what gets saved in scenes/scene subsets

alan bard newcomer

sillyme, I've been creating custom content, buildings etc ... passing things back and forth to hexagon and 3d max and then saving the finished items as scene and scene subsets
But as I just discovered with the loss of my data drive.some things disappear.
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If it was only saved as a scene ... it doesn't save imported objects?
but if I save them as scene subsets it does?

 

sriesch

This isn't a complete answer, but just as an FYI there are several things you should do to avoid loosing stuff. 

One, make sure when you save .duf files that you save them into a folder that has already been mapped as a DAZ Studio native content folder.  I don't remember what problem arises if you just save to a random folder on your PC, but possibly that could be related, I recall long ago I found I lost stuff that I had imported after a reinstall of my OS, but no longer have that problem; perhaps this could have been it?

Two, make sure you back up all your mapped folders.  When you save scenes, DAZ Studio sometimes creates data folders scattered among these folders, and those are needed when .duf scenes load, as the .duf scene doesn't (or doesn't always) contain everything needed for the scene, sometimes it references these other files as well.

alan bard newcomer

I have stuff backed up mulitple places.. but apparently the newest stuff didn't get copied (index problems) over when I did the most recent backup...
when I opened the one of the  new scene files it informed me it couldn't find any of the objects I imported...  that's when I discovered they aren't really imported but linked to... so even though I have the scene files... which are dumped to a separate drive than where the content libraries are the object files were lost....

Bejaymac

DUF files are normally just "loader" files, they hold the instructions on how to construct the object/scene and where to find the DSF asset files to do that.

Saving as a scene/subset will take all mesh work that isn't in native format, and write it out into the "data/auto_adapted" folder, these are the files your DUF files are looking for and not your original mesh, it's only Poser content that DS will store the paths to the legacy files in the DUF.

Sometimes the mesh work is actually saved right inside the DUF file, which means you wont have any DSF files for it, this is rare though as I only have a couple of items that have done that.

alan bard newcomer

the scene subset files are dufs... like the scene files... 
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the mesh work is all objects created out of primatives in daz ... sent to max and read in as a single mesh and then exported as an object which I import into daz... but apparently they are not imported but the objects are linked to...
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it wouldn't sting as much but the last weeks worth of objects apparently didn't get copied to the back up drive ...  the back up drive was reconfigued as the daz content drive but the scene files can't find the objects...

 

 

 

sriesch

I don't know what your backup process is, but part of mine involves simply copying the root folder that (among other things) includes all my content.  I have found a handy utility called ExamDiff (and I'm sure there are many others out there as well) that allows me to do a byte-by-byte comparison of two folders.  This has on occasion shown differences between the original and the backup I had just made (sometimes due to something I forgot, sometimes due to bad memory silently messing up a file copy), allowing me to correct or redo the backup until I got it right, so that I know it worked by the time I remove the backup drive.  Of course this isn't a gurantee since I could both miss other steps such as exporting the DS database into my folder before copying, copying the wrong folder, comparing the wrong folder, changing something after verifying the backup, etc.  However it's still better than nothing, and perhaps a similar utility could assist you in reducing the chances of your backup processing loosing things.  Of course that may not work if your backup process is much different.

alan bard newcomer

I back the whole 300 gigs of daz data off to another drive... 
and even though there were more files in the new folder.. it missed the latest ones... 
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don't know how because I still did some work later ... but when I switched to the new drive they weren't there....
the first picture is what it was, the second is what it is now....
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the building minus the doors and windows was one object with multiple texture zones
 

but I'm getting really good at knocking holes in walls for doors and windows and merging textures etc... 
so I should have it back in a few hours... he said hopefully

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