Triggers and Behaviors making character disappear

[b.diskin]

My character's eyes disappear when I assign a trigger and/or behaviors to them. (I have similar problem with head disappearing fir head turn. That's a problem for another time.)

I have a Photoshop character that I want to have his eyes blink. I was able to do this with Illustrator character. I can see it them in Puppet view but as soon as I switch to Scene they disappear. They appear briefly when I hit the trigger but after the cycle is done they disappear. I noticed they disappear with trigger only and behaviors only alos. Layers are in correct order. Behaviors and trigger settings are same as YouTube video. Same for layers. I even re-imported the character. Any suggestions?

[TheOriginalGC]

There are several reasons that your images are disappearing. Sometimes they are missing, other times they simply aren't lining up correctly. The most common way for parts to get out of alignment is when the original art gets edited and the edit causes the dimensions of the part to change, causing CH to get wildly out of alignment. Another way is if the parts are accidently hidden in the original. If you would like, you can use the export function to share the puppet here and we can take a look at it.

[b.diskin]

I've not exported and posted projcts or art on a board. So, far the board has rejected attempts to post my CH project, Photoshop file and a.puppet file. Would mind walking me through this step?

[TheOriginalGC]

You'll likely need to use a file sharing site like drop box or Google Drive to post your zip file. Just use the export feature to export the puppet itself. The rest of the project isn't necessary.

[CoSA_DaveS]

Your PSD seems to work pretty well for me (after placing Mouth Sad and Mouth Happy groups into a trigger swap set together). I assume you're adding Cycle Layers to the animated mouth sets — make sure you check Hold on Last Layer and On Trigger End = Stop immediately. The rigging issues section at the bottom of the Puppet panel will warn you about these types of things if you click on it: 

[b.diskin]

Everything is set up as it should be. I have created a .puppet file and a public file on Dropbox. How do I post it for the community to view?

[b.diskin]

Fingers crossed this works. Here is my puppet file.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/crlz6zlfgcj2p49/Brian%20Edited%20Articluated.puppet?dl=0

[TheOriginalGC]

The puppet downloaded fine, thanks. I'm not sure how you have the swap sets set up. It looks like both right and left arms are part of the same swap set and no matter what I do, I cannot seem to see the other arms. Is that accurate?

[CoSA_DaveS]

Assuming you want the left and right arms to be triggered separately, you want to place all the left arm animations in a single group ("Left Arm"), and similarly for the right arm. Then if you drag that Left Arm group into the triggers panel on top of the Create Swap Set drop target, it will create a swap set with triggers for each animation. You have to apply Cycle Layers to all those animation groups (you can select the folders all at once and then click on the "+" next to one of them that in the trigger column, and pick Cycle Layers). ONE of your groups should either be the default, or not in the swap set at all. That one is the rest pose, and normally doesn't have an animation — it's a single frame, from which all the others animate.

Note that any layer (or group, with Cycle Layers) that gets assigned to a trigger will disappear, and only show up when triggered. A maximum of one trigger in the swap set will be triggered at any one time.

[CoSA_DaveS]

I see you've already figured out how to assign keyboard shortcuts to a trigger, but for anyone else reading this, each trigger needs to either be assigned a shortcut (in the Triggers panel, there is a box at left side of each trigger where you type it in) or you generate Controls panel controls after the triggers are set up.

And for this type of Cycle Layers animations, usually you want to enable the Forward and Reverse and Hold on Last Layer parameters. Looks like you already figured that out too.

[b.diskin]

Whoa! You guys are replying too fast for me to catch up. :0 D

You guys are brilliant!!

Puppet is in preliminary set up phase. Sad Mouths and Happy mouths will be set up as swap sets. I hadn't got as 'adventurous' as having making him ambidextrous — both arms separately moving into different positions. I'm moving in baby steps. I just started messing with this a few weeks ago. I promise I will work on it next week and repost the character.

Thank you all!