ZTool Auto Saver

[Maph]

Hey everyone,

This is my first post here, so bear with me. :)

I got a little bit frustrated after I had a crash and didn't save for a while, and I lost an entire evening's worth of work; so I wrote a little ZTool autosaver.
I got some good results on my home and work machine, so I thought I'd share it at ZBC.

http://www.maphart.com/uploads/files/ZPlugs/AutoSaver35.rar

You can use this tool as a backup utility or either your main saving util.

I hope you guys find it useful!

[PLyczkowski]

The link is broken... Also, does it work with Z4?

[Maph]

The link should work now. :)

And I can't say if it works in Z4, haven't found any time yet to test it to be honest.

[PLyczkowski]

It works flawlessly with ZBrush 4! This is the most useful plugin ever, thank you so much. Yesterday I lost an hour of work, it's so good to have this.

[marcus_civis]

A small word of warning here. This is an excellent idea and many people have longed for such a feature but there is a fundamental flaw with writing a zscript plugin for timed saves: only one plugin/zscript can be active at a time. This means that if the user activates a different plugin while working (for example, SubTool Master or changing brush size using the [ & ] keys) this one will cease to be active. This pretty much ruins the auto save feature.

I've not looked closely at the plugin but perhaps you could add in a 'Refresh' button so that the timing could be restarted. (I don't know how you are storing variables but using memory blocks will mean that these persist throughout a ZBrush session whereas ordinary [VarDef s are lost.) Users would have to refresh the plugin manually but perhaps it would still be useful for those that like auto-saves.

[Maph]

You're absolutely right marcus_civis, and I am well aware of the limitations that come with ZScript. But there's nothing I can do about that I'm afraid. Unless Pixologic finally allows multiple plugins running at the same time (and fix that horrendous "[Sleep] not working if you're idleing" bug).
I have a couple of "failures" of my plugin as well, sometimes paired with using image plane.

If there's a lot of interest, I could look into building a little applicationl that communicates to ZBrush by invoking a zsc every n ticks of the timer, but I wouldn't know how to get around to doing that. Supposedly, it could be done; as my co-worker told me once he used that technique to have 3D mouse support in ZB. Not sure how much of that was thin air though. ;)

I am using a combination of mem blocks and VarWrite/Reads into VarDef variables. Not the most elegant solution, but it worked for me at the time.

I'm quite busy with my iPhone game (mage-maze.com) at the moment, but I'll have a looksie at that refresh button when I get some spare time. :)