Yes, for your setup, it would be best to create a skin for each equippable piece (weapons, hats, torso skins) and enable them during runtime via script. This approach allows you to manage the different combinations of equipment and appearances your character can have without needing to create a unique skeleton for each possible combination. As mentioned in the forum discussions, skins can be combined programmatically in Unity using the new skin API, allowing for a flexible and efficient way to handle multiple equipment parts and appearances.
For the altered animations, such as the character holding their arm differently when holding a weapon, you can indeed play two animations at the same time. This technique is known as animation mixing, where you can blend animations together to achieve the desired effect. For example, you could have a base idle or run animation that plays continuously and then mix in an arm animation specific to the weapon being held. This can be achieved using the animation blending features provided by the Spine Unity runtime.
