[Bf-committers] Newbies and Blender

[Robert Wenzlaff (AB8TD)]

On Friday 09 June 2006 23:55, Doug Ollivier wrote:

> Even for experienced users the /tmp directory is a huge problem. (auto
> saves not saving is a major cause of wasted time for me)

It isn't saved in a normal .blend file, but it is saved in your B.Blend file 
(CTRL-U).  

Does Blender create the B.Blend in a system specific way? Or is a stock one 
just dumped from code?  If the latter, then  an #ifdef WINDOWS can take care 
of that like in the B.Blend.  But error checking should be done in any case.  
After all, if someone is browsing their HD sees a directory labled "temp" 
they might assume it's OK to delete.  Then the next time they run Blender 
(could be weeks later), no safety net.

While it is a unix standard, /tmp isn't a very convienient place to put 
backups anyway.  I have a Blender directory and it's four steps off root.  
Also if I'm working on multiple .blend files (either at the same time, or one 
after the other) all the numbered files just get lumped together.  

And the timestamped file names is rather inconvienient, too.  Maybe the last 
autobackup could be named "LastBlenderFile_xxxxx.blend (where xxxxx is to 
ensure uniqueness) and when saving the next autobackup rename the 
LastBlender_xxxxx to the timestamp.

In addition to the warning screen when the dir does not exist I think the 
following should be added:

A "./" option in temp directory to sve autobackups in the same dir as the 
opened .blend file (or even "./temp").  I think on most systems "./" would be 
the directory of the executable so maybe "" (or some other token) should be 
assumed as the .blend dir.  

A token such as {CURRENTPATH} would be nice in that you could set paths such 
as {CURRENTPATH}/temp for auto save, and {CURRENTPATH}/render for the output. 

Rendering over another project's finished work is another possible Newbie 
error.  Condidering that some of the renders could be hours of CPU time per 
frame, this is a mistake that desparately needs to be side stepped.  A 
ExpandTokens(char *name) that had many tokens ({CURRENTPATH}, {FILENAME}, 
{DATETIME}, etc).  Would be very useful for setting up a B.Blend that would 
make each new .blend behave the same way relative to itself.  

Does Blender actually use the Temp dir for anything else?  Maybe a separate 
Autosave dir (set on the auto save window) should be added.

-- 
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       I prefer Rush to G. Gordon Liddy.
        After all, the Watergate Tapes
        can't hold a candle to either 
         "2112" or "Moving Pictures".
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Robert Wenzlaff  rwenzlaff at soylent-green.com