Unity Access skeleton Bone Error

rxmarcus

I am using Unity and am simply trying to get access to a specific bone of my skeleton. For whatever reason I keep getting the error "NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object" on my line of code "armBone = skeletonAnimation.skeleton.FindBone("gunBone");"

I am very confused because I'm doing exactly what was done with the spine boy example, and it that example compiles with no errors. I have named the bone I'm trying to find "gunBone" in Spine as well. What am I overlooking that is causing me this headache?

Thanks in advance.

using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;
using Spine;

public class Script_Aimer : MonoBehaviour {

private int playerNumber;
public UILabel debugLabel;

private SkeletonAnimation skeletonAnimation;
private Bone armBone;

// Use this for initialization
void Start () {
	skeletonAnimation = GetComponent<SkeletonAnimation>();
	armBone = skeletonAnimation.skeleton.FindBone("gunBone");
}
}

rxmarcus

Pharan

Looks like a script execution order thing.
SkeletonAnimation's objects may not have had the chance to be instantiated before you tried to find the bone.

Try calling skeletonAnimation.Initialize() before trying to call FindBone.

rxmarcus

Aha, I did as you suggest and finally was able to get it working . Haven't needed to do that before, any tips on when its necessary to call initialize and when its not?

Pharan

I read somewhere in Unity documentations that script execution order is nondeterministic unless you specify it in the project settings, so you may have not needed to call it before just out of pure luck.

Nate made Initialize() safe to call whether you need to or not so just always call Initialize before doing anything with the SkeletonAnimation in Awake() or Start() or similarly-timed methods.

rxmarcus

Thanks thats great know. I am trying to get a bone rotating dynamically while a animation still takes place. I have seen in a lot of the Unity Spine examples that they do the following bit of code:

This is from https://github.com/EsotericSoftware/spine-runtimes/blob/master/spine-unity/Assets/examples/goblins/Goblins.cs#L33

private SkeletonAnimation skeletonAnimation;
	private Bone headBone;

public void Start () {
	skeletonAnimation = GetComponent<SkeletonAnimation>();
	headBone = skeletonAnimation.skeleton.FindBone("head");
	skeletonAnimation.UpdateBones += UpdateBones;
}

// This is called after the animation is applied to the skeleton and can be used to adjust the bones dynamically.
public void UpdateBones (SkeletonComponent skeletonAnimation) {
	headBone.Rotation -= 15;
}

When I attempt to say "skeletonAnimation.UpdateBones += UpdateBones;", I get "SkeletonAnimation does not contain a definition for 'UpdateBones'.

How do these examples use this and I can't do so in my own project?

Pharan

The UpdateBones field should be there.

Did you update your runtime to the latest? This is a really new addition. I think just a few days ago.

rxmarcus

That would probably do it. Am trying to update right now. Any tips on updating these types of files in Unity? I just tried to close out unity, delete the old spine runtime from the Assets folder and put in the new. When I started my project back up everyting was severly broken....

Pharan

No need to delete the old runtime.
Just overwrite the files where they are. Deleting the old files breaks the links to components.

And when you overwrite, try not to include the .meta files. Depending on your project settings, those are what determine the link to GameObject components and assets and things. If you replace them, there's also a chance you'll break everything.

This actually isn't a problem for the files in Spine-C#. But it's something to look out for when updating the files from Spine-Unity.

rxmarcus

Sorry for so many questions, I am somewhat new to Unity and have been trying to use Subversion with my project.

I am wondering what runtimes I need in my project anyway.... I started by following a tutorial that had me import 'Spine C#' and 'Spine 2dtk' (because I'm using 2dtoolkit). Should just those 2 work for me?

Nate

Official instructions are here:
https://github.com/EsotericSoftware/spi ... spine-tk2d