Rig going invisible when selecting either arm

[NotJustPets]

I am using Character Animator (and the Beta) for the first time, I have made the rig in illustrator, all the layers were working great, made triggers and swap sets. I needed to add different variations of the arms and hands, different positions, hand movements etc so I would be able to make the triggers and then record some scenes. I did everything the same way with the arms before in illustrator with the arms and hands, but when I pulled the rig up to start making the new sets with the different movementst/expressions I noticed anytime I clicked on the original arm my whole rig goes invisible and I cant have both original arms visible at the same time. I have tried moving layers around, adding the + to the other arms and made them their own layers, combining the layers, but I have not been able to figure what I am doing wrong or if its a combination of things. I have also noticed that some hands have a warped mesh on them with points for other hands. I don't know where I messed up or if its the ap glitching on me (which it has done) I have been working on this for hours. Also a note that all I have is a head for my character, and under the head I have mouth, arms, hands, eyes, and eyebrows. THANK YOU!!!

[NotJustPets]

I started to move the new layers i made one by one to a new page, the rig started to work fine again, but then on my third swap set it started to wig out on me again, and my arms are no longer connected together

[NotJustPets]

Yet another update, I am at a loss, I have switched names, reset everything, Im to teh point where I am going to start from scratch because I cant figure out what happened or why. Here are some screen shots of what is happening in Ch and what jist of my layers in Ai

[alank99101739]

When things start disappearing it sounds like a swapset issue - wrong layers are in swapsets. Could you share screenshots of the triggers and layers the control and swapsets they belong to? That is where i would start looking anyway. (Swapsets are one of the few ways of making things disappear - so disappearing stuff (including in rig mode) has often been a swap set issue for me)

[NotJustPets]

Sure these are the three sets I have which dont include any of the ones that are appearing on my screen, I cant even disable things to not be in the scene becuase it makes other things i had invisible pop back up

[alank99101739]

There are a few things I notice that are different to what I am used to. They may not be wrong, but with weird stuff happening I suggest removing anything unusual, see if it behaves, then add it back one by one to see what causes it.

• You have a spelling error in neutral for mouth - not sure if on purpose to avoid autotagger
• I am not sure if it's safe to have the same layer in two triggers of the same swapset - nuetral mouth was an example, but there were others - I normally have say 3 siblings under the same parent and attach triggers to those three - so it is very clear to display one and not the others
• The eyebrow triggers are attached sometimes to more deeply nested layers - i would bind to layers up a level (eg use Sky/Head/Eyebrow/Worried instead of Sky/Head/Eyebrow/Worried/Worried2)

I am wondering if putting the same layers under multiple triggers in the same swapset is confusing ch.

[NotJustPets]

Still not working, I tried this and it will work for a second then stop

[alank99101739]

Can you share the puppet? Might be time to use "export puppet" from the menu, drop into google drive or similar, then share a link here so others can download and have a look. Sounds like a strange problem!

[NotJustPets]

Sure! It is a really strange thing, on the phone with someone from Adobe right now, they seem just as confused. We rolled back to a previous version. I had to delete the entire project and just keep the basics and what I needed for a skit, now the mouth isn't switching from neutral to angry in a swap set and the lip sync isn't working on one of the swap sets, should I post the entire project or just it's current state

[NotJustPets]

this is what I have before things started to go south
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1r-esIo8DMcugTasL0d88k0eVekx9LZAT/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1K1_pmZxkVpuTrgRUh1Exo6Vimk500sf1/view?usp=sharing

and this is the current state it is in

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Q9cYh1M8vOP3zQ8jrvhbydynFc6IUgsq/view?usp=sharing 

[TheOriginalGC]

While this isn't the puppet file, I do have one suggestion - move the arm layers so that they're not part of the head. Since you want them to be in front, put both arm layers above the head layer and see if that helps.

[TheOriginalGC]

To make it work, I created a new layer to insert your arm pieces into, one for Right Arm and one for Left Arm. By putting the arm parts into a new layer, I was able to create a swap set with that layer. Now I can use a trigger to switch from one pose to another.

[NotJustPets]

Thank you I will try that, I ended up deleting everything and just using the hands on the original arms(down position) the eye brows were giving me the issues, and illustrator started to crash on me. I don't know why the eyebrows were giving me such a problem. I tried pulling the puppet, but the file would not appear when ever I tried to get it on Google drive

[TheOriginalGC]

Character Animator will track the eyebrows on your face, going up and down as your own eyebrows do. You do not need to create a swap set for your eyebrows unless it's important to the animation. You can just raise your own eyebrows for a simple surprised or pleasant look and lower them for a serious or angry look. If you choose to create a swap set, you will need to put all of the eyebrow positions in a single layer, just as with the arms in my example above. I will create an example file to show you what I mean.

[NotJustPets]

Thanks, I did not see an example(I am new to all of this) I had to use the triggers for the eyebrows cause my glasses were getting in the way of the movements ( waiting for contacts to arrive) and it was also causing illustrator to crash for whatever reason, I had three layers for the eyebrows when I started over, normal, angry, and worried, then triggers for things like one eyebrow up, doing a wave with them, etc.. but it would make everything start to wig out on the rig, things would just go invisible. 

[TheOriginalGC]

I set the eyebrows to respond to the same trigger so they would move together. You just need to change the trigger key for individual movement. I suggest choosing two keys that are close together on the left side of the keyboard so you can easily select them with one hand for simultaneous action.

[TheOriginalGC]

Here is the link to the file. I made some other corrections such as change the name of "Pupil Range" to "Eyeball" and added the cycle animation behavior to the blink.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QZJnzQljhidauptwgUUFu7UZoH_oNU9A/view?usp=sharing

[NotJustPets]

Oh AWESOME thanks! I was informed that I needed to have eyeball as pupil range so the pupil wouldnt leave the area while tracking, is that not the case? (again super new, photoshop is the only thing I ever used and that was about 20 yrs ago)  

[TheOriginalGC]

Character Animator is programmed to recognize "Eyeball" for the pupil range and anything can be named Eyeball, even the frame of glasses or an area colored to match the rest ot the face (in cases where only pupils can be seen, which I am fond of doing). There are advanced techniques where the eyeball and pupil are positioned behind a mask in the case of large pupils.

[NotJustPets]

Ive seen that and was curious to try it with my cloud and have the lids I have actually function, but I was on a time restraint. Now that I have more time I wanna really make this thing come to life, I would love to be able to control it more without triggers, like finger movements and the such, I tried the Ch Beta but my mic arm kept getting in the way. Anywho, I thank you VERY much for your help. Hopefully I can open my original file again (I had to send it to a friend to delete the eyebrows from it becuase it kept crashing anytime I saved the file) <3!!