How can I reference an animator in another script so that it plays the desired animation when a button is clicked?

Hi, I’m currently trying to make a simulation game (kind of like tamagotchi) where you nurture a pet through different interactions. I used a sprite sheet in unity 2d and spliced them to make the different animations needed. (idle, fed, hungry, etc). And I used this code on the Pet’s game object

var anim : Animator;

function Start()
{
anim = GetComponent("Animator");
}

function Update()
{
if(Input.GetMouseButton(0) == false)
{
anim.SetTrigger("NoRub");
}
}

function OnMouseOver()
{
if(Input.GetMouseButton(0))
anim.SetTrigger("Rub");
}

So that it plays the ‘Rub’ transition animation when you rub the pet (left mouse + hold) to make him happy and returns to idle state (which is just bobbing up and down) when you stop. Anyway, my question is how can I reference the pet animation in another script, for example a ‘feed button’? so it triggers the animation after a click and then reverts back to idle as usual.

I’m not the best at coding and I was wondering if anyone can help me create a variable in the other scripts which is an animator type so that this could work? In one attempt, i tried dragging the animator from the pet into the other script’s swatches in the inspector but the feedbutton turned into the pet.

You need to trigger NoRub in every frame if you’re not rubbing? Why not have a bool “rubbing” instead a rub trigger and stay in the state a long as rubbing=true? Only leave to idle if rubbing=false.

Now you could reference the animator of another object direclty:

var datAnim = datOtherObject.GetComponent("Animator");

But I think that’s bad style and you end up with animator code spread out through your whole project…

Just Reference your Creature from every Button

var thing:Tamagotchi;

then you can call a public Feed method on them:

thing.Feed();

and then in the Tamagotchi you have a public Feed function

public function Feed()
{
    anim.SetTrigger("Feed");
}