Animated Portraits issue; AnimationController getting deactivated on runtime?

[bluespheal]

Hello, this is my first time posting here, I came across a seemingly simple bug/issue, I'm sure it's nothing major but for the life of me I cannot figure out what I'm doing wrong.

To preface, I started by getting familiar with the Dialogue UI by making my own as per this video:

I did made a few changes, but nothing in regards to the actual settings and such, just colors, font size, positioning, etc.

Then I wanted to try animating the portraits, I followed the following video tutorial:

However here lies the issue, whenever I try and run a specific animation from an arbitrary Dialogue node, the error: "Animator does not have an AnimatorController" appears and I'm clueless to why that is.

I have tried using both "AnimatorPlay(FadeOut, speakerportrait)" and "AnimatorPlay(FadeOut, Portrait Image) " and both return that error.

I will attach every relevant image and what I've tried to solve this issue.

First, my Custom UI tree, as you can see, it's fairly similar to what is shown on the first video:

Screenshot 2025-07-01 182533.png (17.53 KiB) Viewed 214 times

This "Standard Dialogue UI" is attached to CustomDialogueUI:

Screenshot 2025-07-01 183718.png (72.35 KiB) Viewed 214 times

And this is the "Standard UI Subtitle Panel" attached to the Subtitle Panel:

Screenshot 2025-07-01 182524.png (87.19 KiB) Viewed 214 times

With these I've made sure all the relevant fields are filled properly,

I also made an empty actor object for my character and assigned the animator accordingly like so:

Screenshot 2025-07-01 182541.png (67.81 KiB) Viewed 214 times

I do have other actors but they do not appear on the conversation I'm testing, and do note the node I am triggering the animation play is set-up correctly, even using AnimatorPlay(FadeOut, listenerportrait)" does not work, I've also tried making separate panels and actor objects to no avail, the error simply keeps happening.

I do have noticed that the animator component of the Portrait Image gets both deactivated and emptied during run-time, I assume that is the cause of the error, but I cannot figure out what is causing this.

Funnily enough, removing all the subtitle panel references from the CustomDialogueUI's Standard Dialogue UI does make the animation play correctly, but as expected, every reference is broken and thus, the correct dialogue is not set on the UI properly.

Any ideas on what I may be doing wrong or missing? I've watched the videos several times and looked for solutions on other topics and online to no avail. I am not able to provide a sample project atm, but I will provide one if asked and if I can replicate the issue.

[Tony Li]

Hi,

Thank you for the detailed info!

Inspect your conversation in the Dialogue Editor. Select Menu > Conversation Properties. Is the "Girl" actor assigned as the conversation actor or conversation conversant?

In the dialogue entry node where the Girl speaks, is the node's Actor dropdown set to Girl?

(See Character GameObject Assignments for more details on associating GameObejcts/Dialogue Actor components with actors.)

It may help to temporarily turn on logging. Set the Dialogue Manager's Other Settings > Debug Level to Info. Then reproduce the issue in the Unity editor's play mode and review the logs in the Console window. More info: Logging & Debugging (video).


If none of that helps, please feel free to send a reproduction project to tony (at) pixelcrushers.com

[Tony Li]

Hi,

Thanks for sending the repro project.

Your conversation is set up with the correct actor and conversant in the Dialogue Editor. However, if you enable logging (Dialogue Manager -> Other Settings > Debug Level = Info), you'll see that it's using the Player GameObject for the actor and conversant:

Code: Select all

Dialogue System: Starting conversation 'TestConvo', actor=Player (UnityEngine.Transform), conversant=Player (UnityEngine.Transform).

This is because your line of code specifies to use the same player GameObject for both:

Code: Select all

DialogueManager.StartConversation("TestConvo", transform, transform);

If you set the conversant parameter to null:

Code: Select all

DialogueManager.StartConversation("TestConvo", transform, null);

then it will find the correct GameObject by its Dialogue Actor component. (See Character GameObject Assignments for a more detailed explanation.)

Then it will use the Girl's portrait animator controller.

[bluespheal]

It worked, thank you very much!

I did notice that when using the debug features but somehow I didn't think it was the cause, I also completely forgot to check that one line of code.

[Tony Li]

Glad to help!