MissingComponentException when using Animator

Question

I followed some tutorials to add WASD movement to a character; I managed to set up the animator thing and it works in the bottom right corner viewport.

Next I tried adding the following C# script with basic movements:

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

public class AppleInput : MonoBehaviour
{
    private Animator animator;
    // Start is called before the first frame update
    void Start()
    {
        animator = GetComponent<Animator>();
    }

    // Update is called once per frame
    void Update()
    {
        animator.SetFloat("Horizontal", Input.GetAxis("Horizontal"));
        animator.SetFloat("Vertical", Input.GetAxis("Vertical"));
    }
}

Configured like so:

But then I get the error message:

MissingComponentException: There is no 'Animator' attached to the "action10Prob_normalsDONEyet" game object, but a script is trying to access it.

You probably need to add a Animator to the game object "action10Prob_normalsDONEyet". Or your script needs to check if the component is attached before using it.

How do I solve this error?

Answer 1

This line:

animator = GetComponent<Animator>();

...says "find an Animator type component attached to the same GameObject that I (AppleInput) am attached to.

But as we can see in your screenshot, you don't have an Animator component on the object "action10Prob_normalsDONEyet". So this line is returning a null (really, a special dummy component that the Unity Editor uses to give you better error messages when testing).

When your Update code tries to use the animator like so:

animator.SetFloat("Horizontal", Input.GetAxis("Horizontal"));

Then you get the error message: you tried to call SetFloat on the absence of an Animator.

The fix for this will depend on your setup. If you already have an Animator, but it's somewhere in a child object under this one, you can either:

• Change GetComponent<Animator> to GetComponentInChildren<Animator> to search child objects too.

• Or, get rid of this top parent object, and put your AppleInput script on whichever child has an Animator attached directly instead.

• Or, make your Animator animator variable public so that you can use the Unity Inspector to assign a reference to whichever Animator you want to use.

If you don't have an Animator component anywhere in the object hierarchy, then it's time to add one to the object with the AppleInput script, so it can find it where it's trying to look for it.

Note that this is one of the most common beginner errors in Unity, so just searching "MissingComponentException unity" will turn up tons of existing answers and documentation about it. So please always make that your first step when troubleshooting an error message.