Trying to organize in my project to make a working file lighter

Interesting questions - hopefully a few different people jump on with their experiences. I am sure it is different for different people.

• How did you lose the work? Through a crash? Project would not open? Etc. There might be ways to protect against a repeat occurrence. Warning about graphics card not being supported is pretty weird!! Sometimes corrupted project files have been recovered by helpful Adobe staff - depends on the problem.
• How many puppets in a scene? I would base this on what your scene needs. I have seen some people with many puppets (e.g. 20) - but know it slows down a lot with puppet complexity. I generally only have a few (plus background which is static). But its driven by my needs of the scene, not CH limits.
• How many scenes in a project? My hobby project was creating 5 to 10 minute videos. I created one project per video (I did not put 5 videos in the same project). It just felt logical, and I do suspect project will get at least a bit slower as the number of scenes increases. I suspect the number of puppets in a scene and the complexity of puppets has a bigger impact on performance. I guess I went with one video per project as well to guarantee the same puppet was used in all scenes, but limit the loss if anything did go wrong.
• How many scenes per project? My 10 minute video style had a new scene every 10 seconds or so - so I had lots of short scenes. For my video I was changing the camera angle a lot, starting a new scene each time. Others I know may have the one scene lasting one or more minutes. I found short scenes helpful though - I render each one to a video file separately, then join using Prem Pro. Separate short scenes meant I could re-render individual scenes to make changes faster (no need to re-render long scenes or the whole video). But I would think changes of location or camera angle are what will drive the start of a new scene.
• How many layers in a PSD file? The PSD file complexity does make a difference to performance. You need a certain number of them due to the layers having to align with the CH puppet rigging structure. I do have many more layers because my artwork was created with Adobe Draw (on ipad) and it created separate layers for every pen stroke. I merged some, but I think CH automaticallly merges them itself. I *suspect* it is the number of *meshes* (independent layers) that makes more difference, but never tested it. My puppet with all the strokes had hundreds (maybe thousands) of layers as a result. I often merged layers plus reduced the number of points in a shape to improve performance due to Draw no doing it for me.
• Running out of keys for triggers - it depends. It does indicate a complex puppet, but it depends - do you have 5 triggers you always use together? If so, I would consider merging them into one trigger (a trigger can have multiple layers). It does seem a lot, which could impact performance a bit. I think it may be the number of layers (not number of visible layers) that impacts performance.
• Compare your puppet maybe to the sample puppets to see if more complex?
• Do more behaviors reduce performance? Depends on the behaviors I think. Gravity and dangles I am sure have more impact than cycle layers for example. There is just more CPU required. You can delete behaviors you don't need.

For me, since I used Adobe Illustrator with Adobe Draw, I did spend some time "simplifying" puppet artwork. Draw might have put one hundred points along an hand drawn line segment - simplification could reduce that tenfold in many cases. Also merging separate layers of the same color etc also reduced layers. But I never really knew if it improved performance.