Weapon attachment switching to wrong item during Hammer Attack animation

bablodable

{two weapon}
{one weapon}
Hi! I’ve run into a strange issue with attachments and I can’t figure it out for weeks already.

I have two weapon slots on my character — for example:

Back slot (where a hammer is stored)

Side slot (where a pistol is stored)

There is an animation called Hammer Attack, where the character should grab the hammer from the back and use it.

The problem:
If only the hammer is equipped, the animation works correctly.
But if both slots are equipped (hammer + pistol), then during the Hammer Attack animation the character somehow grabs the pistol instead of the hammer — even though the animation is supposed to use the hammer.

So it looks like Spine is activating the wrong attachment when multiple weapons are present.

My question:
What could cause this behavior? Is it something related to SetAttachment keys, slot order, or timeline blending?
How should I properly control which attachment is used in a specific animation?

If you need more info (screenshots or project file), I can provide it.

Thanks in advance!

Misaki

bablodable Hmm, it might be hard to say for sure without actually seeing the skin settings. I think we could definitely pinpoint the cause if you could show us the actual project.
Could you please send that project to us via email?: contact@esotericsoftware.com
Please include the URL of this forum thread in the email so we know the context. Then we can take a look at what's wrong.

Spinebot

The issue you're experiencing with the Hammer Attack animation grabbing the wrong weapon when both the hammer and pistol are equipped could be related to how attachments are keyed in your animation timeline. It is possible that the attachment timeline for the weapon slot is not correctly set up to switch to the hammer during the Hammer Attack animation. You should check the attachment timeline in the Spine Editor to ensure that the correct attachment (hammer) is keyed at the appropriate frames of the Hammer Attack animation. Additionally, ensure that the animation state logic in your runtime code is correctly setting the desired attachment based on the current animation. If the animation state is not properly managed, it might inadvertently switch to the wrong attachment due to blending or incorrect state transitions.

To control which attachment is used in a specific animation, you can explicitly set the attachment in your animation timeline or use runtime logic to ensure the correct attachment is active. If you have animations that change attachments, make sure they are not interfering with each other by checking the order and timing of your keyframes. You can also use functions like setSlotsToSetupPose to reset attachments to their default state before starting a new animation, ensuring that no unintended attachments are active.

bablodable

Misaki Thanks! I’ve just sent the project to contact@esotericsoftware.com
and included the link to this thread.

Please let me know if you need anything else.

Erika

bablodable Hi! I have checked your files. You didn't leave an active character selected but I tried mimicking the skins you pinned in the first screenshot you sent here.

The issue you are seeing is likely cause by the order in which you pin your skins. The pistol and the hammer both occupy the same slot that is activated in the hammer_attack animation, when such a conflict happens, only the skin that is applied last will show the attachment for that slot. This means that if you pin the hammer, and then the pistol, the pistol will be shown. If you pin the pistol and then the hammer, the hammer will be shown instead. This logic is also applied at runtime, so ensure that the equipped weapon is the last skin applied before playing this animation, or separate the slots if you need both to be usable at the same time.

bablodable

Erika Thanks for the explanation!

However, I actually tried to avoid the skin order issue by creating separate slots for each weapon (for example, one slot for the hammer and another for the pistol).

My intention was to completely eliminate skin order dependency, so that each animation would only activate its own specific slot.

But Spine still seems to pick the wrong weapon.

If I already separated the hammer and pistol into different slots, why is the animation still affected by skin order? Where could I have made a mistake?
What is the correct way to set it up so that each animation only affects its own slot, regardless of skin order?

Misaki

bablodable

If I already separated the hammer and pistol into different slots, why is the animation still affected by skin order? Where could I have made a mistake?

It should work, but in the Spine project you sent us, both Extra/Weapons/Gun_Martha and Extra/Weapons/Hammer_01 are set to the same Weapon_l skin placeholder under the Weapon_l slot. Therefore, the pistol and hammer are not separated into different slots. If you properly separate each weapon into different slots, it should work fine.

Alternatively, since the hammer_attack animation appears to be specific to the hammer, you could avoid splitting the slot and instead separate the skin placeholder, e.g. "Weapon_Hammer". You could then animate it so that the hammer's skin placeholder set active during this animation. So the following setup should work:

I hope this explanation has made the issue clearer.