Force autoback?

[simmsimaging]

Anyone know if there is a way to force Max to do it's autoback on command rather than just by time? I'd love to make a toolbar/button for that and I checked scriptspot but couldn't find anything.

I get a lot of crashes and corrupted files so want to save more often, but not clutter up my working directories and file organization with a million temporary files.

Thanks in advance.

b

[jonahhawk]

Martin Breidt (or Briedt) makes a nice auto increment script. I use it in place of Ctrl + S.

It creates a subfolder in your scene folder with the "file_name.bak" then stores each increment as "file_nameV0001.max" etc. I love it.

Sometime, I want to write a script the forces autoback to save locally instead of in the project folder which is always on the network for us. This would make autosaves way faster on large scenes.

[simmsimaging]

Sounds perfect - I will look for it. If you ever get around to that script for autoback locally please let me know, if you decide to share it

Thanks for the help.
b

[simmsimaging]

That script is exactly what I needed - thanks! and thanks Martin Breidt - works great!

b

[stevesideas]

Wouldnt it be better to first try and resolve your crashes ?

Do you not have incremental save on ? That has saved me a number of times..

[zoranm]

I aggree with Steve. Incremental on Save saved me many, many times and I miss that feature when I'm working in other apps. At the end of a project I could easyly have couple of hundrets of max files, which allows me to go back to any stage of projectif I need to.

Zoran

[simmsimaging]

I would love to solve the crash problems of course - but easier said than done and in the meantime I have some nasty deadlines to meet so I just don't have time to debug the scenes any further. Anyway, I think it's mostly memory issues - these are hi-res renders with very hi-res texture maps etc. (10K maps and renders).

Increment on save is on sometimes, but not always. I have a toolbar button for doing just that, but the main thing for me is that I wanted to be able to save temporary files that were not part of my incremental chain of files.

Zoran: I understand what you mean, but I am actually trying to avoid having to generate and keep hundreds of files, and try to track what happens where - thus this script is perfect for the workflow I prefer

b

[jonahhawk]

Local AutoBack to C:

Better late than never....

Here is the script to set your AutoBack folder to be in a local folder; specifically c:\autoback\ (today's date).

c:\autoback\20090304\

If you put this in your startup folder, it will create and/or use the folder structure. If you change projects during the day, run this script again manually or restart Max. Your project settings may reset the autoback path to the project folder.

Put this in your startup folder in Docs and Settings or the main scripts folder in the max root will work as well.

enjoy

(
        local dateArray = getLocalTime()
        local year = (dateArray[1]) 
        local month = (dateArray[2]) 
        local day = (dateArray[4])
        local date = year as string + formattedPrint month format:"02u" + formattedPrint day format:"02u"

    makeDir ("c:\\autoback" + "\\" + date)
    setDir #autoback ("c:\\autoback\\" + date)
)

NOTE: This only works with Max9 (with AVG extensions) or later. AVG extensions are free if you don't have them for some reason. They were to be included with Max9 but we had one guy, still using 9, for whom this script failed. He installed the AVG_dlx90.dlx and all is well. This script works fine with 2k8 and 2k9.

[Tdog]

Sometime, I want to write a script the forces autoback to save locally instead of in the project folder which is always on the network for us. This would make autosaves way faster on large scenes.
Reply With Quote


Dont think you need a script
You should be able to change the system paths to absolute c:\my docs\3dsmax ...
in the sytem path configs

[jonahhawk]

The only sytem paths are:

Additional Icons
Additional Macros
Additional Scripts
Additional Startup Scripts
MaxData
Temp

You can set your own user paths after you have set a project folder. But when you create a new project, the autoback will be set to a subfolder of the project folder.

This script just sets the autoback path for you automatically each day. It also is handy to be able to keep a limited history of autobacks per day. You could extend it further to change folders a couple times per day... all kinds of possibilities.

[jonahhawk]

double post

[Tdog]

User Paths

Ok I spoke from memory its really your User Paths you change

select Autoback and then Modify/ browse/ click Make Absolute.
This will not be chaged when setting a new project. Tested it worked here

T

[jonahhawk]

Well actually, that only works for new projects. If you have existing project folders, we have at somewhere between 10-20 that we would consider current, the xml file stored in the project folder restores the folder structure for that project. We would have to manually go through all of our existing projects (and past projects when they come up again) and set the Autoback folder. This script does what you are doing, only it does it on startup and it adds a dated folder which can be handy. You can never have too many backups!