Old scene cannot find Cosmos assets (because they're no longer on documents under Onedrive, but now under c://users/user_name/documents/etc

[JezUK]

I need to work on some 2 year old Max files and I'm getting a lot of missing Cosmos assets.

It turns out that the assets were under my L: drive (Onedrive\Documents\Chaos Cosmos\ etc) and now they're under my C: drive (C:\\Users\user_name\documents\ etc etc).

I can only imagine that this happened when I upgraded to V-Ray 6 as it's not something I would do myself.

However, when I go to the appropriate C: drive folder, those needed assets aren't there. The only ones that are there are mainly new ones that I've only now been downloading and importing since I started using V-Ray 6......

The 2 year old max files are some of the heaviest scenes I've ever worked on and they used a lot of assets from Cosmos libraries (HDRI's, 3D Models etc etc) and I cannot see a way of reloading all of these assets back into the scene without manually importing each asset one by one (and then they don't get picked up where they are being used at their scene location, but at the origin 0,0,0......).

Please can Chaos advise how I'm to fix this V-Ray / Cosmos problem I seem to have?

Many thanks.

[caypiranha]

can ´t you recreate your old path somehow? e.g. creating a networkdrive "L:" if not otherwise possible. Then copy all that stuff based for now in Cosmos C: folder over.
Or use an asset management tool like Connecter from designconnected.com (quiet handy btw.), or there are some on scriptspot around. It can also scan a lot and fix it. Max´s asset tracking tool, isn´t that top notched in this point at all.
But also here you can scan you folders (a bit)

[JezUK]

Sorry, perhaps I didn't explain myself.

On the L: drive USED to be my OneDrive with Chaos Cosmos - that's where things used to be (I'm guessing from V-Ray 5, which was when I was doing this old project).

Now, I've discovered (because of this need to have to work on this old file) that, possibly in V-Ray 6, Chaos Cosmos got created on my C: drive.

However, it seems that ONLY new stuff that was imported when using V-Ray 6 is now on the C drive and my L drive (for Chaos Cosmos) is completely empty.

Did the upgrade to 6 from 5 empty my L drive? (I don't believe I did that and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have done that because I'm smart enough to know I'd break things.....and I certainly wouldn't have had the brains to choose to put them there on my C: drive....).

So, this seems like it was done (to me) during the upgrade from 5 to 6.

Make sense?

[vladimir_krastev]

Hi, thanks for posting. Please read the Moving the Asset Download Directory and the Configuring the Asset Download Directory documentation pages.
I hope this helps. If not contact us again.

[JezUK]

Hi Vladimir,

I think the problem is though that my L: drive is empty, so there's nothing to move.

Is there a way of re-importing them into the scene such that they retain their original position / location within the scene? When I tried to import one asset via Cosmos, it didn't propagate that asset throughout the scene, just placed a new one at the origin.

[DougBowker]

I was just encountering the identical problem yesterday. Not only that, when Cosmos found out it couldn't locate the assets, most often it just crashed Max altogether! Especially frustrating when it was very long load time already becasue it's a 1.8GB file, with 16k objects and roughly 121 million polys. This is a Chaos problem, not a you or me problem.

There are two ways to handle it, and in certain respects, neither are great but it'll allow you to work on this scene. For this/your particular situation the simplest solution is to copy your entire Cosmos folder over to your original drive. That's Step 1.
Step 2 is (in a blank scene) go to Cosmos and re-direct it over to your old folder path. Now close Max, then re-start it and try loading in your scene. This should fix things for this current scene, but obviously it cause issues with newer scenes done in the meantime. Yeah, I know...


The 3rd option (I think) is once you've got it open and all the assets reconnected, you could in theory to a File/Archive operation, in which case it copies everything in one new folder, with all the sub paths included within it. That at least gives a whole new location, but honestly, I haven't tried that yet.

[vladimir_krastev]

Hi,

I think the problem is though that my L: drive is empty, so there's nothing to move.

Cosmos does not move or delete assets on it's own. There must be some other reason. Can you find the assets manually in the respective folder? Can you send us a screengrab of your 3ds Max's asset tracker?

I was just encountering the identical problem yesterday. Not only that, when Cosmos found out it couldn't locate the assets

Could elaborate bit more? Do you see the assets if you go to the directory? Do they show up in 3ds Max's asset tracker?

Keep in mind if the Cosmos assets are edited any way, the auto relink won't work.

[JezUK]

Hi Vladimir,

To solve my problem I thought I'd try and create a new, empty scene file and import all the cosmos assets my old work scene file needed. However, what happened was not only were the file names different to what was originally imported via Cosmos, but they were imported as .exr files rather than .hdr - see attached.

(so, how could, for example, collaboration work when the filenames for assets, are different?).

Also, why are my HDRIs now coming in from Cosmos as EXR's and not HDRs?

[vladimir_krastev]

Hi

I think the problem is though that my L: drive is empty, so there's nothing to move.

This is your main issues and it is not related to V-Ray or Cosmos.

If you merge assets in any other way than trough the Cosmos Browser they will not download automatically later if needed. If you edit assets in any way, they won't download automatically in case they have gone missing.
When you download and import assets from the Cosmos Browser, it marks the assets and uses this later to tell if an asset is missing and eventually automatically download them again.
The hrdi to exr change was made to improve performance.

[JezUK]

So basically, if these were exrs that would have saved me, but because they've been changed to hdrs, your automatic process can't work?

PS - I've since set my cloud backup to ensure cosmos drive gets backed up......

[vladimir_krastev]

Hi, could you send us your scene (or part of it) that has the missing assets for a test. You can share the scene here or trough the support contact form.
If you choose the contact form please include a link to this thread in your message.