Character Animator CC 2018 crashes in several scenarios

[RuneJaco]

Hi there,

I have a Windows 10 x64 PC (workstation, kind of), that I use mainly for After Effects, Audition, Premiere Pro, and some Photoshop and Illustrator. I was very excited to see Character Animator out of beta for this latest update and installed it to give it a spin.

I watched some "what's new" and tutorial videos and look forward to creating some masterpieces with this. However, the application is very unstable on my computer. It crashes in the following scenarios that I have ran into so far.

1. If I try to create a new puppet from the start screen. It seems not to matter which of the templates (blank face, Chloe, ...) I choose. If I choose a Photoshop version, it always crashes. If I choose an Illustrator version, AND Illustrator is already open when I do, Character Animator survives. However, if I save any changes to the puppet and return to Character Animator, it crashes immediately.

2. If instead of selecting a template I just go to Puppet -> New Empty Puppet, I am taken into the record workspace. I get to name my new puppet, I see the output from my webcam/mic in the Camera & Microphone panel, and I can generally do stuff like set my rest pose. But if I click the Rig workspace at the top center of the UI, the application immediately crashes again.

Given these to problems, I have not really been able to do a lot with the app yet. I couldn't find anyone else reporting this problem, so it could of course be my system, but it works really great for AE, AU, PPro etc., so I dunno why that would be the case.

Please let me know if I can provide any further info to help resolve this issue!

Thanks!

[anniem32845173]

I feel your pain.
I'm running CA v1 on Windows 7, alongside the Beta version, no problems.
Have tried to replicate your problems but it's running fine on my system. I'm one of those people nervous about upgrading to Win 10 as I've 'heard' there can be some conflicts.

Only thing I could suggest is to try uninstalling and re-installing and that might fix the problem. Oh yeah, and a bug report to Adobe... don't hold your breath.

Have also tested with one of my .ai files used in previous version and it's working fine.
Maybe keep the Beta version installed as well, which is what I have done?
Good luck. Hope this helps.
Annette

[RuneJaco]

Hi Annette,

Thanks for sharing your experience! As a result of your post I have gone through the following steps right now:

1. Reinstalled Character Animator CC 2018, i.e. uninstalled it and installed it again. Crash still happened.
2. Uninstalled CA, Photoshop and Illustrator, and reinstalled all of them. Crash still happened.
3. Installed Character Animator CC (Beta), the previous version available in my CC app. The beta is stable and I can rig/play with characters in it. CA CC 2018 however still crashes...!

So there is something going on in the final release version that does not work here. I guess I will be filing that bug report...

[anniem32845173]

Sorry to hear that.

Have just tested on Mac using the Blank face, Wendigo, Chloe and all seems fine but it insists on opening each .ps file in Photoshop at the same time as opening in CA. Weird.

Good luck with the bug report and I hope they sort it out for you.

[RuneJaco]

Thanks - I hope so too.

Just one further note in case someone from the team wanders across this - the CA beta isn't all that stable here either. I can make a Chloe and play with her, no problem, but if I make a new empty puppet and double click on it, the beta also crashes.

Ah well, eventually...

[DanTull]

Are you comfortable making a registry tweak? If so, if you can enable mini dumps (mini dumps are a lot smaller and easier to send, albeit less detailed) repro the crash and send me the dump file, I can try to understand what is going wrong.

Collecting User-Mode Dumps (Windows)

If registry editing makes you edgy, you can also right click in Task Manager when the app is crashed (and has the dialog up so it isn't closed yet) and choose the option to save a dump file. However, that's a full dump, so it'll be a lot bigger.

Thanks -- DT

[RuneJaco]

Hi Dan,

Thank you very much for looking into this!

I am a developer myself so registry tweaking and crash dumps are part of daily life.

I collected a dump, zipped it, and uploaded it to my server, and sent you the link by private message.

This dump comes from me starting the application (not the beta, this was the full CC 2018 version), then going into the Rig workspace. Immediate crash. Please let me know if you want me to test anything further, I will be happy to do so! However, since I am in Europe, I might take a few hours to reply because of needing sleep and such minor details.

Thanks again, looking forward to moving in the general direction of a solution to this!

Rune

[DanTull · Accepted solution]

I'm having trouble getting symbols to load into WinDbg to inspect the thread stacks in the dump in more detail. However, it looks like all the frames in the main/crashed thread point to a heap buffer overrun in nvoglv64.dll, so it seems to be a bad interaction with your video driver.

DT

[RuneJaco]

Right on cue, Dan! I just finished updating my Nvidia driver to version 388 (I believe, popped up this afternoon), and now Character Animator no longer crashes. Awesome! Thank you for taking the time to look into this!

[DanTull]

Sure thing. Glad you're back in business!

DT

[DaveRazor_Candeo]

I am experiencing the same crashing issues on my Windows 10 machine. I really hope that this gets resolved very soon.