(2D) NPCs' Idle animations defaulting to Idle_U instead of Idle_D?
IIRC NPCs are supposed to default to idle animations facing _down _(if they have idle animations/an "idle name" set). For some reason, my NPCs now default to "idle_U"/ idle up instead of "idle_D"/idle down. It seems like this is a somewhat recent change. I don't know if updating AC would somehow be involved (seems unlikely) but I did update to 1.72.4 recently; perhaps I unchecked something I should have left in. I don't think I created an ActionList that changed this, nor any custom scripting. (I've made a few custom scripts to deal with menus, but they shouldn't affect animations.) Shouldn't be a problem with mixing up the Motions and States either; idle_U should be playing the right "up" animation, for instance.
Here are some Gifs showing what two NPCs as the game starts
https://imgur.com/a/EPaVM2R , https://imgur.com/a/B4BbC8P
Thanks for help as always.
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Comments
2D characters don't so much have a "default" direction. Rather, their direction is based on their rotation. Could it be that your NPCs have a non-zero rotation, such as (0,180,0)?
Your media shows the animation being played, but not the Inspector of the NPC itself. If their rotation looks OK, can you share that? Try also unchecking Turn root object in 3D? in their Inspector, and see if that has an effect.
Their rotations and their child rotations are all at (0,0,0), and "Turn root object in 3D?" is unchecked.
Here is a gif of the Inspector of one of the NPCs as the game is running (16 meg gif): https://imgur.com/a/QPtUvLz (I guess maybe a screenshot would have sufficed; I included screenshots below the gif of the inspectors of the child objects, just to be safe)
This feels strange because I don't think I ran into this issue when originally creating this NPC. Now "she" doesn't want to face or talk downward. (_But _maybe I wasn't originally playing with different character directions - maybe had "Facing directions: none" - and facing downward was the only option as it was the default. I can't exactly remember tbh.)
_Testing _it just now, it looks like the "Character: Face direction" action works and, by running that in the OnStart cutscene, I can have the NPCs facing downward right away that way. Is this a solution I should accept?
A rotation of 0,0,0 would equate to facing upwards, so yes - using the Action to set enforce their starting direction is the way to go.