I use a lot of referencing in my workflow, sometimes using nested references as a modular modeling method to create multitudes. It’s sometimes then necessary to collapse these referencing relationships by importing. This should work without issue, as I’m meticulous about namespacing so even reordering the hierarchy after import retains unique names on all objects.
Shaders are almost always applied and managed at the lowest level of any given piece of geometry, with NO tweaks downstream in referencing parent files.
I’ve just again experienced Vray shaders just vanishing from a file. They are most definitely there when the file is saved, then upon reopening not only is shader assignment lost, THE SHADERS THEMSELVES HAVE DISAPPEARED.
This is completely mindblowingly rubbish.
Has anyone else experienced this or know how to avoid it. It’s a complete show stopper.
I have traced this problem to shared referenced shading nodes. They completely fail to save with the file after reference import (not sure whether this is related to nested references or references in general.)
The nodes are there and visible in the Hypershade after everything is imported, and objects correctly display shading assignment. I save the file. On reopening, there is not a single shader in the scene.
I actually reproduced a similar behaviour (the reference was totally missing, along with everything with it). However, it happened only once. Maybe try this.
Importing references has been part of my workflow for years, and I’ve never experienced geometry or anything else missing in the way you describe, except in these instances with shaders. If something is visible in the file, it should save no matter what, and that’s definitely not happening in these cases. So your experience is pretty odd.
The help doc you linked to is about the loss of edits to references, which isn’t really the issue… is there a reason you think this might be related?