Character Animator constantly not responding then crashing after disabling independence on an object

[Kristi Hex]

I've been working with this character for days and shot many scenes with it.  After removing independence from an object (hair), it got hung up and started not responding.  After roughly 10 minutes of waiting, I restarted Character Animator and my computer as well.  The scene opened back up ok the first time, then hung up after switching to rig mode.  I restarted again and troubleshooting led me to clearing the cache (Alt and Refresh Button) which caused it to be permanently hanging up in the scene as well.  I restared and opened an older character with no issues, but the important character I'm currently working on now crashes Character Animator.

Please help.

[Kristi Hex]

After trying everything I could find on the support community, I ended up going into the Illustrator artwork file and deleting the part (hair) that was causing the problem, then reloaded Character Animator.  This fixed the problem. 

[dtull-adobe]

Wow, glad you got it sorted out, but on the off chance you still have a version of the Illustrator file and project that was hitting this issue reliably and were willing to share it, I'd be curious to try to reproduce it. It sounds like a good bug to pin down. Totally fine if you don't, but just figured I'd check. 

Dan Tull

Adobe Character Animator Team

[Kristi Hex]

Yes I do actually.  I have a copy of the puppet with the error and a copy of the Illustrator file (from before I deleted the issue).  I also have a theory on what caused it (since it still reproduces the error).

I had accidentally tagged an object as independent and went to remove the tag.  Upon further inspection, the object (which shows up as just one object) in Character Animator, is not an object in Illustrator.  In Illustrator it's composed of 7 drawn lines (all labeled <path>) and one shape object.  I have a suspicion that this has something to do with the issue.

[dtull-adobe]

If you're ok with sharing and want to zip up the project and Illustrator file and send me a download link (via a private message, probably), I'd be curious to look at it. To reduce proliferation of many tiny layers in the Ch data model, it only includes groups that have a "real" name applied, so that's probably why it looks like one thing in Ch but is actually multiple strokes in Ai. Still, it definitely sounds like you've got a very isolated repro case that I'd be curious to get under the microscope (debugger). 😄

Dan Tull

[Kristi Hex]

Yes, I understand why Ch handles unnamed objects and groups the way it does.  I was merely suggesting that I think it's tied to the problem.  Sure, I can zip it up and send it along.  Please let me know what you find.

Kristi