Rig a 2D character for Spine

Last updated: October 12, 2026

Turn a 2D character, creature or prop into a rigged, animated Spine skeleton your game engine can load. The Layer agent splits flat art into body parts, has the rig built with an idle and the animations you ask for, and delivers a Spine zip you can open in Spine or load in a Spine runtime.

Before you start

  • Start from art that already exists: a layered PSD with one layer per body part, or a flat image of a single character, creature or prop. The agent rigs art; it does not design the character.
  • Know which Spine version your project uses. The agent builds for Spine 4.1, 4.2 or 4.3.
  • Rigging runs as an agent job and needs a Creative Units balance to start. The agent shows the cost for you to approve before it begins; see Creative Units.

Steps

  1. Attach your character art to the agent. On Home, select Add to prompt > Attach files or photos and pick the image or PSD. In a session, you can instead open the image and choose Rig character for Spine from its tools, which sends the same request with the image attached.

  2. Ask the agent to rig it for Spine, and name the animations you want and the engine it is for.

  3. Answer the agent's questions, such as the Spine version and the animations besides the idle, then submit your answers.

  4. Review the plan and approve it. The agent splits the art into parts if it needs to, checks the cut, and hands the rig to its rigging specialist.

  5. When the rig is done, it lands on the board with a message that lists the delivered files, the body plan, the animations and the Spine version.

  6. Open it to play it in the Spine player. Choose an animation, change the playback speed, or turn on the bone overlay under the player's settings to check the pivots.

Result

A Spine zip on the board and in your library, holding the skeleton JSON, its atlas and the atlas's texture pages, with bones, pivots, draw order and an idle animation plus up to three clips you asked for. The agent also delivers a preview video of the animations. When the art needed splitting, the split parts land on the board as a layered PSD.

Use the rig in Spine and in your engine

  • In the Spine editor: unzip the file and use Spine's Import Data on the skeleton JSON, with the atlas and texture pages beside it. Spine's own guide covers the options: Importing skeleton data.
  • In an engine: load the JSON, the atlas and the texture pages with the Spine runtime for your engine (Unity, Unreal, Godot and others). Keep the files together and keep the texture pages' file names unchanged, since the atlas refers to them by name. See Spine runtimes.
  • Match the version. A Spine runtime loads data exported for its own major and minor version. Ask for the version your project's runtime uses; if you change runtime later, ask the agent for the same rig in the new version.

Production tips

  • Draw for the rig. Art in a neutral pose with arms clear of the body, legs apart and capes or hair swept behind gives every part a whole shape. Anything hidden behind another part in the original art does not exist in any layer, and the agent has to paint it in.
  • Bring a layered PSD when you have one. Name the layers by body part (head, torso, arm_l, arm_r). The agent rigs a clean PSD directly and only splits art that is not already in parts.
  • Iterate in the same conversation. Ask for changes after delivery ("slow the idle down", "move the left elbow pivot up", "add a hit reaction"). The agent edits the rig it built and keeps every other bone, slot and animation name, so engine code that plays them keeps working.
  • Keep names stable. Animation names such as idle, walk and attack are what your game code calls. Tell the agent the exact names your project expects.
  • Animate a prop too. Chests that open, banners that sway and plants that bend rig the same way; say it is a prop and describe the motion.

If something goes wrong

  • The agent says Spine rigging is not available. It is not turned on for your workspace. Contact support from Help & Resources > Talk To Us.
  • A limb detaches or bends in the wrong place. Tell the agent which part and where it should bend; it moves the pivot or repairs the part and redelivers.
  • The zip will not load in your engine. Check that the runtime's version matches the version the rig was built for, and that the JSON, atlas and pages were imported together.
  • An uploaded Spine zip shows as a plain archive. Layer recognises a Spine zip when it finds a skeleton JSON next to its atlas in the same folder of the zip. See Supported file types and what you can do with them.

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