In a 2D Animation prefab, on instantiation, scripts have references to different prefab

Unity Engine
1

Sorry, I cannot think of a succinct title to this post. I have no idea if this is related to 2D Animation or Prefabs or neither. Maybe I’m doing something wrong.

Here’s what I’m trying to do: I’ve got a 2D animation character with multiple faces. The player takes actions and then I enable/disable certain faces to make the character’s expression change. In my hierarchy you can see the faces here:

I have a scriptable object which has a reference to a prefab of my animation. This prefab has a script with references to the face GameObjects like so:

Notice how the icon of Idle Face is different from the other two? That’s because, after the prefab was instantiated, I manually dragged the face3 from the hierarchy (pictured above) to the script while in play mode. When I did that to with all the faces, it started working as expected, but before I did that, the actions had no effect on the screen.

Here’s how I’m instantiating the prefab:

            if (characterData.humanAnimation != null)
            {
                spriteRenderer.sprite = null;
                var animation = Instantiate(characterData.humanAnimation, sprite.transform);
                animation.name = "Animation";

                var faceReferences = animation.GetComponent<FaceReferences>();
                faceReferences.BeIdle();
            }

characterData is the scriptable object. humanAnimation is the 2D Animation Package prefab.

Here’s the really weird thing (at least to me): After I stopped the game and started it again, the instantiated Face References script STILL had the right face3 and the wrong face1 and 2, even though I didn’t do anything to save this prefab after I dragged the things over manually. Weirder still, after dragging face 1 and 2 over manually, after I restarted, it looked just like the image above: The instantiated Face References script STILL had the right face3 and the wrong face1 and 2.

Anyway, the workaround I came up with is this, and it seems to fix the issue:

            if (characterData.humanAnimation != null)
            {
                spriteRenderer.sprite = null;
                var animation = Instantiate(characterData.humanAnimation, sprite.transform);
                animation.name = "Animation";

                var faceReferences = animation.GetComponent<FaceReferences>();
                faceReferences.idleFace = animation.transform.Find(faceReferences.idleFace.name).gameObject;
                faceReferences.happyFace = animation.transform.Find(faceReferences.happyFace.name).gameObject;
                faceReferences.upsetFace = animation.transform.Find(faceReferences.upsetFace.name).gameObject;
                faceReferences.BeIdle();
            }

But, it feels like a bug that I have to do this at all. I would expect this to work with no manual intervention: Shouldn’t the script get references to the instantiated prefab instead of what it’s getting?

Here’s my FaceReferences script if that helps:

using System;
using System.Collections;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using UnityEngine;

public class FaceReferences : MonoBehaviour
{
    public GameObject idleFace;
    public GameObject happyFace;
    public GameObject upsetFace;

    public void BeHappy()
    {
        idleFace.SetActive(false);
        happyFace.SetActive(true);
        upsetFace.SetActive(false);
    }

    public void BeIdle()
    {
        idleFace.SetActive(true);
        happyFace.SetActive(false);
        upsetFace.SetActive(false);
    }

    public void BeUpset()
    {
        idleFace.SetActive(false);
        happyFace.SetActive(false);
        upsetFace.SetActive(true);
    }
}
2

Hi, please report a bug to us so we can take a look. Thanks

3

I tried to reproduce it and figured out it was my fault. I have a prefab of the original, then a variant. I put a script on the variant that has references to gameObjects and I accidentally dragged references from the original into the variant’s script. I meant to drag references from the variant into the variant script. I’m sorry to waste your time, but thank you for offering to help.

4

Glad to hear you sorted it out!

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