Puppet acts weird when breathing

Independent layers connect to parents. So what you may want is to keep a copy of the old torso behind the new independent layer torso as part of the old parent group (skinnyed down a bit so you cannot see it behind you new breathe independent layer torso). You can then attach arms to that.

i think of it kinda like having a connected skeleton beneath all the clothes and moving body parts on top.

Thx for screen shot!  If someone jumps on who has used breathe, listen to them over me! ;-). But here is a suggestion in case useful.

I don’t have access to a computer for a while, but “Adobe Character Animator Help | Control puppets using behaviors - This behavior scales the chest of a character as if it were breathing in and out. For example, try animating the Wendigo puppet in the Start workspace, which shows breathing and head turn movements.”  So it sounds like you really want a separate layer to represent the chest.

I also noticed you moved the origin point up above the breathe point. Normally the advice is to make the origin around the belly button. Not sure if the scaling is relative to the origin, in which case having breathe below origin *might* cause funny results. I would hope breathing scales around the breath point, in which case it should be in the center of the chest. But if it scales the whole layer, then you need to put the part you want to scale into a separate layer so only that part scales, otherwise CH would think everything outlined in yellow is “the chest”, so the head I assume would scale as well.

If you turn the mesh on in the scene window (little button at bottom of scene window), it will show the yellow mesh While animating. You might try turning that one and exaggerating the breath settings to better see what it is actually doing.

But I am not a breathe expert - just some suggestions. The screenshot was perfect however.