Reference to Animator component not appearing in the inspector

Question

I have already tried to look into this... but no luck..

Sprite renderer, and mover references, work fine they appear in the inspector as I want them to.

However I am having issues in FILE 2 I am unsure of how to Serialize the Animator in the inspector.

FILE 1

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

[CreateAssetMenu(fileName = "EnemyConfig", menuName =  "Enemies/Enemy config", order = 0)]
public class EnemyConfig : ScriptableObject
{
    public float moverSpeed;
    //public float zRotation;
    public Sprite sprite;
    
    public Animator animator;
}

FILE 2

//EnemyController.CS
using System.Collections;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using UnityEngine;

public class EnemyController : MonoBehaviour
{
    [HideInInspector]
    public EnemyConfig config;
    [SerializeField]
    private SpriteRenderer spriteRenderer;


    //Want to get a reference to the animator component appear in the inspector
    //This is my issue...--------------------------------------]

    [SerializeField]
    private GetComponent<Animator> animatorController;

    //----------------------------


    private Mover mover;
    
    private void Start()
    {
        mover = GetComponent<Mover>();
        if(mover != null)
        {
            mover.speed = config.moverSpeed;
        } 
        
        
        if(config.sprite != null)
        {
            spriteRenderer.sprite = config.sprite; 
        }
        

        // related to the animator
        if(config.animator != null)
        {
            animatorController.animator = config.animator;
        }
    }
}

Here you can see how the Sprite reference, and mover reference appear in the inspector. I am trying to do the same with the Animator

Answer 1

GetComponent<T> is a method, it is not a type. So, you can't declare a field with this as its type. I would be surprised if this code actually even compiles. What you want is simply

[SerializeField]
private Animator animator;

Note that AnimatorController is an Editor-only class; you can't include it in your game code. Hence why you want Animator here.

Another thing to consider is, is the Animator component going to be on the same game object? If so, you don't need to serialize the reference - that would only be useful if it's going to be on a different game object, and you need to store that link at edit time.

If the Animator component is on the same object, you can do this:

private Animator animator;

void Start()
{
    animator = GetComponent<Animator>();
}

The advantage is that you won't have to make sure the reference stays up-to-date, it will be connected whenever the gameplay starts. This, by the way, is the correct use of GetComponent<T> - since it's a method, you can call it within another method, not where you had it in your File2.