All posts

[Live2D] A Neat Little Discovery While Animating!

I recently made the jump from Spine to Live2D for animating, so I'm still relatively new to it.

I'm still exploring the unique strengths of both programs.

For instance, the biggest difference between them is the physics engine! I’ve been trying to figure out how to leverage it effectively when creating animations. (Sometimes it honestly just feels easier to manually keyframe simple swaying motions.)

So for a recent animation commission, I decided to try something different. First, I keyframed the X-axis movement for the petals in the background. Then, I used that axis as an input parameter in the physics settings to drive the rest of the movement (like turning, moving up and down on the Y-axis, and rotating).

It worked, and it ended up saving me so much time! (Though to be honest, my logic for setting up physics isn't the best—looking at the final result, manually adjusting the shapes still feels like it would have been more precise.)

Still, I used this method for parts of the commission, and it was definitely a lot faster than my old workflow in Spine!

Learning a new program is always so refreshing. I hope I can keep finding neat little tricks like this to level up the quality of my work while speeding up my process!

Keep reading