XGEN DEEP BACKUP
The Deep Backup Tool is created to allow users to roll back to a previous Xgen scene with the associated files at the time of backup. You might ask, well, why do we need this? What’s the difference between just saving my Maya scene and opening a previous version? There are couple reasons for existence of this tool:
  • As Xgen is always ‘live’. If you have a Maya scene saved 10 days ago, and you had a good result, but your art director, or anyone, told you to change something, say, the way hair clumping looks. Taking the notes, and you went on and followed the instructions. You updated all the Ptex maps (density, curl, clumps, region, etc). You showed it to the art director, and they said, “I actually liked the version from 10 days ago, can we roll back?”. Now if you try opening the Maya scene saved from 10 days ago, you will find that all the ptex maps and Xgen settings are out of sync. That’s because Xgen is always live and will always have the latest .ptex linked to whichever Maya scene you have…Unless you have created a copy of the entire Xgen folder.
  • To prevent this from happening, we can do a deep backup as we go.
  • Last updated: Pre V.12.00
To correctly use the deep backup tool:
  1. ​Make sure to have a Maya saved first
  2. Enter a deep back up folder name and select either .ma or .mb
  3. Click on Deep Backup. The Deep Backup Tool will create a backup folder each time you click ‘Deep Backup'. The default folder can be found in your MayaProject/data/xgt_backup folder.
  4. You can also set the backup path to a different directory by clicking on the > key.
In each backup folder, it contains:
  1. entire xgen collections folder
  2. 3dPaintTextures folder
  3. .ma/.mb) file
  4. .xgen file
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When you do a deep backup, these items are copied and moved over to the backup folder, and they will be put into a ‘dated’ folder, to avoid overwrites.
5. To roll back a version, simply click on one of the file on the list, and click “Roll Back”. Here I currently have a scene with modifier renamed
6. It will ask if you want to replace the ‘current’ collection folder with the backup.
Now, something to take note of when you want to ‘Roll Back’ to a previous backup folder.
  • Each roll backs will make yet, another copy of your 'current' xgen and 3dPaintTextures folder, and store it in backupPath\xgt_temp\original. If there is any issue, you can go to this folder and make manual copy/paste if necessary. If everything works fine after a roll back, you can simply remove these extra folders.