Puppet's Illustrator Layer setup: Not Displaying Layers in Sync with Character Animator

[Alba_83]

My illustrator document isn't syncing with my Character Animator setup.  I am using a template (Nelson) and drawing different textures and replacing the templates textures with my own. 

Things I have tried: 

1. Re-syncing via the character menu by hot clicking the blue hyperlink below, and re-opening the working illustrator file. 

2. I have checked my Illustrator working file is labled and saved in the same place: 

3. I have restarted my PC and freshly relaunched.

All that checked, I am still having the following issue within Character Animator: 

 

And in Illustrator, there is a twirl with several paths.  And checking my 'blink' in Record mode clearly shows that 2 is not showing up. My closed blink is non existant within Character Animator, but does clearly exist in the Illustrator file. 

Thanks in advance for any help. 

[Alba_83]

After doing a little looking on the forums I did find another person with this issue and their answer was the following: 

 Correct answer by mre8 | Explorer

Well, quickly found my answer. I'll explain in case any else is wondering...

If your layer in AI has an object that is NOT named... e.g. <path> <group> <layer>, the layer in CH will not have the twirl down triangle.

If you want to be able to access sublayers or objects in an AI layer once imported to CH, the object in the layer must be named in AI.

An unnamed parent layer will follow this pattern. If the object inside the layer is named, it will accessable, If it is not, the parent layer will keep the "unnamed name" and there will be no twirl down to access the objects inside. This is true even with multiple unnamed objects in a layer...

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When I named the <paths> in the twirl down in Illustrator, it allowed the (2) to twirl but there is still nothing inside actually displaying. and the blink does not show the closed lid yet. 

[Alba_83]

Still no resolution for this issue. 

[alank99101739]

What is your "E" drive? Ch should auto detect the change, but relies on the file system to send "file changed" notifications. Not all file systems do this however. E.g. network drives I believe do not support it. I do not know about memory sticks. Just wanted to make sure your E drive (shown as the path name) is correctly telling CH when the file changes.

The other thing to try (probably not the issue) is use "Edit Original" from the menu in CH. This guarantees to open the file that CH is using.

[Alba_83]

So I just realized this was happening, in fact the blinking is happening, but it's only going from either Full to Half blink, or it goes from Full to Closed blink...  Here is what I mean.. at 10 sec's I recorded after swapping these two layers around. 

Here is a gif of the what happens when I swap (1) and (2) above  https://gyazo.com/8f51eeb33c93330b18a6a67efb999a27

First 10 seconds is the half blink then the last 10 seconds is the closed blink... How do I get the blink to play Original / Half/ Closed?    Instead of just Original and (1) or (2). 

[Alba_83]

It seems to not be hiding the other layer either... Meaning if it uses half blink [1]  closed blink [2] is still behind it never invisible. 

[alank99101739 · Accepted solution]

The choice of drive is only relevant if changes are not being notice automatically when the CH window gets focus again.

To confirm, did you add a Cycle Layers behavior to the "Right blink" layer? It is not shown on the screenshot. You should have "right blink" with a Cycle Layers behavior added. Two child groups, one for half closed blink, the other for fully closed. You do not need a swapset or keyboard triggers - they might get in the way actually (delete them if present).

You may need to reorder the children to be "1" then "2" (screen shot shows "2" then "1"). I am assuming the "1" is half closed, "2" is fully closed.

If you have that all set up, can you please share a screenshot of the cycle layers settings (the properties panel) for the blink layer. You will probably need to adjust the settings - you want it to play forward and hold the last frame, then when trigger ends you want it to play in reverse. "Forward and Reverse" and "Hold on last layer" might need to be on - dont remember exactly. You can set the "Advance Every" to a number like 10 (or 5) to see what is happening easier (it will slow it down).

[Alba_83]

Cycles layers was not applied at all. I put it on just now onto my Right Blink Layer, which houses my half and closed eye textures.     Now I have the eyeball disapearing thing happening.   Take a look I set the speed to 3 in this gif,  https://gyazo.com/5316f9f9cd92dbf4caa3ac5a805c1b22

Also here is what the settings look like.  "Hold on layer" fixed the eyes from disapearing.  

Results: https://gyazo.com/509e67b70182ef98e5081bac5d40cc7d

I have a case of learning pains... Thank you for the help my progession has been at a stand still with this issue. 

[Alba_83]

Forgot to mention, I did just do as you asked and moved my files to my normal C drive, my E drive was an external hard drive. 

[alank99101739 · Accepted solution]

Glad you are making progress. If you set the forward and reverse button I think it will display the half close frame as eyes open as well. 

[Alba_83]

Thank you looks better