Corrupted 3dsMax files - "Compress on Save" is the culprit

[catpower]

A 3dsMax problem.
I opened a co-workers file that is around 4GB who does not use "Compress with Save". I saved with "Compress on Save" on, all my files will not open. Issue is repeatable. Lost 2 days of work since the 4 files I incrementally saved will not open, the austosave will not open, the .bak will not open. None will merge.

Anyone else had this happen with "Compress with Save"? I use it for all my files, only had 1 other corruption issue in the past 3 years. Anyway to get anything out of a file that won't open or merge in 3dsMax?

Thanks - Chris

[glorybound]

Is it a new after SP2 issue? You can send the file to Autodesk, but I don't think they'll be any urgency on their end.

[catpower]

I haven't recently installed a SP.
Autodesk is worthless. I have a deadline tomorrow, going to have to redo it unless there's some way to recover these files.
Thanks for the reply, good to see a fellow Christian in the rendering world!

[glorybound]

Glad to help. Can you post it someplace where I can download it and see if I can open it?

[catpower]

I tried it on 3 different computers here. It's DOA. Thanks though.
Remembered another project 6 months ago that wouldn't open once it got handed to me and I saved. So be careful with files over 3GB and using "Compress on Save", seems like a consistent bug.

[Alex_M]

I've never had this happen to me in 10 years of using 3ds max but I've also never had to work with files anywhere that big. In the meantime, try to use vray proxies and Max proxy objects as much as possible in order to save on scene size.

You should report the bug to Autodesk if you want this to be looked at and fixed in a future update.

[peterguthrie]

starting to wonder if this is the issue we have been running into recently. Only happens with massive files (over a gb). Not something I've run into in the past

[kenetor]

I have run into this in the past and it stung us hard, we now no longer use this feature and zip files up manually after we are done with older options/versions.
Sorry to see this is still causing issues.
I think the only way around it is being lucky enough to have an autoback from before it corrupted.

[Syclone1]

Im in the same boat, I stopped using Compress on save a few years ago as it was corrupting files and since Ive stopped using it the only time Ive had a corrupt file is if the power failed in the middle of saving, it also took far less time to save whit that option off.

BTW to the OP, have you tried to do a file merge? That has saved me in the past.

-dave

I have run into this in the past and it stung us hard, we now no longer use this feature and zip files up manually after we are done with older options/versions.
Sorry to see this is still causing issues.
I think the only way around it is being lucky enough to have an autoback from before it corrupted.

[glorybound]

I have found that MAX starts to quickly fall apart when the model gets big. A small model, MAX is a dream, however, a big model MAX chokes.

[anthonyh]

moving up to 3dsmax 2016 we had scenes of about 1gb using a lot of trees with multiscatter. nitrous just runs so slow you can`t animate with it. reset it to legacy directx and it was fine, far quicker. same issue on a quadro 4000 and geforce 980ti. don`t know if this is normal ?
as for saving we ditched `compress on save` a long time ago for exactly this reason. saving on a network also has issues , with big files you generally have to leave your pc alone and not also access the network while saving or that can stuff your file too. maybe it`s just our cruddy network ?