ZBrushCentral

WARNING!!!! Be Cautious when saving ZPR FILES HELP if anyone can

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

I’m Currently in The Comic Con Comp and been saving my file as a .ZPR file. I don’t know if it is too big for Zbrush to handle but everytime I try to open it just Crashes it says “ZBrush Has Stopped working”

Things that I did:
when it was working I did some work with the model I didn’t like it so I reopened the file it started not opening. Zbrush would just crash but at the time I could restart Zbrush and open it that way. It would work, so I worked on the model again and saved my progress and took a break. I started ZBrush and it just automatically crashes it couldn’t open it.

After that I just decided to save it as a .ZTL.

So WARNING save it as a .ZTL first and then Save it as a .ZPR that’s just my opinion. I’ll probabbly never save it as a .ZPR file again. :confused:

good thing is I saved the model but it was not the same file I was working on meaning all the work I did was lost.

I did more work then this: THIS WAS THE LAST PIC I TOOK BEFORE IT CRASHED.

Sarah_Body_clothe_Render.jpg

if any ADMIN Can help to recover my file or tell me what happened That would be greatly appreciated.

I guess I’ll have to redo everything I just hope I can finish in time. If not I’ll still finish it.

Attachments

Sarah_Body_clothe.jpg

Sarah_Body_clothe2.jpg

#2

For those who commented on my COMIC con Withcblade thread Thank you and I’ll update and thank everyone personally when I get up to speed with my model.

Thanks again :smiley: :smiley:

#3

looking good! I really like her hair

#4

hey, realy nice sculpt:+1:

#5

That’s why I almost always save to a new file when I save my progress. That way I can go back if the last save has been corrupted. Sure it’ll require a little more space, but todays 2TB’s cost as much as the 250GB’s did 5 years ago :slight_smile:

Great model, I would love to see her finished. Knee area looks weird tho, kinda twisted.

#6

Very good start. May I see a closeUp of her hair?

#7

I also discovered a ZPR issue last night I didn’t know about. I had a ZPR saved on my desktop and I moved it to my external drive while tidying up the desktop. When I tried to open it again I got a “cannot load” error. After a bit of cursing, I moved it back to my desktop and opened from there and it was fine. Weird…

#8

re the zpr crash thing. I just had the same problem. What i think i did that broke it was renamed the folder they were stored in. This ties in with above moving the folder problem. I opened the zpr with notepad it was mostly jiberish but I searched for the original folder name, and it was listed within. I tried to rename the folder back to its original name (me being clever lol) didn’t work, maybe this is a bit of a bug?

#9

The model is looking good Filthy. Thanks for the heads up on the zpr file thing. I’m just starting with Zbrush and don’t even know when or why to use the zpr fomat to save. I’ve been using the ‘save project’ and have actually accidently and not realizing it ‘saved’ over a file when trying to open it at the beginning of a new work session. That saved a blank screen right over the project so your sunk :). The buttons are right next to each other and I think I just hit the save button by rote. You use the save much more often than the open. Live and Learn, right? Are you making that model with the thougt of selling that outfit in SL?

#10

the model is Adiagon’s not mine .
re saving zbp is new to zb4 lets u save the tool material and lighting all in one shot thats in file save as.Tool save tool saves just the 3d model subtools and all that.Document save as seems to turn it into an uneditable flat version of what ur working on. that had me stumped for weeks

#11

I just lost a zpr, it was 180mb or so on disk and for no reason at all it is now 500kb. pixologic seem to think that their file system is fool proof and therefore it must be some other problem. However, I have experienced this 3 time on 3 different machines. They obviously have a bug and denying it won’t get it fixed.
it is pretty stupid to place all the eggs in one basket. why don’t they just use a container so if one component fails, the rest are intact.
Great software but the company is just a little arrogant!

#12

I am also having trouble opening my ZBrush 4 project files. When I try to open them I get “ZBrush Executable has stopped working”.

I try to save often and with multiple files but if I have to go back to the last project file that opens I’ll lose over 2 days of work! Has anyone found a way to fix the files or recover any of the data?

