Yes, I know I should have made backups… but I didn’t.
When I tried to delete an output pin from a Sequence node, the editor crashed and now I cannot even right-click the control rig without the editor crashing.
Hello, I have same problem with control rig
I can’t find information anywhere, only that the rig control tends to suffer these errors
Taking advantage of your comment, how would you make versions in unreal?
Is the asset, the project, duplicated?
Typically, you use Perforce, or perhaps Git with large object file system.
You’ll include the “Content” and “Source” and “Config” directories, but exclude most of the others (intermediate, saved, build, …) because those are just intermediate re-generated files.
Then you make changes, and every day when you’re done (or when done with a particular sub-task,) you commit changes to source control.
Ideally, you push those changes up to the server, if it’s not done automatically, too.
If you have git or perforce set up, Unreal will also have source control related menu items inside the editor.
For the “busted control rig asset” problem, see if you can maybe open up the busted asset in a text editor and figure out what’s going on. Sometimes, this can work, but frequently, it would require you to read a bunch of C++ code to figure it out, and patch it in the debugger to rescue it. If you’re not a C++ programmer, and don’t have one near you, that’s going to be harder.
I had the same thing happen with Control Rig. Unreal crashed after attempting to drag a new function into the graph. The Control Rig asset became corrupted, and because it was linked to the Animation Blueprint (which was linked to the Character, which was linked to the Game Mode, which was linked to the Editor Startup Map in the World Settings), the project would immediately crash on open.
I had to temporarily remove the Config folder from the project so it would not load the affected map on launch. However it would still crash if the Character or Animation Blueprints were clicked on. Fortunately I had a backup of the Animation Blueprint on another drive which allowed me to restore that file without the corrupt control rig node in it, and then all other files could open normally again. I had a few other working copies of the Control Rig so I only had to recreate a portion of it.
EDIT: I suppose if one didn’t have a copy of the AnimBP backed up, one could just delete (or rename) the corrupt Control Rig file using your computer’s file browser. Deleting from within Unreal may not have been possible, since it would crash even when right-clicking the file. Deleting the corrupt file may have been an alternative way of allowing the Animation BP to open, since the corrupted file could no longer be found.
However, seeing how unstable Control Rig appears to be (it crashed the Editor again this morning after hitting undo a few times), I’m seriously wondering if it is safe for production use. It also asks to be recompiled every time I open it, which also seems unstable (described here).
In my case recently even with version control on Perforce I didn’t identify a corrupt node until months and many revisions later. Because I still had access to be able to open the blueprint (not always the case in the past) I could just spend half a day recreating it all. Export to python did not yield enough code to rebuild the entire blueprint. Also as a habit for people falling on this post, with how fragile it is with permanently corrupting files. I’ve adopted these habits:
Don’t use public functions. Changes to the interface can and will corrupt dependencies when not updated properly, checked out and recompile
Don’t use pin variable bindings. When copying and pasting pin bindings to other control rig blueprints, this can crash unreal when the binding doesn’t exist in the new blueprint
Close and open the control rig on working intervals as there are workflows that render an incorrect execution path until the blueprint is closed and reloaded.
