Currently it’s very difficult to swap animations in the animation editor to a new version of the rig.
This is because there is a bi-directional instance link saved into the place. The AnimSaves in the rig points to the save, and the save points back to the rig. The reference in the rig is a red herring, it doesn’t affect anything. The save itself has to point to the rig.
I often model and animate together at the same time for part of the content authoring process so I can adjust gaps between parts, put detail in a revealed area, and fix skinning errors. That means I re-import the same rig several times and then move the saved in-progress animation to the new rig.
If I want to move these saves to an updated version of the rig I’m animating, I have to carefully adjust the correct instance, which I usually forget which one it is, so it’s an extremely tedious and clumsy process for every single iteration. Not to mention, every time I duplicate the rig and open it in the animation editor, only to be reminded that I need to do this, it creates a new empty save, which clutters up the explorer and makes it harder to find the right one. After doing this back and forth a dozen times, it becomes untenable.
There should be a better way to move saved animations onto an updated / duplicated and modified rig.