Ask a question!
< All Topics

Is not a Valid Member of Model

Created
Updated

This issue is encountered when scripting systems that work with objects stored inside of Models, but those objects cannot be found. There are many reasons why this could occur and it heavily depends on the circumstances. Here are a few common reasons why this may occur:

  • The object you’re looking for inside of the model does not exist.
    • Did you forget to add the object?
    • Did you not wait for the object to be added?
    • Did the object exist, but get removed at some point?
  • The object you’re looking for inside of the model is spelled differently.
  • The object you’re looking for existed, but then was deleted.
    • This could happen if the object isn’t anchored or goes beneath the FallenPartsDestroyHeight and is destroyed.

Those are just a few of the possibilities, but the primary cause we’ll be discussing and solving today is actually due to instance streaming. Roblox enabled this feature by default on all Experiences created after July 10th 2023. While this feature is great for improving performance for our players, it requires us to change how we work with Parts, Models, and other objects in our Workspace.

If you’re unfamiliar with instance streaming, it basically only loads objects like Models & Parts stored inside of the Workspace service that the player is actually near. If you think about it, why should the client load every single object stored inside of the Workspace service, when they’re likely only seeing or interacting with the objects that are relatively close to them?

Solution

Disable Streaming

While Roblox’s instance streaming is extremely useful for increasing the performance of our game for our players, it could be a massive roadblock for new developers learning scripting from older tutorials. Many new developers can be very tutorial focused and prefer to follow the tutorial exactly as they see, in order to prevent encountering any unfamiliar errors.

Of course if you disable streaming now, but want to enable it in the future, you will have to make some changes to your existing code. The changes you will have to make aren’t complicated, so depending on how staggering the issues from having instance streaming enabled are, I think it would be worth disabling until you’ve finished learning.

You can disable instance streaming by doing the following:

  1. Select the Workspace service inside of the Explorer
  2. Find the StreamingEnabled property of the Workspace service
  3. Untick the checkbox

Using Wait for Child

If you’re wanting to keep instance streaming enabled in your game, you should be able to do this pretty easily.

Whenever you are accessing an object from the Workspace such as Models or Parts, you should avoid using the dot operator and instead use the WaitForChild or FindFirstChild functions. The reason for this is because if we use the dot operator, but the object doesn’t exist then an error will be thrown. Whereas if we use either of the two functions mentioned, we will not encounter any errors if the object doesn’t exist.

local Workspace = game:GetService("Workspace")

local greenEgg = Workspace.GreenEgg -- Old method that shouldn't be used


local redEgg = Workspace:FindFirstChild("RedEgg")
print(redEgg) -- Should print "RedEgg" or nil depending on if it was found

local yellowEgg = Workspace:WaitForChild("YellowEgg") -- Will pause the script until found
print(yellowEgg) -- This will print "YellowEgg" once is has been found
Contents