Puppet pin Tool stops comp from rendering - AE version 23.0.0

[ellenv54463183]

While working with the puppet tool (advanced or legacy), suddenly my comp will no longer render. There are no error messages or any other feedback. The preview just suddenly stops when the layer with the puppet animation should start, and the entire comp fails to render when exported.

I've seen a thread  from 4 years ago about this exact problem, but I can't find any solution that works in the new version of After Effects. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

(My system is up-to-date, my memory & cache is purged, I have enough memory, and the animation itself is pretty simple)

[ellenv54463183]

UPDATE

The problem occurs in one specific project. The only solution was to:

1. start an entire new project and insert the 'old' comp

2. remove the object with the puppet position effect on it (since the existing problem still occured in this new project)

3. recreate this said object again within the new project and with a new puppet position effect

Glad I found a workaround, and glad it was only a tiny animation.

I started the project in AE 2022 and continued working on it in AE 2023, that may be the cause of the bug.

So I learned that I should finish ongoing projects in AE 2022 before updating to 2023, to avoid these kind of problems. 🙂

[JohnColombo]

Hi @ellenv54463183, 

Thank you very much for reporting this issue. We are also able to reproduce this failure to render with the Puppet effect applied. Our testing has shown it can be caused by toggling Continuously Rasterize on a layer after Puppet pins have been added, related to the Continuously Rasterize effectively changing the size of the layer out from under the Puppet mesh. This could also happen if the Comp size were changed after adding Puppets.

We've opened a ticket to investigate a fix for a future version of After Effects, but a workaround in the meantime would be to avoid toggling Continuously Rasterize on a layer that has Puppet pins applied. If you do get into the "cannot playback" state due to this issue, removing and reading the Puppet effect should fix it, but we do understand that might result in lost keyframes on the existing pins.

Thanks again for this report,

- John, After Effects Engineering Team 

[ellenv54463183]

Thanks for the information and investigation ticket! Greatly appreciated.

[salcos]

having this same issue how can i fix this? my animations are very complex I can re do it...thanks!

[Debby@Myl]

OMG, I have the same problem, and I am using the latest version of AE (25.0.1)! Comp with puppet effect is not rendering at all. I can't believe Adobe hasn't found a solution since 2022! Please help!