Okay, it's been asked...backing up up Poser libraries...

I need to back up mine, and I would like like to know the BEST way to do this. Would it be to back up each section (ex geometries, textures, etc), or something else.

I REALLY, REALLY don't want to re-ask everyone to reset my links....lol

Get an external hard drive and copy everything to it exactly how you have it set up
on your current hard drive.  To be extra safe buy two.
Keep one or both somewhere else so in case someone steals your
computer, there is a fire, or some other catastrophe.
Then if you ever have to, you can copy it back exactly the
same way as you have it now.

The best and easiest way is to just back up your entire runtime to either an external drive or to DVD, or better still, both!

DVD might be safer.
I lost an external hard drive and found out that they tent to overheat.
fortunately I did recover most of the file on it but still can't  recover the boot sector.
And I thought it the best, safest way to backup.

What I do is back up the complete poser folder too 2 external hard drives, one is a hard drive I use regularly and the other is for backup only.  Then if I need to restore poser I just drag the folder to the drive I want it on and the most i have to do is fill in the serial number.  Then I backup all downloads and the files I have created too DVD, twice, I do it twice because I have lost data backed up to CD or DVD, Steve

I think a really quick way is to become familiar with the CollectSceneInventory.py in your RuntimePythonPoserScriptsUtility folder.  It will save a copy of a scene along with every external files used by the scene i.e. Geometries, and textures. And resave all you favoite scene.

I have actually have 2 80GB HDDs I keep my stuff on, and everynight, before I shut down I make a copy, of whatever it was working on, to that other HDD.

The new PC I'm building will have a RAID-1 Mirror, and will take care of all the copying automatically.  The only drawback there is that there have been several times I accidentally deleted or moved a driectory, and it was my fault.  And had the two drives been in RAID-1, I would'nt have had the second drive to check for the missing data...

My extra 80GB is internal, for speed, but if you do go external I suggest looking into an ethernet drive/enclosure.  Then this drive can set on your network and be accessed by any of the computer that are on.  This is great for transfering data without needing to power a pc just for the instance.

Angelouscuitry,

Quote - I think a really quick way is to become familiar with the CollectSceneInventory.py in your RuntimePythonPoserScriptsUtility folder.  It will save a copy of a scene along with every external files used by the scene i.e. Geometries, and textures. And resave all you favoite scene.

how does this work exactly? I guess it will make bigger files, but if this saves a complete environment (figures, poses, lights, props, textures..) it's what I'm looking for..

Ragnar

Saving the complete pz3 does the same thing!!!!!!!!

Quote - Saving the complete pz3 does the same thing!!!!!!!!

Hi thefixer,

regarding my recent hd crash... I had the .pz3 but when I tried to open them, Poser wasn't happy and asked me to locate some obj ... so I'm not sure that the pz3 does the same thing.. but I might be wrong...

The pz3 will have everything in your scene, if Poser couldn't find something that was/is on the pz3 after your HD crash then that is probably because it was something you maybe didn't put back when restoring from your backups, very easily done, Months down the line I'm still finding stuff I had before that is missing now which means me having to find them on disc!

The pz3 saves everything! As well as my runtime backup, I also save every pz3 file to DVD so I can go back to them at any time to make adjustments if needed, that's also why I never delete anything from my runtime even if I think I won't use it again because I will have a pz3 somewhere with it on!

This is why it is better to backup your entire runtime!

OK, so the .pz3 file contains "scene information" like which figure from my runtime is used, where is located in the scene, which pose it has, which texture from my runtime it has, etc...

But is there a way of saving a file that has inside all the props and texture and figure (..etc) that I set in a scene ? Maybe this CollectSceneInventory.py works this way?

[OT] I think that this forum is great! Learning a lot ! [/OT]

I'm not sure what you're after Ragnar, the pz3 saves everything in your scene including the lights, how many, what settings etc. everything. I really don't know what else you need! The pz3 has it all as you have said above!

From my understanding the python script "collectsceneinventory" does just that, tells you exactly what you have in the scene just in case there is a prop or something hidden away that you can't actually see [I could be wrong]!

