Layers with "guide" in the name are ignored

[Lee James]

One of my Photoshop layers wasn't appearing in Character Animator.

After spending a very long time trying to figure out why, I discovered that any layer with "guide" in the name gets ignored by Character Animator!

[oksamurai]

Ha yep, this is a trick we did so the instructions in some of our templates only show up in the master artwork files (see "Blank Face" for example). Sorry it took a while to figure out! Maybe we should change it to something less likely to be named...

[Lee James]

Ah, thanks for the clarification!

Perhaps the word "guide" could be changed - though if we know about this little feature, people could maybe use it themselves. The main thing is just knowing about it!

Having spent quite a long time now getting into Character Animator, I've found the learning curve surprisingly steep, which really surprised me because CA seems so simple in the tutorial videos. I normally pick things up really quick, but rigging my character's various poses and angles has been one of the most confusing things I've ever done.

The biggest source of confusion has been the relationships between head, body, independent, dependent, parents, how the software regards all these parts, how they relate to one another, plus the layer structure and naming (which seems to have changed throughout the course of the betas, to make things more confusing).

I wish I could click a little button and out pops a little guide (in the program itself), reminding me of the correct layer naming and structure, as well as perhaps a little diagram explaining the relationship between body, head, independent objects etc.

Having said that, I'm not complaining at all. I do think the software is amazing and congratulations on it!

While I'm here: I've made a list of about 40 suggestions: some minor, some major (purely for the sake of helping development, I don't need answers to them). Is there any preferred place where I should post these? Individually or all together?

[oksamurai]

Agreed, rigging is tougher than it needs to be now. We will keep working on improving this until it's automatic or magical enough that it feels easy.

Feel free to post here or DM me if you want it to be private. All together is great!

[Lee James]

Cool. I'll still be building up my list of suggestions for another week or so, but when I reach a suitable stopping point, I'll post them all together, either in the "Suggestions" forum, or I'll DM you. Thanks!