I am running on Windows 7 64-bit with 8 gigs of RAM. The program didn’t crash or seem overworked when I was saving the files, it acted like it saved normally and I continued on with my work.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

#13

This same thing happened to me too when I was first learning how to use ZB4. It would always happen when my model got above a certain level of subdivisions or the file size started to get too large. (Which ever one caused the incorrect file save is hard to say, but they are both related, thus my advice.) The fix I found for this file save error, is to switch all my subtools to the lowest subdivision level before saving. I’m not sure why this is, maybe the 32bit app runs out of memory while saving? Not sure. But it keeps me from getting those 500KB files when the ZPR should actually be 800MB or larger. Always check the size of your saved ZPR before shutting down ZB, if you see it spit out a file that is way too small (like 500KB) then don’t shut down ZB until you know it’s created a file that is the right size for your project. If it did spit out an incorrectly saved file that gives you an error, then 9 times out of 10 your work is probably lost… Another thing you can do to make sure ZB made a good ZPR file (you should be able to do this if you have lots of RAM and using Windows) “Switch user” to a different user account in Windows, dont log off of the current user just let it run in the background, then open a new instance of ZB in that different user account and see if you can open the file you just saved. This way you don’t close the instance of ZB that still has all your hard work in it and in the event your file is corrupted, you can try to re-save, optimize your scene, export an OBJ, etc. on the original user account… I haven’t tried this last part myself, but it should work just like that… Someone should try to open ZB on two different user accounts at the same time and post if this last part works just like this.

#14

Found some saved files in this directory:
C:\users\public\Pixologic\GoZProjects\Default

I didn’t know that Zbrush was saving any files here, but I was able to recover my project. Hopefully that will help someone else.

@3dman26 - I always save my projects at the lowest sub level and I still got this problem. The solution? Don’t use ZProject files! Save as ZTL instead.

#15

Some adivses/remarks about the ZPR files:


  • ZBrush is saving almost everything, including all your temporary loaded tools. It means that a ZPR can save a lot more tools than needed, which can multiply the file size and memory needs.
  • Then if possible, if you are just working with one Tool and doing incremental saves (which are strongly advise…), use the Tool >> Save function, not ZPR save.
  • Times to times, delete the unused temporary tools. To do so, select the Tool to delete, go in the Tool >> SubTool and delete all the SubTools. When deleting the last one, the SubTool will be deleted. Then redo this step for other un necessary Tools. Note; if your Tool list become empty, click on the Tool largest icon to display the Tool floating windows: all your Tools are listed here.
  • if your ZPR file seems ok, I mean, that it’s file size seems to be coherent based on previous saves, try these steps:
    • [list]
  • Go in preferences >> mem and put the Tool undo slider to 1, then do a Store config.
  • Quit ZBrush, go in the ZStartup >> ZPlugs folder and move all your plugins outside of it, in a temporary folder. You can do the same for extra alphas, materials, textures, at least, keep the default ones.
  • Reboot your computer, then quit all unused application which may have launched at startup and check that you have at least 4 Gb of free RAM.
  • Now, launch ZBrush and try to open your ZPR file.

  • Check on save if you have a .zzz file at the same location of your save file. This file is a temporary one and the previous save is overwritten only if the save is successful, which mean that ZBrush shouldn’t corrupt files.
  • About the files in the C:\users\public\Pixologic\GoZProjects\Default (or similar on Mac OSX), it’s the temporary folder of GoZ, when managing files between ZBrush and the target apps. Don’t forget to clean it times to times as it can take a lot of hard drive space. (Check the GoZ preferences to clean it).
    • [/list]I hope all these advises will help!

    #16

    @Totyo
    @jameaterblues
    thank you guys, you saved my life
    fortunately I worked with Goz, and I’ve found almost all of my work there, but if I didn’t I’d probably be dead by heart attack right now
    why zpr has to be such a pain?
    I will always save as ztl from now on (and multiple copies)