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Digitalslave
Participating Frequently
February 7, 2017
Question

Character Animator Won't Open

  • February 7, 2017
  • 9 replies
  • 5712 views

So.

I finally Upgraded Video apps to 2017.

Everything works but Character Animator.

AE is fine.

But CA ICON bounces in dock a couple times then vanishes when trying to open.

No other versions of CA or AE on computer.

1. Tried rebooting computer (multiple times)

2. Tried holding shift. (mt)

3. Tried signing in/out of CC.  (mt)

4. Uninstalled and installed CC.

5. Uninstalled and installed CA.  (mt)

6. Tried opening from Applications  (mt)

6. Tried opening from CC Window  (mt)

6. Tried opening from AE  (mt)

This is nuts.

Now what?

iMac (27-inch, Late 2012)

3.2 GHz Intel Core i5

32 GB Memory

NVDIA GeForce GTX 675MX 1024 MB

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9 replies

DanTull
Adobe Employee
DanTull
Adobe Employee
February 13, 2017

Weird. It sounds like it's failing really early in initialization. Does it even pop up the splash screen before vanishing? I take it that it doesn't present an Apple or Adobe crash report dialog either?

I'm curious to see the output you see if you run the executable directly in Terminal.

Here's some instructions on how to do that if you aren't familiar (if you are, skip this part):

1. Switch to Finder.

2. In the Go menu, choose Utilities.

3. Double click the Terminal application.

4. Navigate to the Character Animator application.

5. Right/Ctrl click on it and choose "Show Package Contents"

6. Double click the Contents folder.

7. Double click the MacOS folder.

8. Drag and Drop the "Character Animator" icon onto your open terminal window from step 3.

9. That should result in a long path appearing there. Probably something like this:

/Applications/Adobe\ Character\ Animator\ CC\ \(Beta\)/Adobe\ Character\ Animator\ CC\ \(Beta\).app/Contents/MacOS/Character\ Animator

10. Press enter to run it.

11. After it exits, select all the output and post it here.

Hopefully that'll provide some clues as to what is going wrong.

One other thing that might help is the process exit code. Once you get the Terminal prompt (the text at the left ending in a $) again (you may need to press enter again after it exits), type this command and press enter:

echo $?

Here's hoping with a bit of sleuthing we can get things working for you and maybe corner a bug in the app so it doesn't prevent others from using it in the future.

Thanks for reporting this issue,

Dan Tull

D
DigitalslaveAuthor
Participating Frequently
February 15, 2017

Hi Dan,

Thanks so much for the help!

I've never run across anything like this.

Never had problems with Character when it was embedded into AE.

Never had problems with any updated apps although there's always a small adjustment

to new UI's or third party plug ins.

And to answer your questions, No. No Splash Screen. No Crash Reports.

Just a 3 bounce CA ICON in the dock and poof. Gone.

Below is what Terminal states based on your directions:

Last login: Wed Feb 15 09:35:26 on console

Dans-iMac:~ Dan$ /Applications/Adobe\ Character\ Animator\ CC\ \(Beta\)/Adobe\ Character\ Animator\ CC\ \(Beta\).app/Contents/MacOS/ChHeadless.app 

-bash: /Applications/Adobe Character Animator CC (Beta)/Adobe Character Animator CC (Beta).app/Contents/MacOS/ChHeadless.app: is a directory

Dans-iMac:~ Dan$  echo $?

126

Dans-iMac:~ Dan$

Thanks Again!

Dan Haberkorn

DanTull
Adobe Employee
DanTull
Adobe Employee
February 15, 2017

Can you do that again, but with "Character Animator" (the main executable) instead of ChHeadless? The ChHeadless item is also a package, so it can't be directly run at the command line like that (it's just the app Character Animator launches to coordinate dynamic link communications with Ae/Pr/etc, so we don't need to worry about it right now).

Thanks -- Dan Tull

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