Some materials for rendering are missing after applyingskins

Maltakreuz

I have a character with many clothings, so it needs many materials to be rendered. I am using skin for character skin and also use separate skins for clothing, so i need to apply them both to have a character with clothing.

In my sample scene it works fine:

(of course so much draw calls is not optimal but this is not the point).

But im my level (which is larger and slower) sometimes character will be only rendered particularly:

As you can see only 3 from 16 materials were created. It does not happen always, but pretty oftern. What am i doing wrong?

My first suspect is my skin-applying code:

void ApplySkin() {
    if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(clothingSkin)) {
        return;
    }

var s = SkeletonAnim.Skeleton;
var init = s.Data.FindSkin(SkeletonAnim.initialSkinName);
var skin = s.Data.FindSkin(clothingSkin);

Skin combined = new Skin("combined " + init.Name + " and " + skin.Name);
combined.AddSkin(init);
combined.AddSkin(skin);

s.SetSkin(combined);
s.SetToSetupPose();
s.UpdateCache();
s.Update(0);

}

Basically here i just combine the skin initially set in inspector with the some additional skin (clothingSkin string). I have tryed another approaches, but somehow if i just apply 2 separate skins or just try to apply clothing-skin at top of initial skin it does not work. Is my code wrong and can result that in some cases not all materials will be created?

Is there any Method to force recreate all 16 materials needed for render? Like ForceRecreateMaterials()?

P.S. I also accessing materials to make lit-copies for them. But this is read only access:

public void CreateLitMaterials() {
   var ll = new List<Material>();
   foreach (var m in mesh.sharedMaterials) {
       var mm = new Material(litEmptyMaterial);
       mm.name = m.name + "_LIT";
       mm.mainTexture = m.mainTexture;
       ll.Add(mm);
   }
   litMaterials = ll.ToArray();
}

But i do not think that is the reason, just accessing sharedMaterials should not break anything. So i suppose problem is in my ApplySkin code.

Harald

Your SetSkin() code shows no obvious problems.
Which version of the spine-unity runtime (name of the unitypackage) are you using? If you are using a recent spine-unity version, could you send us a minimal Unity project that still shows this issue, as a zip package to contact@esotericsoftware.com? Then we can have a look at it.

Maltakreuz

I am using Package version: spine-unity-3.8-2020-08-17.unitypackage.

Found when exactly this (and some other) render bugs happen. I normally call such SetSkin() or SetAttachment() code from Start()-Method. But (for performance) reasons some objects, far from player, are disabled in Awake(). So Start() will be called first player comes near them and object will enabled and Start() will be called.

Same bug happens without skins just with regular SetAttachments() code

var s = anim.Skeleton;
s.SetAttachment("head", "oak_golem/head_3");
s.SetAttachment("ram", "oak_golem/ram_3");

The ram in hands of golems is taken from obviously wrong rectangle in sprite sheet. But the same golem near player, where Start() called in the beggining of game work fine.

So the both bugs can be quick and dirty fixed just by calling Start() (and alle skins/attachments code) in the begining of the game. And deactivate them (if needed) just in first Update(). I have no idea why does it make any difference call Start() of an game object in "real" start of the game, or just later when object activated. But this is the reason and q&d solution too.

Harald

Maltakreuz wrote
I am using Package version: spine-unity-3.8-2020-08-17.unitypackage.

This package is almost a year old now, there have been many bugfixes in the meantime. Have you tried whether the issue still occurs when using the most recent unitypackage? You might want to create a backup copy of your project first to quickly restore the previous state.

Maltakreuz

Just updated to spine-unity-3.8-2021-07-12.unitypackage. It does not help, render-bug is still there. "Bugfix" to allow all spine object to call Start() in the beginning of the game still works for me.

Harald

This is strange. If you want, you can create a minimal Unity project that still shows the issue and send it as a zip package to contact@esotericsoftware.com, then we can have a look at it. Please then briefly mention this forum thread URL so that we immediately know the context.

Abelius

This is going to be a blind shot, but I also had a similar problem until yesterday, so I've decided to chime in just in case I can help.

I have two 38 skin-combined models that were also "skipping" skins when changing their appearance. Not always, though, so troubleshoot has been slow as hell and I didn't want to involve you guys because my use case is completely crazy with so many skin constraints, attachments, etc...

In some cases I needed to re-apply the combined skin to avoid the problems, in other cases I got an IndexOutOfBounds exception and the models were missing their eyelashes... it was madness.

Until yesterday I decided to rape the runtimes, lol... and modified Skeleton.cs, like this...:

public void SetSkin (Skin newSkin) {
      //if (newSkin == skin) return;
      if (newSkin != null)
      {
          //if (skin != null)
          //    newSkin.AttachAll(this, skin);
          //else
          //{
              ExposedList<Slot> slots = this.slots;
              for (int i = 0, n = slots.Count; i < n; i++)
              {
                  Slot slot = slots.Items[i];
                  string name = slot.data.attachmentName;
                  if (name != null)
                  {
                      Attachment attachment = newSkin.GetAttachment(i, name);
                      if (attachment != null) slot.Attachment = attachment;
                  }
              }
          //}
      }
      skin = newSkin;
      UpdateCache();
  }

That is, I make the SetSkin method ignore the previous skin, so everything gets reset every time.

This solved all my problems regarding combined skin changes, but your mileage may vary, ofc.

I don't know if this may be a bug or I'm just doing something wrong, tbh.

Nate

@Abelius It seems like you could call SetSlotsToSetupPose after calling SetSkin to achieve the same.

Abelius

Yes, I've been doing that, and skeletonAnimation.Update(0) as well, but it didn't help in my case.

Edit: just FYI, this is related to this other post of mine: Skin constraints/bones not enabled after skin change a year ago.

That weird behavior also disappeared with my "solution", and now I don't need to run my Set skins action two times for all constraints being correctly applied.