Inspiring

Question

AE cannot connect to CA dynamic link

Forum|Forum|9 years ago
December 6, 2016
8 replies
11518 views

Hi,

I have been using After effects to build scenes with characters from Character Animator for a while now. Upon latest opening up of the project I get this:

"After Effects error: failed to connect to Adobe Dynamic Link project (86::1)"

What has happened and how do I fix it?

This topic has been closed for replies.

kjetils30485119Author

Inspiring

I'm still experiencing this. Seems to happen more often if Character Animator is busy loading something/etc. when I open After Effects project containing Ch scenes. I've started using export to png as you mentioned in a different post.

paiges86490643

New Participant

Hey, I'm having the same issue. It's driving me crazy. I can't get anything to fix it and I have so many linked files it's impossible to guess which is which since it removed all the names. What is the export to png solution you mentioned previously?

oksamurai

Community Manager

If you do File > Export > Png Sequence and WAV, that will make a folder of png image files for every frame of your animation. Then in AE you can go to File > Scripts > New Comp From Character Animator Recording.jsx to bring it into AE manually.

kjetils30485119Author

Inspiring

After importing by guessing all scenes have now been put into wrong AE comps. In addition, the dynamic link scenes from CA are not working - only color bars.

oksamurai

Community Manager

Seems like there's a bug here. We've filed it - someone may try to contact you about it, thank you for all the info.

From the team: "i'm not seeing the error msg, but i can repro bad behavior when i try to move a scene that is currently dynamically linked to AE into a different folder in CH -- the DL footage in AE goes black. purging cache causes AE to hang. maybe related? maybe see if restoring the scene location (i.e., moving it out of the folder that it was placed in) helps?"

I've been using dynamic link a lot and have seen the color bars a few times, but not as an icon, only in the comp and showing a broken dynamic link icon in the project panel. I've also seen weird flickers and other strange things at times. Usually in my case, restarting the app fixed the issue - but it sounds like that isn't the case here. And at most I've only been using like 2 dynamic links / characters in any given project.

kjetils30485119Author

Inspiring

Hello again,

I think this is related to this error, but i am not sure.

When I try to import new scenes into a AE project which already has scenes from the same CH project, one or more of the already existing CH dynamic links break, as you can see in the attached image. The selected CH scene has just been imported, and two other scenes have been broken.

I then try to right-click and reload the broken links, which results in the same 86::1 message as before.

This is starting to get very frustrating.

kjetils30485119Author

Inspiring

Upon next opening up of the project, I am now not seeing the error message anymore. The dynamic link box shows up and asks to connect per scene (although, again, it does not ask for which scene, only what CA project).

I am now just clicking on all scenes from top to bottom.

kjetils30485119Author

Inspiring

Another question.

Why does my main CA project appear as being last edited a month ago (4 november 2016) when the project autosaves all the time in CA? And why does it show up as having a size of 0kb?

kjetils30485119Author

Inspiring

I tried pressing reload footage on one of the missing scenes, and the dynamic link seems to find the project.

However, the scene names have been removed, so all I can see in my project is the name of the CA project. Linking back to the different scenes will therefore be by pure guess.

Once I selected a scene to reconnect, the scene appeared as a new scene in the project panel instead of actually reconnecting to the scene i wanted to reload.

The import dynamic link dialog box reappered after this, but then this happened.

"stopped working" - close application.

What do you recommend? Deleting all of my CA scenes in the AE project and importing them in again?

kjetils30485119Author

Inspiring

After this message has apperared for each scene I have imported from CA, I get another message saying one file is missing since last time.

In the project panel, all of my CA scenes now shows up with color bars.

Any idea how to see what folder they are pointing to?

Adding the same scenes from the same CA project by drag-and-drop works.

My entire project is on a separate external drive btw.

kjetils30485119Author

Inspiring

Restarting the computer did not help.

oksamurai

Community Manager

This is a new one to me so I asked the rest of the team (who are way smarter than me). A few questions they had:

No recent app/os updates?
Ch project location/name didn't change?
Restart of machine doesn't help?
Is that message appearing in AE?
How are you setting up the connection?
Which versions of the apps do you have and where are they installed?

E

egustal

Known Participant

I have the same issue during app update, however. Went from 17 to 18, and I also updated Ch. I can open the project in AE 17 fine, but then I can't connect to media encoder (because a new one was installed). Then if I open my project in AE 18, all the Ch dynamic links break. Bad situtaion either way.

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