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I mean in 'rigging' mode, the nested tree of layers inside your puppet with layers named Left Eye and so on. The nesting of layers is very important to ch.
Thanks for sharing the puppet (direct message). A few suggestions (but it will probably take a few passes to get right).
First, for the triggers, don't include the children - just do Chad/Head/Left Eye/Lid/Sad Eye and that should be enough - don't include all the child layers - they will be hidden automatically when the parent is hidden.
I am not sure what is meant to be inside the swapset vs outside. E.g. "Sadness" is not in the expression swapset. Is it meant to be an alternative expression to the others? If so, you need to include that trigger in the swapset (see how its not indented?). Basically the only way to make some things disappear when you trigger something (e.g. make other sets of eyes go away when you want rage eyes to appear) is to use a swapset. (You can sometimes hide it behind the triggered artwork, but this often bites you later.) Could you explain which triggers are alternatives? E.g. what you want to disappear and appear together based on triggers?
I would think carefully about nesting. I would avoid "Lid" under Left Eye as it is the only child. So it does not serve any purpose. Then you have Default/Default/ under Lid - one has a trigger, the other has a behavior, but it feels over copmlicated.
Personally, I try to get all alternatives per swapset named consistently across eyebrows, eyes, mouth etc (to make it clearer) and always group them together under the same parent (you have some nested at different depths). Consistency can help avoid mistakes
For example, you have triggers on the two children of Rage_tired Right. Why not have one trigger on the parent? And what it is an alternative to exactly? I suggest making the hierarchy reflect alternatives clearly - if only so you can come back in a month's time and understand it better.
So my first step suggestion is to work out the emotions you want, give them all a clear name, work out what parts of the face should appear and disappear for each emotion, then restructure the puppet around those groupings a bit more.
E.g.
- Left Eye
- - Left Blink
- - Expresions (all children have triggers in the same swapset)
- - - Default Eye
- - - Happy Eye
- - - Sad Eye
- - - Rage Eye
- Left Eyebrow
- - Default Eyebrow
- - Happy Eyebrow
- - Sad Eyebrow
- - Rage Eyebrow
Now, Left Blink is special - you can elimate the "Expressions" layer above if you want to, but just illustrating not to have siblings of expressions that are not expressions - group expressions next to each other at the same depth with nothng that is not an expression there. It makes the puppet structure clearer. This makes the triggers easier to check (the paths will all look similar).
Note: you don't *have* to clean up the nesting, but I find keeping the structure clean and consistent helps avoid mistakes. E.g. I cannot look at the puppet hierarchy and understand what your trigger objective is.
Oh, and the Right Blink tag is on the nested "Blink right default" layer for some reason, not the "Right Blink" tag. Blinks work by hiding all siblings. Because "Blink right default" is nested as the only child inside "Right Blink", it won't hide anything when it blinks. Usually you would have the blink tag on the Right Blink layer so it hides all the other layers.
If you want blinks to have expressions, then put the Right Blink inside each eye expression.
E.g.
- Right Eye
- - Default Eye
- - - Right Blink
- - - (other artwork, pupils etc) - this will all be hidden when the Right Blink above triggers
- - Sad Eye
- - - Right Blink (drawn sadly)
- - - (other artwork, pupils, etc)
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