Why is :WaitForChild not working?

Help and Feedback Scripting Support
#1

I am trying to put an animation into my game that is triggered by using a tool. I try to declare the variables but when I put :WaitForChild it gives me this error:
image

Code where the error is happening

local Mouse = game.Players.LocalPlayer:GetMouse()
local Character = game.Players.LocalPlayer.Character
local Humanoid = Character:WaitForChild(“Humanoid”)
local Animator = Humanoid:WaitForChild(“Animator”)
local AnimationClip = script.Animation
local LoadedAnimation = Animator:LoadAnimation(AnimationClip)

I don’t get why it is doing this. Could someone please explain?

#2

The Character may have already loaded ahead of time before the script even started to detect it, you could just change your Character variable to

local Character = game.Players.LocalPlayer.Character or game.Players.LocalPlayer.CharacterAdded:Wait()
2 Likes
#3

It means that Character is not a valid variable, often when calling Player.Character the Character hasn’t loaded yet which sets the variable to nil

You can wait for Character to load with the following code:

repeat wait() until Player.Character
#4

Although this method is highly recommended.