ALT MOUTH DISAPPEARS WHEN TRIGGERED

[Rajae22959864g0o7]

Hey Adobe Ch Fmily! I hope you can help me with this issue that's been exhausting me for days, My alternative mouth sets (happy-sad-etc..) aren't working properly, 

everytime i trigger the happy or sad mouth set with all the visemes it just disappears, but it used to work fine before.  I had to recreate a new puppet project and when i started all over again the alt mouth sets just stopped working out of nowhere.

I am sure I'm doing something wrong.

Can someone check my puppet to see if there's anything wrong with it? Thank you very much.

[alank99101739]

I have a suspicion, but not 100% sure. First some background information.

Ch tags layers automatically based on layer names. Behaviors then use the tags. You can change the tags. My suspicion is in the past you manually adjusted the tags, but when you came back to it again and reimported, you are using the default tagging again and that is causing the problem. For example, any layer with "Mouth" as a word in the name will get tagged as a mouth layer.

So when I see "Mouth" as a layer with "sad mouth" and "neutral" etc under it, that looks funny to me. I would have called the root say "Mouths" (hoping that does not get auto-tagged with the "Mouth" tag) then "Neutral Mouth", "Sad Mouth" etc under it (which get auto-tagged).

The other thing you need to worry about however is to make sure the mouth variants are all picked up by behaviors (Face and Lipsync). You can expand the "handles" section to see what layers it found. It first looks for layers tagged "Mouth" then looks for children layers with all the viseme tags. So another possible reason is that has not worked - layers were not tagged for visemes correctly, or the behavior did not find them.

The expression variations would then be added to the swap set. (I notice the "alt mouths" layer is not in the swapset, I assume on purpose?)

[Rajae22959864g0o7]

Hey! Thank you so much Alan ! I've been a big fan of your dedication to solve issues here, you are a TRUE LEGEND and I really respect how devoted you are to help others, I will try to go by your advice, I am still learning and all those parents and children layers are new to me so I am trying my best, 😅 I will let you know if your suggestions worked for me, Keep it UP man!

[Rajae22959864g0o7]

I know that I pretty much messed with the character rigging parameters and I don't want to restart, the question I have here is: I actually tagged all types of mouth (sad-happy-talking to the side-alternatives..) as the main mouth in the puppet tags, so could that have done anything to the puppet that made it unable to recognize the triggers?

[alank99101739]

Explaining via writing can be a bit tricky at times, so I have been trained by these forums "solve one step at a time - too confusing to do it all at once". But here goes in a short form. A mouth layer is like a swapset - it picks which viseme child layer to show, hiding the rest. Swapsets are the only way to make something disappear (okay, head turner is also an automatically controlled swapset). So as soon as "its disappearing", then its something to do with swapsets where the default is not to display something (no "default" set). Triggers (without a swapset) can only *show* a layer, never hide one, so when its disappeared, its a swapset kind of issue.

What makes mouths interesting with multiple expressions is there are two layers of swapsets - choosing which mouth to display, and the visemes for the specific mouth shown. The correct swapset has to be selected at both layers for the right thing to appear (the right expression, and the right viseme). So I don't know if it is the expression level (e.g. the parent layer thinks "I am a mouth - I will hide everything except the "Neutral" layer under me because that is what I do!), or there is something wrong with the viseme tagging inside the mouth (I could not find the viseme layer I want to use). You had not expanded the sad expression group for example, and you can override the tagging regardless.

I *doubt* it has not recognized the triggers. You can look at the triggers panel, click on a trigger, and it will show the layer. You can also look at the LipSync "handles" or whatever sections in the properties panel and it will show the layers it has decided to use for the visemes. If it has not picked the layer you expected, then it could be (for example) picking the "sad" expression group (via trigger and swapset), but showing a viseme in the "neutral" group. End result - nothing is shown.

I always keep forgetting whether LipSync etc can handle multiple expression visemes at the same time, or whether you need to add a behavior per expression. Don't ask me why, I always forget (and am not near a computer with Ch installed to try). Again, looking at the "Handles" section of the LipSync behavior will help work that out.

[Rajae22959864g0o7]

I will share my puppet with you so that you can check it all

thank you so much in advance!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1v__JfnYzxeeBwjXiytb42-B_wjV53kku/view?usp=sharing

[alank99101739]

I will try when I get a chance, but I do recommend giving it a go yourself in the meantime. E.g. start by checking the tags on layers (via the property panel) to make sure only the right mouth layers (ones with visemes under them) have tags, and have a look at the "handles" section of the behaviors to see if it has bound to all the right layers (is the "neutral viseme" bound to the sad mouth neutral layer? Its the best way to learn! 😉

[alank99101739]

Sorry, had a busy patch for a while. Just came back to give it a try but sharing on the file is not enabled so I could not download it. (I sent a request.)