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bobokirk
bobokirk
Inspiring
October 26, 2017
Question

No Sign of Character Animator CC2018 in After Effects CC 2018

  • October 26, 2017
  • 2 replies
  • 2937 views

Not only is Character Animator behaving strangely (character not responding to lip-sync track after invoking the control to sync, tapping the "play" control, to check lip sync in the Scene, makes the character freeze in position even as I am moving around to animate), but I see no controls in After Effects about importing, exporting, or anything regarding Character Animator.
I have CC2018 updates for everything (Ps, Pr, Ae, Ch, Au,Ai, Mu ....).
I'm also Windows 10 Pro ....

No panic, as I have other work to catch up on in Ae and Ps, but I'll sleep better if this can be resolved sooner rather than later.

Thanks for the help!  I know we'll get there!

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    2 replies

    Jeff Almasol
    Adobe Employee
    Jeff Almasol
    Adobe Employee
    October 27, 2017

    After Effects can still import Character Animator scenes via Dynamic Link or manually via PNG+WAV.

    For the Dynamic Link issue, try the following:

    1. Quit all Adobe applications.

    2. Wait ~30 seconds for the background dynamiclinkmanager process to quit, then restart After Effects.

    3. Retry your import of the Character Animator scene (e.g., via File > Import > File or by dragging the .chproj file into AE's Project panel).

    For the PNG+WAV workflow, see this FAQ: FAQ: Importing exported PNG Sequences and WAV files from Character Animator into After Effects

    bobokirk
    bobokirkAuthor
    Inspiring
    October 27, 2017

    Thanks Jeff!  All is coming together.  I actually have not tried the dynamic-link function yet.  I've used the PNG+WAV process, and it has worked for me throughout the BETA program.
    But I'm looking forward to using DL.
    Will I need to always quit all Adobe apps before using it, or this just a 1st-time set-up thing?

    Jeff Almasol
    Adobe Employee
    Jeff Almasol
    Adobe Employee
    October 27, 2017

    You shouldn't need to quit all Adobe apps first, but we're still trying to reproduce the issue in-house. The background dynamiclinkmanager process for the first app that uses it should be the one used by all subsequent apps, and they should be compatible (assuming you're using the same revision of apps...e.g., all CC 2018 version), and shouldn't matter which one you start first. It seems like there might be a scenario in which something is causing some incompatibility, but which is solved by making sure AE's version of dynamiclinkmanager is used first (i.e., by launching AE first).

    Quitting all apps and waiting up to 30 seconds allows any background dynamiclinkmanager process to quit completely so that you can control which app's version of that process is used.

    If you can reliably repro a scenario, starting with no dynamiclinkmanager process running, that produces this error, we'd like to know. e.g., nothing running, Character Animator launch, After Effects launched next, then you select the .chproj. That sort of thing.

    Thanks.

      TDFAP
      TDFAP
      Inspiring
      October 26, 2017

      Apparently AE CC2018 no longer supports CA or importing CA scripts as Compositions. Now, the preferred method of integration is via DynamicLink, but I keep seeing this error :

      when I load a project that has CA scenes imported vid Adobe Dynamic Link. I know this isn't exactly what you are experiencing, but there seems to be a few issues with the integration of these two programs as we upgrade to CC2018. As far as my issue is concerned, I am able to resolve it, by manually re-linking the missing scenes once the file is open. Once I do, CA correctly populates data into AE.

      bobokirk
      bobokirkAuthor
      Inspiring
      October 26, 2017

      Oh WOW!  I'm somewhat taken aback that Ae would no longer support Ch ...!   Whew .... I'm shocked that the Ch Team didn't throw up the warning flags weeks ago, prepping us for this.
      I'm paying artists lots to produce puppets and now my workflow is in disarray.
      Hopefully Adobe will address this post haste ....
      Thanks for your help, too!

      DanTull
      Adobe Employee
      DanTull
      Adobe Employee
      October 27, 2017

      I think the script still exists and works, but is no longer included by default now that Ch supports dynamic link with Ae.

      If you still have AE CC 2017 around, you can still run that script File > Scripts > Run Script File, then point to the script in the Adobe After Effects CC 2017/Scripts folder.

      I can also try to dig up a copy of the script if you don't have it.

      DT

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