that works, I’d be interested to know how you get on.
My issue with Dragon Bones was that I’m using sprite sheets instead of one individual part and adjusting it with Dragon Bone. Dragon Bones and spine are good for sprites that on one individual part for each thing instead of several different sprites for each head, chest, etc. atleast from what I noticed when testing it.
Take a look at my game bleach on itch.io, thats a bragon bones animtion but it’s made up of 4 parts, head, right hand and wand, body and legs
I can’t export to spine with Dragon Bones either. It has some login thing to some Chinese site. I even tried it on the 4.9.5 version and the same thing.
I use 4.9.5, I don’t remember a login, so if you installed 5, I would delete everything you also find in user/appdata folder, and give 4.9.5 another go.
