Unity Issue Tracker - "Sub-emitters must be children of the system that spawns them" error is shown even though sub-emitters are correctly parented

Fixed in 2019.2.X

Fixed in 2017.4.X, 2018.3.X, 2019.1.X

Votes

13

Found in

2017.2

2017.2.0b10

Issue ID

949522

Regression

Yes

"Sub-emitters must be children of the system that spawns them" error is shown even though sub-emitters are correctly parented

Visual Effects - Legacy

Sep 08, 2017

How to reproduce:
1. Open "EmitterIssue" project and "test stage 1..." scene
2. Enter playmode and pause it
3. Observe "Sub-emitters must be children of the system that spawns them" error appearing
4. Double click on the error in the console, it highlights "Debris" GameObject that has two sub-emitters "DebrisSmoke" and "DerisFire" that are correctly parented under "Debris" GameObject

Expected result: Error should not be shown, since "DebrisSmoke" and "DerisFire" sub-emitters are correctly parented under "Debris" GameObject as required in 5.6+ versions

Regression introduced in - 2017.2.0b1
Reproducible with - 2017.3.0a7, 2017.2.0b11, 2017.2.0b1
Not reproducible with - 2017.1.0p2, 2017.2.0a4

Note - Deleting some of the "MediumExplosionFX" prefabs, fixes the issue

richardkettlewell

Jan 25, 2019

We are currently testing a fix for this issue.

Comments (14)

Annabelle-AB

Sep 22, 2021 07:00

Issue still occurring in 2020.3.17f1
thawzi

Aug 30, 2020 12:36

still have in 2019.4.8ft
Amigo89

May 11, 2020 15:47

Still have it in 2019.3.9f1
Sarper-Soher

Mar 11, 2019 20:22

Still happening in 2017.4.22f1 LTS version
CocoJinny

Nov 15, 2018 08:03

Only device occurs. unity 2018.2.4f1
Subhanshu

Nov 02, 2018 09:38

This error is occurring in Unity 2018.2.11f1 too.
ChubbyBobby

Sep 17, 2018 15:29

Also occurs on 2017.4.6f1
TooManySugar

Aug 21, 2018 21:00

Its happening to me too!! :\
ITs been a year and its happening on 2018.2.0f2
https://forum.unity.com/threads/regression-sub-emitters-must-be-children-of-the-system-that-spawns-them-949522.494429/
Leewhitt

Aug 19, 2018 17:01

I also have in 2017.3.1f1, even on the standard assets fireworks! Seems to be intermittent though, occasionally they fire off fine.
mostlyhuman

Aug 03, 2018 04:11

Problem still exists in Unity 2018.2.1f1, it appears to also cause a nasty memory leak. Again when this happens if you click on one of the parent particle systems in the scene and then go under subemitters and click the linked gameobject in the field it will highlight the child emitters location in the scene hierarchy and you can see it will be under the wrong parent and not the expected parent. So somehow they are being jumbled and assigned the wrong parent, this only happens when they are instantiated through code. If you drag them in as prefabs they maintain their correct relationship.