Question Animator is not playing an AnimationController

I have a character who is using an AnimatorOverrideController and everything works just fine until I try to set a trigger or a bool parameter of the animator. nothing happens and I get a warning saying "Animator is not playing an AnimationController"

any information on that error would be appreciated.

going to sleep for now, been banging my head against the wall with this issue for 4 hours now.
will post screenshots of the code, gameobjects, and animator controllers in the morning.

 

So here's basically the whole system, in the picture with the console showing you can see that when I Debug.Log(animator.isActiveAndEnabled); on Start() for both characters it shows true but then if I debug.log the same when the character uses an attack it shows as false and I get the animator not playing an animationcontroller message.

 

figured it out. was referencing the animator of a prefab, not the instantiated objects