Preparing art for Riggy: PSD layers and PNGs
How to lay out a PSD or a set of PNGs so that every moving piece arrives as its own part, in the right place and in the right drawing order.
A layered PSD
The PSD is the main way in. Riggy reads the file itself, so neither Photoshop nor the Spine editor is needed.
- One layer per moving piece. Whatever should move on its own — a wheel, an arm, an eyelid — needs its own layer. Pieces flattened together move together.
- Name the layers for what they are. You and the model both find parts by name; “layer 3” leaves the model guessing what the piece is for.
- The layer order is the drawing order: the top layer is drawn on top.
- A group tagged [bone] becomes a bone. The tag is optional: without it every part arrives on the root, and the model places the bones when you ask for motion.
- The shape of a part is what you see in Photoshop, not only its transparency: layer masks, group masks, clipping groups and opacity all count.
- Hidden layers and adjustment layers are skipped. The import summary in the chat lists everything that was left out, so nothing disappears silently.
- The file must be 8 bits per channel, RGB.
- Art too large for one 2048 × 2048 atlas page is scaled down as a whole — parts, positions and canvas together — and the summary says by how much.
- Two layers with the same name stop the import, and the message names both. Rename one and drop the file again.
A set of PNGs
No layered file? Drop the pieces as images: one file per part, up to 64 at once. Each image becomes a part with its own bone.
- Images of the same size — layers exported at canvas size — keep their places: the position is written in the transparent margins.
- Sliced pieces of different sizes carry no positions at all. They land in the centre of the canvas; ask the model to lay them out, then check the result — it is the model’s guess.
- Numbers in the file names set the drawing order: part2 goes before part10.
- JPEG and WebP are converted to PNG in the browser before upload.
- A single image is a valid rig: it can sway, rotate and turn.
After the import
Read the summary in the chat: it names the parts that came in and what was skipped. Fewer parts than layers usually means hidden or empty layers. A part in the wrong place can be dragged on the canvas; a part on the wrong bone can be dragged onto another bone in the tree.