Start, Complete and End are Spine.AnimationState events, used by the SkeletonAnimation class.

SkeletonAnimator is different; it doesn't use Spine.AnimationState at all. It currently uses Unity's SendMessage API and not Spine-C#'s C# events. I don't think you even get Start/End/Complete with SkeletonAnimator.

When using either SkeletonAnimation or SkeletonAnimator, weird things happen inside the duration of a mixing/crossfading transition if you are using that. Some events don't fire in a consistent or expected manner. This applies to all runtimes. It is most likely that Events from the previous animation are ignored. Using SkeletonAnimator/the Unity API events are much more confusing. It's not Spine's fault. Unity's Animation system's event firing is faulty and unpredictable.

I notice that End actually doesn't fire after each loop though. Thanks for reporting this.
As for whether or not this is "intended" behavior, that's really up to Nate (or up to you if you want to modify the code to suit your needs). Complete and End are pretty ambiguously similar terms.

If you need need help editing the code for events for your purposes, just try to describe it in this post and we'll try to see what should be done.

I think events are working perfectly fine EXCEPT for where mixing is involved. Even user-defined events don't work properly.
So yeah, I agree with you when you say it makes sense for Complete to fire when one animation plays to its full duration then a new animation starts playing. It not firing there during crossfading is a bug that exists in all runtimes right now.

So did you manage a workaround or did you only figure out how it currently works?

I'll try to read through that later. :p
I think just fixing Spine-C# for your project would be the way to go though, instead of dancing around Spine-C#'s bugs.
The issue isn't that it's hard to fix it for your specific purposes. I think the issue is fixing it so that it applies to general cases. Nate hasn't mentioned if he has made any decisions on this front yet, because it's not just about the Spine-C# runtime. It's about all the runtimes.

I will say though, SkeletonAnimation's inspector's animation name and loop fields are pretty crappy.
But it has partly to do with Spine-Unity's deep guts being just Spine-C#.

I realize this is an older thread but thought I'd post in case it helped someone else along the road. I've also had the issues with inconsistent animation events with spine in Unity. Particularly event handlers like these in Unity c#

   [code]skeletonAnimation.state.End += delegate (Spine.TrackEntry entry)
    {
        Debug.Log("End event fired for track: " + entry.TrackIndex);
    };

    skeletonAnimation.state.Start += delegate (Spine.TrackEntry entry)
    {
        Debug.Log("Start event fired for track: "+entry.TrackIndex);
    };[/code]

They are inconsistent and undependable, especially for layered animations. I agree with alex.seeck on avoiding changing the spine runtimes so that you don't run into update conflicts with future releases, and don't have to spend time maintaining your changes within each future release. However Esoteric has done an excellent job with custom animation events. My workaround that solved these issues for me was only using custom events with the Event handler instead of Start or End. For example:

    [code]skeletonAnimation.state.Event += delegate (Spine.TrackEntry entry, Spine.Event e)
    {
        Debug.Log("Custom event fired for track: " + entry.TrackIndex + " with event name: " + e.Data.Name);
    };[/code]

Custom events with the event handler have proven to be very accurate and reliable in my experience even in animations with multiple layers and tracks. It always returns the right event with the right trackindex at the right time. So in Spine itself I've added custom events for "Start" and "End" and keyed them respectively at the beginning and end of each of my animations. While I also do not think this solution is ideal, start and end events should come for free in the runtimes, in its current state, this is the cleanest solution I could come up with while avoiding editing the runtimes. Hope this helps someone

Since this thread started, we've made some big changes to event handling in the Spine runtime. They should be 100% reliable. If that's not the case for you, you may have run into a bug. Could you please provide us with a reproduction case that shows the issue?

Am using Spine on my first commercial project and have hit a problem with the end state trigger. I'm using the following to turn off an object when a specific anim finishes

plr.state.End += delegate
{
   // *** DELEGATE ***
   if (plr.state.GetCurrent(0).Animation == exploreSwapOutAnim)
   {
      gameObject.SetActive(false);
   }
};

This does get triggered but I think it's when the 0.2s mix time is reached rather than the end of the anim. If I change this default to 0 then it immediately triggers and I see none of the animation. This also happened when I tried using the specific animation mixing values entries. I just updated to the latest and it doesn't seem to be any different (Last updated: UTC - 2017 March 16).

I think you may be running into the new default of non-looping animations not being cleared unless you clear them yourself or explicitly set the duration.
If you want the old default of non-looping animations automatically clearing after they finish once, you can find this line and use the commented out value: spine-runtimes/AnimationState.cs at master

current default:

entry.trackEnd = float.MaxValue; // don't clear the track even if the animation doesn't loop.

old default:

entry.trackEnd = loop ? float.MaxValue : animation.Duration; // don't clear looping animations. clear non-looping animations after it reaches Duration.

Ah, I see. My bad.

I'm not sure about what your setup is and what you were expecting.
Can you maybe describe what the sequence of animations is on the base layer/track 0 in a table? And when you expected End to fire? You know the difference between End and Interrupt, right? Are you on the latest Spine and Spine runtime?

Your first post above vaguely sounds like it's doing what it's supposed to be doing, but I'm not sure.

I have a multi-layered anim and I want to trigger something when a specific animation on a specific layer finishes playing.

I'm having the same issue, I have several animations in tracks and I want to trigger something when a specific animation on a specific track finishes playing.

I'm doing:

baseTrack.Complete += onComplete;

But it's not being called. This happens on track 4, while track 0 is still playing a loop.
I tried what was suggested to enable clearing of the tracks, but it didn't make any difference.

I also tried SetAnimation and AddAnimation, but no difference.

The onComplete method is never called. How can I debug this?
I can send a very simple repro project to you if it helps, but i'd rather not share it here.

Thanks!

This thread was started 7 years ago, not sure you have the same problem! Please show your setAnimation and addAnimation calls, as well as adding your listener.

Thanks for the quick response!

I did some laboration with mixDuration but didn't notice any difference.
But the code is very simple. Anything here out of the common?

Also it's worth noticing that i'm playing looping animations on track 0-3, this one is on track 4, with loop set to false.

baseTrack = skeletonAnimation.state.SetAnimation(track, anim, loop);
baseTrack.Complete += OnAttackAnimComplete;

// Have this as well after, not sure if it matters?
skeletonAnimation.Update(0); // Update skeleton so it happens now, and not next frame (prevents flicker)

...

// This is never triggered
private void OnAttackAnimComplete(TrackEntry trackEntry) {
   Debug.Log(Time.time + "<color=white>: OnAttackAnimComplete " + trackEntry.Animation.Name + "</color>");
}

Sorry, it seems to be something in my code setting the animation multiple times, so it's most likely no spine issue. Thanks for the help

Thanks very much for the followup, glad you've figured it out!