Outline and mesh - Character Animator

[rolfk5777606]

Hi, I am a german newcomer. Normaly I can see the outline and the correct mesh - but in this case I can´nt see - What is wrong?Here my Question

[David Arbor · Accepted solution]

On the right side in the Properties panel the character's Left Arm Mesh Shape is probably set to "Auto" or "Rectangle." If it is set to "Auto" then in this case it automatically chose a rectangle, but you can manually switch it to "Contour." See the attached screenshot for where this option is. 

[rolfk5777606]

Many, many thanks - I spended a lot of time to find this - thanks for your Quickly answer!!!!

[alank99101739]

If you want to understand *why* the problem occurs, the main reason is all the artwork in the mesh is not connected. There is a gap somewhere. I think this gap can be as small as a pixel or two in size and the separate artwork a pixel or two. So it can be tiny, but present. Character Animator tries to draw a contour line around the artwork in a layer. If it draws a contour but finds artwork left over, it drops back to rectangle.

So what I do is go into Photoshop/Illustrator and focus on the root layer for the arm (in your case) and select everything. Then go over it with a magnifying glass around the edges looking for gaps. Or use like magic wand selections, invert the selection, then see what got selected (and delete it normally). That causes the mesh to start working again without the manual override David described.

[alank99101739]

Oh, the reason I track down the root cause normally is I think that the artwork outside the mesh is not warped when the arm moves etc. So you can get these little dirty pixels in front of the background if you look closely. So I invest in getting the artwork all connected and not relying on the manual override.