I'm glad you got past the images folder. Note we are working on tutorial videos that are more workflow oriented, rather than feature oriented like the documentation.
The Photoshop script is meant to be run inside Photoshop. You would need to open a PSD from those other programs with Photoshop, then run the script. We don't have a tool that runs on a PSD and exports JSON. We've considered accepting PSD files directly, but this can fail depending on what Photoshop features the PSD uses.
We talked with the Affinity Designer guys some time ago and I believe they added a Spine JSON export option, though I haven't seen it personally. I don't know about Affinity Photo, sorry. I haven't seen a script for ArtRage.
Using weights (binding a mesh to bones) is not required to create mesh deform keys. Relevant doc page:
Meshes - Spine User Guide: Keying
Select a region attachment, check Mesh
, then you can go to animate mode, edit the mesh vertices, and key the mesh (or use Auto Key
).
To use soft selection, open the Mesh Tools view (click Views in the titlebar in upper right of the Spine window, or alt + e
) and check the Soft selection
box. Now when you manipulate mesh vertices, the vertices nearby are also affected. Sorry there aren't docs for the Mesh Tools view yet, it is very new.