Duplicating and changing puppet artwork

[Owen 01]

I have a base puppet that includes an AI graphic, behaviors, triggers, etc. I want instances (duplicates) of it that are different in graphic elements like hair length and skin color. What is the best way to maintain the behaviors and triggers in the duplicates? Export and import?

OR... is there a good way to change skin color across all of the AI layers for one puppet that include 5 head profiles, 5 hand choices in each of 5 body profiles, etc? Note that “Recolor artwork” seems to only work on visible layers, resulting in a bunch of toggling to turn them all on and then try to get them back to the original states after changing skin color.

The ideal approach would be to import the base puppet in CA each time, then set a few parameters like skin color, hair color, and hair length. I doubt this would work, however. <sigh>

[alank99101739]

You might be able to use triggers to change the puppet around, but personally I normally just export then import, as you mention. That way you get a local copy and can change the puppet for a specific purpose.

[Owen 01]

When exporting the .puppet file, renaming the file, and importing (all in Ch and all within the same project), the underlying AI file name remains unchanged. Indeed, changes made to one puppet changes all of them. I know there is the underlying .ai file within the Ch project, and it seems that all of the 'different' puppets are using that same .ai file. How do I force Ch to use a different underlying .ai file for each new puppet?

Is the puppet's name at the top of the layers hierarchy in Ch's Puppet window have anything to do with the situation?

[alank99101739 · Accepted solution]

If you duplicate a puppet the Path property will point to the same AI file. However if you export and then reimport the puppet, a copy of the AI file is also made. If you want to verify, single click on the puppet (in project panel) and the first property should be the path name to the AI file. The imported puppet will have this in a "Gathered Media NN" directory. So the filename is the same, but the path name (directory name) will be different.

The rigging hierarchy is not relevant - that is just for the rigging tree inside CH.