Community Expert

Question

Updating Character Art PSD Sometimes Loses all Rigging and Handles

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
May 5, 2020
3 replies
3963 views

Hello Character Animators! I'm working on a character and adding layers and elements as I go. (Trying to build out some nice cycle layers sets for visemes etc.) My current work flow is Adobe Illustrator exported to PSD and into Character Animator. It seems like 90% of the time any updates I make work as expected and about 10% of the time for some reason all of my character rigging and edits disappear after updates.

I cannot seem to narrow down what kind of changes are causing this. My questions are, is this a known issue and is there a way to save or copy the character rigging and settings separatley so I can reapply them to the puppet when this happens?

Thanks in advance for any guidance you can share!

alank99101739

Legend

I dont think reordering layers causes problems, but changing the nesting depth and layer names definitely can cause problems. CH sometimes will think you deleted the old layers and created new ones, losing all the rigging etc. So its really important to get the structure right early. E.g. I would suggest creating a frontal profile for all new puppets even if you dont need it, because if you want to add it later you need to re-rig the puppet again. (Not end of the world, but a pain if you have clever triggers going on.)

Kat Kremser

Author

Community Expert

Thanks Alan! I'm getting back to work on it today, based on this I think what I'll do is create the whole base structure with place holders for now. I think after a little more experimenting I've discovered it may be happening more frequently becaue of the way Illustrator will combine groups of layers on PSD export if you don't have peices specifically on a named sublayer.

ghost_tones

Participating Frequently

I have the same question, thank you! I have found to create updates in a Photoshop file separately and copy and paste the layer in to the source puppet Photoshop file.

ebenheizerm28787053

Inspiring

As far as I know, you should avoid changing the layer order and should not also rename the layer.

Kat Kremser

Author

Community Expert

Hi, thanks for your answer! I will certainly keep that in mind for future development, right now though I'm not really sure how you'd go about this when developing a new character and needing to add layers to test? It seems like changes to certain areas shouldn't affect others unless I'm missing something? Also, I'd love to know if there is there a way to save character settings so I can re-apply that to newly imported art?

ebenheizerm28787053

Inspiring

Just make a new copy for an experiment. After you are happy, copy the experiment puppet structure to your real puppet. So sorry for my long response. I didn't see you have responded:(

shooterstache

Inspiring

Hi this seems to happen when you move layers or folders that have been rigged with handles and "bones". For examples if I have my arms and hands in my body folder and rig them...then decide I need then to be infront of the head folder so I move the arms into a folder above the head folder I'll have to re-rig.

Kat Kremser

Author

Community Expert

Hmm but I'm experiencing if I even add a layer to one of the visemes in the head all of the body rigging is gone for example, is that normal, is there no way to save all that work? like I add a frame to a mouth sound and all of my arm bone and IK settings are gone?

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.