The Crusader seem to have many parts that is controlled invidually, which is why he is split up that much,
- the .atlas file tells where all the parts are on the image
- the .skel have the animation and information of how it should put them on textures (some don't use texture animation at all)

- you could make your own animation in Spine ($$$) to replace the existing, then you would just draw in parts as the sprite should look, then export them to spine which puts them just like you had them in the art program, then you would just connect the bone structure and animate them

- It would be neat if we could write something that would export it back and forth between the atlas's png layout and into a art program format in the positions it should have in the skel file (it could be possible) .. but if things have texture animation, then they are often cropped near the edge so you can't draw anything extra outside its area

- last way would be to replace idle with one of the single frame ones .. both the skel, atlas and png .. but then it won't be animated

if you do art, then at the end remember to select transparent areas and select the induvidual color layers of red green blue and delete all outside color that remains (as they do become visible in the different blending modes that the game uses.

I've had this problem as well.

https://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=819597757
Look under "Recommended Software" see "Important Information for Artists", it got some info about plugins and tools to fix the transparency.. that fixed it for me.

Yes, it is possible to get most of it to appear without problem.

- Take the image that is in there and store beside the file
- change to the newest version of spine and you should find a option to unpack the atlas file
- unpack it using the atlas file and image, all the parts should now appear in the folder
- change back to the old version and you the red squares should be gone now

This should make all the parts that isn't mesh animated appear. (which is most of them)

The skel files in the game is saved without taking priority to storing the mesh coorinates as they were originally, so they are there but wrongly scaled, to fix this I wrote a program to auto scale and re-write all the coordinates easlily, using the unpacked images and the skel file, but I made it in GameMaker which forces you to put the files odd places to write and save.. I'll be trying to rewrite it in Java this month.

EDIT: Unless someone else have some easy fix for it

1) I managed to view the skeleton files and make a stupid program to fix the scaling problem that makes them broken .. I will work on Java next month and can try make a better version of it then, because the current version demands that you do everything from a stupid placed save folder.

2) I'm pretty sure you can do it in any order, because you can always make some stick figure art to begin with .. coding doesn't require art, but you might want to have a skeleton animation ready to use as default til you get something to replace it with .. and the animation would sometimes require that you do the art first in case you have hair wiggle you want to get down, but you could do the base skeleton without problem with just some stickman standin.

3) I have not tried to make a character from scratch so far, but from what I have read .. you just need to make sure that some of the skeleton bone names are the same .. because the codes in the game uses that to detect them.

4) can't see what you mean here .. it's just a single skeleton file with an atlas like the other animations.

5) I was trying to change it so that one character is a lot different then the others, BUT .. all the alternative characters share the same visual effects, so that was kinda a problem for me :P .. in the code you pretty much tell the game when to put it on top of the character if I remember correctly ..

I've done a bit of character skinning lately, and MANY of the parts that moves on the characters are cut using a looping path of points (aka a mesh), anything outside that path is not drawn, so that limits how much you can draw outside the original sprites.

To fix this I had to get Spine ($300) and make a custom program to repair the mesh points in the original files (because they get messed up when importing, and I just wanted to make an addition to the original ones) before I could start working on them.

if I wanted to make a new model then Spine would be the only thing you would have needed.. I do not know if it is possible to animate it in a free skeleton program and then export it to json which someone with Spine Pro can read and convert for you. (what free versions are there out there anyway?)

Are we talking about a reskin or did you intend to change how things works aswell?

I'm trying to load and edit the houndmaster, but I can't find a way to get past that all the meshes is tiny and doesn't fit the image, anyone got any idea what I'm doing wrong.
Skeleton data warnings[tailbit.com]
(Nonessensials it the cut off words in the error lines)

And yes, version 2.1.27, unchecked Power of two and set Max width and height to 4096 .. I've also split up the image using the atlas file, (is it supposed to do that by itself?)