if I have a character controller attached to a model, which will cause a trigger event when entering a trigger, the model or the character controller?
Only takes a few minutes to set up a quick test. OnTriggerEnter for the player and the trigger, OnControllerColliderHit for each of them as well. Put things like Debug.Log("playerTrigger hit:" + col.gameObject.name);
inside.
If you test ControllerColliderHit, it will constantly hit the ground, so you may want to tag the ground and add: if(!col.CompareTag("ground"))
to weed those out.
I believe that the trigger detects a charController, and nothing else will detect anything, but I’d run my own tests – it can depend on the set up.