Character Views

Character Views is an advanced feature for rendering characters from different angles or perspectives. It is used by plugins and custom components that need alternative character visuals -- for example, showing a character's back during RPG battles or a side profile in a cutscene.

You do not need Character Views for standard use. Scenes, character sheets, dialogue portraits, and galleries all use the default base rendering automatically. Only define views when building custom rendering systems (e.g., battle plugins) that require non-standard character art.

How It Works

Characters are rendered using skin layers (static images) and optionally Spine animations. By default, all layers without a view tag are rendered -- these are the base layers.

When a view is defined in the Characters > Views editor tab, it can be assigned to specific skin layers or spine configurations. Those tagged layers are then excluded from default rendering and only appear when explicitly requested by a component.

Defining Views

  1. Go to Characters > Views in the engine editor
  2. Create a new view entry (e.g., id: "back", name: "Back")

Tagging Skin Layers

  1. Go to Characters > Skin Layers
  2. On any layer, set the view dropdown to your defined view (e.g., "back")
  3. That layer will no longer render in default mode -- it only renders when the view is requested

Spine Views

Character templates and statuses support spine_views -- an array of Spine configurations for specific views:

"spine_views": [
  { "id": "back", "atlas": "path/to/back.atlas", "skeleton": "path/to/back.skel", "default_animation": "idle" }
]

Each entry overrides the default Spine rendering when the matching view is requested. A character can have a static base doll and a Spine back-view, or vice versa.

Using Views in Components

Pass the view prop to CharacterDoll or CharacterSlot to request a specific view:

// Render the character's back view
<CharacterSlot :character="char" :slot="slot" view="back" />

// Default rendering (base layers only, no view prop needed)
<CharacterDoll :character="char" />

When view is provided:

  • Base layers (no view tag) are not rendered
  • Only layers matching the requested view are rendered
  • If a matching spine entry exists for that view, it overrides the default Spine config

Script API

// Check if a character has a spine config for a specific view
character.isSpineForView('back');

// Get the spine config for a view (returns null if not defined)
const config = character.getSpineForView('back');

// Get filtered image layers for a specific view
const layers = character.getImageLayersForView('back');