If the pz3 contains everything, then why are there so many references to .obj and .jpg files? ;-)

What I mean is it saves everything it needs to open the scene again, not absolutely every single thing!

The original post was about backups which was answered and then we skewed onto this topic.

A scene inventory and saving your work are very different things, the pz3 saves all the information necessary to reload the scene, obviously you have to have in your runtime the things it's looking for when referencing it!

The point about a HD crash is, if you haven't backed up your runtime and you have to reload all your stuff by hand from the zip files then there is a very BIG chance that you will forget something or say "I don't need that now" only to find you do when you try to open a pz3 which references that prop or character or whatever! Saving a pz3 will save everything as long as you have those things in your runtime for it to reference later!  Maybe I'm just crap at explaining it!

Quote - DVD might be safer.
I lost an external hard drive and found out that they tent to overheat.
fortunately I did recover most of the file on it but still can't  recover the boot sector.
And I thought it the best, safest way to backup.

The one I have used to get very hot too.
Almost burn me if I touched it.
What I did was get some heat sinks
(those little aluminum things with the
fins on them) and stick them on the
drive with some heat sink compound.
You can buy these at a electronics
supply store if you aren't familiar with
them.  Now the drive is barely warm.

Quote - What I mean is it saves everything it needs to open the scene again, not absolutely every single thing!

It is clear for me now

Ragnar, I do hope so, as I said before if you need any info you can always PM me!

re: backups
I use an external harddrive and CopyTo Synchronizer (download.com)
and i periodicly back up to DVD

Quote - From my understanding the python script "collectsceneinventory" does just that, tells you exactly what you have in the scene

collecsceneinventory has two options. one to make a list of everything used by the pz3 and one to copy everything used in the pz3 into a folder.

if you copy everything to the folder it wont matter if you have not installed all the original files or lost the original runtimes because all of the obj, jpg, etc files will be in the folder.

Ragnar - To ever have hope of Opening a .PZ3 %100, after a crash, the .PZ3s alone is'nt enough  A.PZ3 only lists the names and addresses of the geometries and textures you imported into a scene, it has'nt ever made copies of those file and incorporated those copies within itself domestically.

The Fixer - I guess Metacreations, Curious Labs, and now R-Frontier have all be afraid of bloated scene file sizes.

If you take a .PZ3 from you machine and try to open it on mine, with first transfering any geometries you've added to your default Runtime and used, that I hav'nt also added, then as the scene is loaded Poser is going to start asking you for the Geometry, that Geometry, this texture and that texture.  If you keep cancelling the dialogs whithout knowing where each thing is, then not having the geometries will crush all of your figures, and not having textures will leave them at thier base color! 

To run the CollectSceneInverntory.PY

1.) First make a folder for all of the files.  There'll be plenty and you'll confuse them so there is where to start.  This makes .RAR/.ZIPing the effort easier too.

1. Open your scene

3)  Open CollectSceneInventory.py from Runtime>Python>Poserscripts>Utility>

4.)  Run the .PY

5)  There is one dropdown asking you if you just want a list of all the files, external to the .PZ3, or actually make copies of those files.  Choose Make COpies.

6)  Point the BRowser dialog to the empty folder you created in step 1.

7)  Give the scene a Name.

8)  Save the scene.  The python will run for a minute and say "Done."

9.) Goto the folder from step one and oogle at all of the files that are only refered to in the .PZ3.  The >PZ3 does'nt have copies of the files inside it.  Only the address' of the files, on your HDD, are whats in the .PZ3.

10.)  Run WinRAR or Winzip to compress the folder made in step one.

11.)  Burn it to DVD.

One thing to note is that the newly saved .PZ3 does'nt now point to the collected set of textures and maps, it is still pointing to the old copies of the scene files.  So do'nt trying to work on that scene by editing the newly duplicated textures.  I do'nt know why, but thats the way it is.

Tyger_purr, that's really interesting to know, I hadn't realised that, that script did all that, you learn something new every day!!

Thanx!

Angelouscuitry,

thanks for the info, will try that for sure :biggrin:

Wish you all a happy weekend!

Ragnar