How can I reference an animator in another script so that it plays the desired animation when a button is clicked?

Questions & Answers
1

Hi, I’m currently trying to make a simulation game (kind of like tamagotchi) where you nurture a pet through different interactions. I used a sprite sheet in unity 2d and spliced them to make the different animations needed. (idle, fed, hungry, etc). And I used this code on the Pet’s game object

var anim : Animator;

function Start()
{
anim = GetComponent("Animator");
}

function Update()
{
if(Input.GetMouseButton(0) == false)
{
anim.SetTrigger("NoRub");
}
}

function OnMouseOver()
{
if(Input.GetMouseButton(0))
anim.SetTrigger("Rub");
}

So that it plays the ‘Rub’ transition animation when you rub the pet (left mouse + hold) to make him happy and returns to idle state (which is just bobbing up and down) when you stop. Anyway, my question is how can I reference the pet animation in another script, for example a ‘feed button’? so it triggers the animation after a click and then reverts back to idle as usual.

I’m not the best at coding and I was wondering if anyone can help me create a variable in the other scripts which is an animator type so that this could work? In one attempt, i tried dragging the animator from the pet into the other script’s swatches in the inspector but the feedbutton turned into the pet.

2

You need to trigger NoRub in every frame if you’re not rubbing? Why not have a bool “rubbing” instead a rub trigger and stay in the state a long as rubbing=true? Only leave to idle if rubbing=false.

Now you could reference the animator of another object direclty:

var datAnim = datOtherObject.GetComponent("Animator");

But I think that’s bad style and you end up with animator code spread out through your whole project…

Just Reference your Creature from every Button

var thing:Tamagotchi;

then you can call a public Feed method on them:

thing.Feed();

and then in the Tamagotchi you have a public Feed function

public function Feed()
{
    anim.SetTrigger("Feed");
}