Finding lost dependencies in Designer?

gnoop

I am using  Subtance Designer for a decade already and  what people praise as quick and easy  re-usability of substances   is never worked for me.

Whatever I did  a few month ago  is no more working  due to lost dependencies.   Red things.    I don't even care to open old files.    Sometimes it's just few days ago when it worked and now it's not .        

Do somebody know a way to revive  old substances  or maybe some "right" working approach ?       

Dependency manager is so cryptic it never helped me  really

Even bitmaps are impossible  to find in Substance Designer

Sometimes I see yellow triangle next to "resource" and see the path.   While it also monstrously inconvenient because it shows the path not for bitmap node   but rather "resource" you spend forever to figure out  which one,  you still capable to find the bitmap at least.

But mostly I see just yellow message "Resource not found"   and something  cryptic    not even a hint what was the file name

poopipe

References only break if you move or delete something you've referenced. 
They're a simple path and uid stored in XML so that's all the app has to go on when trying to load them. 
The path can be absolute (c:/whatever) or relative to an alias you've set in designer. 
If you change the alias, rename a folder, move something etc. then it'll get upset and should be asking you to locate the missing resources.

Dealing with it isn't so complicated but does require some organisation.

Strategies include...

Not moving/deleting stuff.
Planning ahead and make use of the alias system to minimise the impact of moving whole folders.
Using the automation tookit impactmanager to update references across your library when you move a resource.
Opening every SBS on your machine at once before you move something and do the move in designer.

gnoop

Thanks poopipe

A right strategy  is what I need probably.     My own one includes  never saving  several graphs in a same sbs.     If moved you would never find it.   And dependency manager   would never help you too.

 

The idea of referencing files is nothing new to me . Although  I don't understand how alias use may make my life better.

Somehow not any other soft using  outside files   have ever  made me so many problem as  SDesigner.    

Photoshop or 3dmax  or Blender    you always see where the missing resources are expected to be  and what the files were   and only SD shows you something  yellow and a piece of cryptic  code.

It have always amazed me since SD first version. Like they  specially designed it most painful to use way possible

poopipe

aliases mean you don't have a hard path stored so you can move something from c:\mystuff to d:\mystuff , update the alias path and not have to worry about lost dependencies.  I primarily use them to differentiate between assets that belong to different projects 

gnoop

Thanks  poopipe

I'll definitely try to use them such way,

Still it's kind of puzzles me why with Photoshop or 3d max it is instantly shown to you what  files are missed ,  you find them  with windows search  for first single  file  and then the  soft finds all others on your own.     No aliases , no troubles ,  you don't even have to  think about it .  

    SDesigner would always   find a way to make you a problem.

poopipe

In fairness max went at least 10 years without a built in way to reliably fix up broken references more than one at a time. 

Substance could do more to streamline the process for sure but the dependency manager does actually do what you want, it's just not feeding you the information on a plate or automating the process for you. 

The whole thing is not as simple as linking files into a PSD or bitmaps into a material though - those are one way relationships with dumb links, basically any file can be replaced with any other and it will function.
A substance node has multiple in/outputs, they all have an identifier, type and a data structure associated with them and replacing one node with an arbitrary alternative is more likely to result in errors than not. As such I imagine Allegorithmic feel it's safest to leave the selection of replacement nodes to the user 

DustyShinigami

Sorry to resurrect this thread. I just wish Adobe hadn't taken over Substance and the old forum was alive and kicking, as I'd ask there. They were usually very prompt at responding to issues. :-\

I've run into my first issue in Designer with dependencies, aliases and the like. I renamed my project - my .sbs - and graph to something different. All the files are in the same location on my HDD, but it's having problems finding one of the assets/graphs. It's given me a Ghost Instance. But when I look in the Dependency Manager, it doesn't give me an error for the missing reference/graph/dependency. Otherwise, I'd just be able to relocate it without issue. Instead, it's giving me an error under <self> and I don't know what this means or how to fix it. There's no option to relocate or anything. The error just says 'Reference not found' and 'Invalid Dependency' for the Instance. How can this issue be fixed?

gnoop

Welcome to troubled world of Substance Designer . A soft that is never going to be user friendly or just convenient. "Convenient soft" is an oxymoron in the world of CG, like dry water. AI will soon do whatever but not in CG field . It's gonna be always an annoying, time wasting puzzle.

Sorry, I can't reply anything helpful. Just had the very same issues today trying to revive my old sbs files on my new laptop.

poopipe

its looking for a graph called flowers in the current package - or something called lace01 in a package called flowers (i can never remember how the URIs work)

you can sometimes get more information by opening the sbs in a text editor and searching for the name it's looking for. it might give you the disk path its expecting