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Adding new animations to Mecanim Controller

Jamie

Thanks for that, Blinz. It hasn't actually worked, but I think I can see why (and I wouldn't be surprised if this is why it wasn't working for me at all to start with). I followed your steps and it didn't appear to work, but I noticed I'm getting the following error in the Console:

"NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
SpineEditorUtilities.ResetExistingSkeletonData (System.String skeletonJSONPath) (at Assets/spine-unity/Editor/SpineEditorUtilities.cs:382)"

ResetExistingSkeletonData! That sounds very much like the kind of function I need. I've just looked in the SpineEditorUtilities.cs file and can see the following code:

static void ResetExistingSkeletonData (string skeletonJSONPath) {

  string dir = Path.GetDirectoryName(skeletonJSONPath);
  TextAsset textAsset = (TextAsset)AssetDatabase.LoadAssetAtPath(skeletonJSONPath, typeof(TextAsset));
  DirectoryInfo dirInfo = new DirectoryInfo(dir);

  FileInfo[] files = dirInfo.GetFiles("*.asset");

  foreach (var f in files) {
     string localPath = dir + "/" + f.Name;
     var obj = AssetDatabase.LoadAssetAtPath(localPath, typeof(Object));
     if (obj is SkeletonDataAsset) {
        var skeletonDataAsset = (SkeletonDataAsset)obj;

        if (skeletonDataAsset.skeletonJSON == textAsset) {
           if (Selection.activeObject == skeletonDataAsset)
              Selection.activeObject = null;

           skeletonDataAsset.Reset();
           
           string guid = AssetDatabase.AssetPathToGUID(AssetDatabase.GetAssetPath(skeletonDataAsset));
           string lastHash = EditorPrefs.GetString(guid + "_hash");

           if (lastHash != skeletonDataAsset.GetSkeletonData(true).Hash) {
              //do any upkeep on synchronized assets
              UpdateMecanimClips(skeletonDataAsset);
           }

           EditorPrefs.SetString(guid + "_hash", skeletonDataAsset.GetSkeletonData(true).Hash);
        }
     }
  }
   }

That all looks fine to me, but I'm no expert, and obviously something has gone wrong. The ".asset" file is in the correct place, so I'm not sure what could be causing this.

Do you think I should start a new thread specifically for this error?

blinz117

Yep, that is likely your problem. The line that is having that error is the first line below (based on the Git repo: https://github.com/EsotericSoftware/spi ... ilities.cs). That means the "UpdateMechanimClips" method is never getting called.

if (lastHash != skeletonDataAsset.GetSkeletonData(true).Hash) {
    //do any upkeep on synchronized assets
    UpdateMecanimClips(skeletonDataAsset);
 }

One thing that you can try is to change "true" in that line to "false". That parameter specifies if the GetSkeletonData function spits out debugging info. If you set it to false, you can see the debug info and maybe get a better idea of what is going on.

clandestine

I just tested this with and without baking, and here's the behaviour I get:

With baking, animations aren't updated in the controller unless you choose "Bake All Skins" or "Bake [Skin]" from the actual SkeletonData asset. This makes sense, because baking animations into clips is much slower than creating a dummy asset to mirror Mecanim.
Without baking, animations are automatically updated in the controller when you export new animations.

My guess here is that your SkeletonData asset is pointing at the wrong / an invalid asset or something. Can you post:

Your directory layout (just a screen of the window in Unity)
Your Inspector window for the SkeletonData asset.

Mitch

Yea... I should handle baking better...

Unity 5 solved a lot of problems with not being able to access Controllers through editor code so I was holding off. I'll take another pass at dealing with updating existing clips for Baking as long as they're still in the same folder.

Jamie

Thanks for your replies.

I've uploaded two images:

unity_project.png

This shows the Project window. You can see the "character_suit_constraints_Controller" file only has 6 animations under it, and never gets updated automatically when I export new animations. At the moment, when I bake the SkeletonData, it goes into the "Baked" folder. That's where the updated Controller with all of the animations lives. When I add a new animations, I re-bake and go find the new Controller in that folder, then drag the new animation up a level into the Animator window for the Controller in the "characters > pc > data" folder.

unity_inspector.png

This is the Inspector for the SkeletonData file. You can see it's linked to the correct controller that's shown in the previous image. You'll also notice that there are 11 animations shown, only 6 of which are shown in the Controller in the previous image.

clandestine

Okay, I've just done a test to figure out updating baked controllers. It looks like you can edit the controller and bake over it while maintaining transitions, so that's probably what you want to do. You could also use two controllers, but since you're doing baking the SkeletonData asset should not point at any controller. That's only for the Mecanim-connected SkeletonAnimator, which is separate from baking.

You said earlier that baking over the same controller was messing with your states / transitions, right? That's not happening for me - what version of Unity do you have?

Jamie

I'm using Unity 5 now. If I try rebaking over the existing one, I get an error, but it's fine. I'm giving up on worrying about this for now. I'm sure it's just got something to do with how I originally set up my project, and I imagine I wouldn't encounter the same problems in future if I just make sure I edit the correct Controller in the first place. I can work around it anyway.

