Draggers stop working after I alter artwork in a different part of the file

Question

This is driving me bonkers! I'm glad that I'm learning so much, but it's costing me so much time, energy and frustration. This is the fourth time I've created this puppet.  I've stopped doing it from scratch and now just edit comprable templates, since I know the templates work perfectly.  (This iteration was an adaptation of the woman pirate standing on a ship.) So I moved in my assets overtop of the template assets, deleted what wasn't needed, adjusted rigging handles as needed, and voila!  It works!  It was great.  I went into my scene, dragged those arms around to record a bunch of triggers and swap sets.  Everything is groovy.  Then, silly me, I need to adjust the canvas size so I can adjust something in the +Head group.  I come back, and the arms are totally broken.  They've shifted on the puppet in record mode (but not in rig mode) and they're hinging wrong now.  I guess I rigged something wrong.  I get it.  Origin points were tied to the canvas size for God knows what reason.  Whatever.  Undo all the arm rigging.  Do it back up.  It's working again.  I re-record my swap-sets and triggers (because the old draggers are gone) and get back to it.  I record 90% of the scene, and I need to add artwork to +Head again.  I add a layer to the +Head group, come back to Character Animator, dragges aren't working again. What in the bloody hell am I supposed to do??  I feel like I'm being as careful and methodical as possible.  I just added a piece of artwork, and a totally unrelated group stopped working entirely!  Why is this program so fragile?!  What am I overlooking?!  (I don't want to spend a day recreating this puppet every time I need to make a slight adjustment.  This is so bonkers!)Nothing in the CA environment changed.  The scene is the same.  The red lights are still red.  All the replays still work!  (I just can't record any new ones because I can't drag anything.)Adding new draggers don't do anything.  Removing and putting back the draggers don't do anything.  Why is something so simple so difficult??Thanks for letting me vent.  Much gratitude for any help offered.  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-AajrvL7mreS2TQ-0Ri1oaJ7RSnKDoW-/view?usp=sharing

TheOriginalGC · Answer

Forgive me if you mentioned it and I didn't see it, but what program are you using to edit your puppet? Most of the puppet maker puppets are Photoshop PSD files, so I'm going to assume that's what you are using. If you are using a non-Adobe program like Procreate to edit your files, please be aware that those files do not save in a format that is 100% compatible with Character Animator (CH). I'm not exactly sure why they don't work well together, I 'm just aware that it's an issue. However, all is not lost. You can open up the files made by these programs in Photoshop and when you save them, they will once again be compatible. That being said, I think the issue you are having is related to changes in the dimensions and/or aspect ratio of your image layers. I will try to explain.

CH relies on the parts of your puppet to be in the same dimensions in relation to each other, which can often get disrupted when an image file gets edited. If the dimensions of the edit is in any way different from the orignal, CH gets confused and it forgets everything it once knew about the puppet. Which is why it's usually a good idea to keep an unedited backup of your puppet and only edit an exact copy so you always have a fall-back position in case things get corrupted.

Below is an example. I took this puppet and cropped out the empty space. As you can see, the program has misplaced the center point of the head. But in the second image, I've dragged that point back to where it's supposed to be on top of the neck. That's usually all that's necessary to put things to rights. Of course, you will need to readjust every part of the puppet, so changing the overall proportions is something you don't want to do too often.

One more thing. When you edit your puppet, do you do it from within Character Animator or do you open the file from outside of the program?

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