How do i get my puppet to smile and surprised mouth?

[Dr. Joe Wadlinger]

I've been going off a blank puppet in Ai to create my own character and it's going pretty good so far concidering I've never used Ai or Ch until about a month ago. However, for some reason I no longer have suprised or smiling layers, or the sad versions, and I'm not sure what happened to them. I've been using the original mouths but for some reason those layers just dissapeared. I was going to just add new layers and redraw them, but it won't let me even add new layers to the mouth groups. What could I be doing wrong? is there a way to get those layers from another blank puppet and kind of copy and paste them back on the puppet ive been working on?

[Monika Gause · Accepted solution]

When copying and pasting them, make sure you keep the layers.

In the panel menu of the layers panel select to remember layer when pasting.

Then they should be pasted into the same group which is important for Character Animator

[Dr. Joe Wadlinger]

ok, I tried it but it still won't let me copy from one puppet in Ai to another puppet also in Ai.

[Monika Gause]

And "won't let me" means exactly what?

[Dr. Joe Wadlinger]

When I follow your advice, and then copy from one of my puppets that I have open in Ai that I need the layers from for another puppet, and I move to that next puppet and try to paste, nothing happens. Even after I did what you said and clicked keep layers, nothing happens. The program won't let me add new layers to my mouth group either, so I'm trying to figure out why it wont let me make a new layer in that group and hopefully if I can get that figured out, then I can figure out how to copy from one puppet and paste onto another.

[Monika Gause]

WIthout seeing the exact files and their structure this cannot be solved.

You need to understand how layers work.

And how groups work.

TAnd how to detect the difference between those two.