And you were right: If I bake a new Controller, edit it, then rebake, it does update the animations and retain the existing transitions.

Majicpanda

I'm actually experiencing this exact issue.. so there is no way to "Generate Mecanim Controller" and preserve your states and transitions?

I have just started my project so doing it the right way from scratch is no problem, but it seems very confusing what the proper workflow should be 😉

There are a ton of things I'd like to use in the Spine controller like swapping out attachments as sprites for equipping items on a player that I don't think you can do if you bake?

Pharan

That's right. Baking doesn't support a lot of features. Baking is a workaround in case you don't need/don't want to use or rely on the Spine runtime— which includes publishing stuff to the Unity Asset store (though I heard that this is actually okay).

As for Mecanim controller stuff, I'll send a message to Mitch to let him know you're having problems.

Majicpanda

Small bit to add. I just tried exporting after making a new animation and then went into Unity, made sure the SkeletonData had the Animation Controller still hooked up in the inspector and then did Instantiate(Mecanim). This appears to update and if not existing, create a new animation controller which might work great except that it duplicated a ton of clips under my controller and now I can't get them out. Any idea why this would have occured?

Edit: It seems unity auto updates the controller after you build over to unity so not sure what caused all the dupe clips now unfortunately...

Xelnath

Hmmm... I've done some work with Mechanim states and such... I'll see if my programming buddy or I can solve this problem and share the script.

Pravus

Hello, i know this thread has been inactive for a couple of months but i came to share my solution to the same problem the opener asked about (since i'm having the same issue).

I use the spine animations in unity without baking them, instead i use a SkeletonAnimator with the auto-generated Mecanim controller.

What i did was create manually a new Animator Controller that uses the animations from the Spine-created controller, so when i export new animations from the Spine project i just delete the Spine-created animator and create it again with right click on the SkeletonData file -> Spine -> Instantiate (Mecanim).
And then i just drag & drop the new animations from the spine-created controller (from the project view) into my manually created animator controller (which has all the transitions and logic between states).

So my character on scene has its animator component using the AnimatorController i created manually.

I hope this workaround helps somebody, it's the best solution i came up with.

Cheers

OperationT

I am also having this problem without baking. According to clandestine, automatic update of the list of animations as children of the automatically generated Controller worked when not baking, and didn't work when baking. However, I am not baking, and still unable to get the automatic update to work.

Thanks for suggesting this work around, Pravus. I think I will have to use this method for now. This will be quite a hassle to re-link each animation to their respective states in the separate Controller, since these links are lost when you delete the auto-generated Controller, which carry all the animation clips. In addition, all of the in-animation events/function calls have to be recreated as well - all of this each time you export new animations from Spine.

It would be so great if someone could point us in the right direction.

Mitch

will address this over the coming weekend.

Majicpanda

Not sure what the exact issues are still but my work flow is:
1) Export to unity
2) Right click SkeletonData file - Instantiate (Mecanim)
3) Save to prefab, delete scene object
4) Ensure prefab has anim controller that is auto-generated
5) Update spine animation, even add a new one.. export to unity (direct file path to unity project)
6) auto generated controller has new animation, everything appears to still be in-tact.
7) Drag new animation clip to Animator window in unity for usage.

Nothing seems to be getting deleted.. not sure what could have possibly changed. I used to have issues but now I don't, sorry for not much info to go off of but somehow things work fine for our workflow. I have seen issues sometimes where the auto built animator won't update properly.

Do you guys all export directly into unity or are you trying to drag and drop files into the inspector etc? I build directly to file path IN my unity assets folder and wait a few seconds and then click into Unity to see changes. If for some reason the auto built controller doesn't update I export again and everything is good.

OperationT

I'm happy to say that I've found the problem for my specific case. Hopefully this will help others as well.

The problem, for me, was adding extension .txt to the .json file as well, which I learnt from following this tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1umSQulghA, as was suggested in a few other posts. After reading a few threads on the forum, I've learnt that this used to be required in Unity 4.x. I suppose Unity 5.x can handle .json files now. I have reproduced this problem a few times by using .json.txt a few times, so I am certain that this was causing the Controller to not update itself when I re-exported from Spine.

Solution: I've deleted the previous Spine export files in Unity and re-exported them from Spine, this time adding only .txt to the .atlas file and leaving .json as it is, and now the auto-generated Animation Controller updates itself by adding/deleting animations as its children every time I export from my modified Spine project. Just awesome.

Majicpanda

Interesting you say that.. we didn't start using Spine really until Unity5 and I forgot to use .txt on the json file and yes everything does work correctly for us without using json.txt in U5.

19 Sep 2015, 12:12

Is this as easy as adding if(!clipTable.ContainsKey(o.name)) before line clipTable.Add(o.name, (AnimationClip)o); in SkeletonBaker around like 406? I added it and it now doesn't cause my issue and seems to remove/add/update new animations properly. I don't know of any adverse effects it could cause though.

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