Pro Referencing animation workflow?
 

I'd be grateful for any help on where I might be going wrong with my workflow in Maya (presently 2016 sp3). I'm referencing a character onto a skeleton and have problems with edits. Workflow is:

* Build character with blend shapes and save in Reference folder.
* Open new scene and Reference in the character..
* Create a skeleton, bind to mesh and paint weights.
* Save the new scene which references in the character, incrementally as animation progresses.

Everything works fine until I make changes on the original referenced character model - e.g. deleting a couple of polygons results in the mesh blowing apart on the rig. It looks like all the weight maps are messed up.

This setup saves on disc space but I assumed another advantage would be I could tweak the REF model and it would update in the new scene without having to bind and redo weights.

Any help greatly appreciated.