AE 2023 - Adobe Font will not stay activate & character substitution

[THX-244940707f0r]

The Adobe Fonts Acumin, specifically Acumin Pro ExtraCondensed Bold will deactivate in AE, or won't activate at all.

 After Effects v 23.0 (up to date as of this posting) Windows 10.

Font Missing

• I used that font throughout a project.
• The font is always active in InDesign 2023.
• The font worked fine in AE for several days.
• Then, the font began to not be activate when I opened AE, no other version of Acumin was active.
• The other active Adobe Fonts were still selectable. 
• There was no warning about the font being missing (I'm not sure if AE gives warnings about fonts).
• The workaround was me loging into Adobe Fonts, deactivating the font, then activating the font (all with AE active), this worked for 48 hours, and several computer restarts.
• The text boxes where Acumin was used, defaulted to a serif font (seems standard for a missing font).
• Twice, the project displayed Acumin correctly, but a few English words substitued to non-English ie. ḋḊď.

The above workaround stopped working, and I tried the following:

• Restarting my computer
• Restarting AE
• Activating the font with AE closed
• Deactivating every other Adobe Fonts
• These steps didn't solve the issue

After leaving for the night, I turned on my computer, and the font displayed correctly in AE... for now. 

Is there something that I can do that will ensure the font activates, and stays active in AE?

Thanks

[Ctrl + Cmd + Create]

I'm having a similar issue with Adobe Fonts I use in PS 2023. Particular "Fit" font. Doesnt load in after effects. I'll look for a work aroud on the tube. I remember in previous versions, and even pre CC we'd have to load them to OS then load them in to each app. 

[Douglas_Waterfall]

This must be maddening. Even more so because it is seemingly random for you.

Unfortunately we do not yet have a way to export the font environment to see what AE sees so we are stuck with asking seemingly random questions in hopes of teasing something out.

• I am aware of issues in AE with duplicate fonts - is this font face duplicated by some other font? Sometimes we can see free font versions with the same PostScriptName as Adobe fonts and that is a fragile situation currently.
• Are you using any other faces with this font? If so do they reproduce this same behavior?
• When you say a font is "not be activate" can you be clearer on this - does the font not show in the Character Panel dropdown when there is no Project open? Does it not show in CC as being activated anymore? If you select the text with this font does it show up normally in the Character Panel? Does it have the substitute font brackets ex:"[Helvetica]"?
• You say "but a few English words substitued to non-English ie. ḋḊď" which is quite interesting - we have seen this in the past when the font environment gets confused and the font that was used to compose is not the one that is used to draw. In particular what are named GlyphIDs are mixed up such that GlyphID from one font are used against a different font and as GlyphIDs are unique to each font you end up with effectively random glyphs being drawn.

Do go check for duplicates, that would be simple solution if it was true. Deactivate all your Adobe Fonts and then go look in your font environment with Windows and with After Effects to see if any fonts with any part of this family name are present.

Douglas Waterfall

After Effects Engineering

[Ctrl + Cmd + Create]

All fonts copacetic. I have fit and the very large selection of Acumin. The next day I cleared cache, rebooted, and relaunched in admin mode and voila. Thank you!

[JohnColombo]

Per @Douglas_Waterfall's comments, moving this issue to Investigating. 

[THX-244940707f0r]

Hi Douglas,

Thanks for taking a look at my issue, and how maddening the randomness of the issue was, ha!

I did not have another version of Acumin active in AE; I checked my Font folder, and searched my computer for Acumin.

Acumin Variable Weight is in the Illustrator and InDesign respective font folders.
I don’t believe this would impact AE.

I had the entire Acumin family active through Adobe Fonts (5 families, 90 font weights), I believe all 5 families were not showing up in AE.

There was a font substitution, in the Character Panel; Acumin had square brackets around it ex: [Acumin Extra Condensed Bold], and another font was displayed in the project.

The font was active in InDesign 2023.

When I deactivated the font trough Adobe Fonts, it deactivated in InDesign, and when I activated the font, it activated in InDesign buy not AE.

Thanks

[Douglas_Waterfall]

Given your detailed description, and my knowledge of how...wacky...the underlying code is this is what I think is happening:

• You have a missing font that has been substituted by "Acumin Extra Condensed Bold". The UI does not show you what the desired font was which leads to confusion.

Why AE decided to use that font as the substitute is a little bit obscure (and beyond this scope) but whatever the reason the project did not have it and that was the one which was choosen.

Unfortunately I do not know of any way for you to figure out what the original font was - all we store in the project is essentially the PostScriptName but we do not expose it (...working on it...)

The missing font is presumably not a Adobe CC font because it would have been downloaded for you.

Here is something you might try (I have not even tried it) - find your layer with the missing font and copy at least one character and paste it into AI or PS - their UI might be more effective at showing or finding the true desired font.

Douglas Waterfall
After Effects Engineering