Issues with losing entire performance of a character- HOW TO SAVE A PERFORMANCE

[Alex.15]

Hi community,

I need some help with understanding how can I improve my workflow as I am running into the same issue time and time again. It happened before to lose a performance once it has been finalised, without a chance of recovering it due to different software errors.

Can someone explain to me - how to make sure that a performance once finalised, is kept intact in case of any errors appear along with additional changes being made?

Once I have finalised the proj I wanted to export the scene via media encoder, which I did without issues, but it happened to be needed to make some additional changes to resize the artboard in AI before re-exporting again the CA proj. and it seems once any type of change occurs at the initial artwork, as this time has happened to be needed to resize the artboard, without making any other changes to the artwork itself, errors occur within CA when auto-saving the AI file, it destroys the entire performance, it moved the artwork around, the recording of the triggers do not work anylonger, basically entire finalised project was destroyed.

How to be able to keep duplicates of the same performance without the auto-save option destroying all of them ? As I have ran into this issue before, I have saved the performance as different named projs in the hope that if any error occurs, I will still be able to recorver the finalised perf. but that is not the case, once the error has been incorporated within CA, it automatically changes all the projs saved - even under different name- as due to the initial AI file being linked to it. Any idea how can I ensure this does not happen anymore? or at least how to reverse the performance to the previous state? As the history option does not work due to the auto-save option constantly updating the project, hence the performance too.

Much appreciated.

Alexandra

[Alex.15]

Anyone?? Any tips pretty please?:) @oksamurai 

[oksamurai]

Changing the artboard size is something I wouldn't recommend doing post CH import. That is going to drastically change how CH looks at the file and will potentially throw everything off since all the coordinates have now changed.

As for safety - before making any major artwork changes, just File > Export > Puppet in CH. That will ensure you at least have the old artwork + rigging to work from in case things fall apart.

For backing up a whole project and the current copy of the artwork, you would first do File > Copy Media Files Into Project Folder to ensure everything is in your CH Media folder, not a reference somewhere else. Then you can do File > Save Project As, and it will make a new instance of the project and all supplemental files. Then zip that up and put it somewhere safe as a backup!

But yeah, the bottom line I'd recommend is - once you import into CH, make sure the size and structure is more or less how you want it, and don't do any recording until you're 100% happy with the rigging.

Hope that helps!