How to change all resource links to a new folder quickly in SD?

gnoop

Does anyone know a way  to put  all links to another folder quickly?    Maybe by text editing sbs file ?    or  with their cryptic  dependency manager?

Like their "relocate" but for all files at once?

ps. Just noticed that  dependency manager  is showing nothing at all

poopipe

That's what aliases are for

gnoop

yeah. but once you switch the alias to another folder  a huge amount of  your older  sbs are not  working  any  more

poopipe

If you set an alias to the current folder, open everything and save them it might update the paths to include the alias. 

If that works you can then redirect the alias to your new folder. 

You can use automation toolkit to fix the paths up if you want to do it properly - or you could probably search and replace woth a text editor if you're feeling brave 

gnoop

poopipe said:

If you set an alias to the current folder, open everything and save them it might update the paths to include the alias. 

I hoped for this  too and tried  a year ago or so  but  nope  .  in newly saved file it still link to same alias, not the actual folder.  

poopipe said:

You can use automation toolkit to fix the paths up if you want to do it properly - or you could probably search and replace woth a text editor if you're feeling brave 

yea. it's what I hoped for  . Import  sbs in some text editor and  then  "find and replace" all  bitmap paths but so far  can't find   a soft where could I do it.     Tried Notepad+++   my favorite  . See only single endless line of text.      Chat GPT  says sbs is an XML file  I could edit on my own  but it looks nothing like xml in Notepad+++.

it's not a first time chat GPT tells me shameless disinformation although ?  :{

PS.  Actually it works . Thanks a lot  poopipe     Chat CPT wasn't wrong either. I just had to rename sbs to xml first  and use simple Notepad exactly as it suggested. 

Easy like 2x2  and  I spent years  trying alaises, special folders and bitmap namesvprefixes   and other useless tricks.

poopipe

you don't need to rename the file - just select xml from the language menu
ctrl+shift+alt+b should format the file with line breaks / indents so it's readable too (not 100% reliable) 


aliases work fine though - our substance library has been through 7 years, 6 projects and 10 material  artists without any difficult referencing problems you couldn't attribute to human error. 

the whole point of them is so you can move the files it references to a different folder and not lose the links.  You want the sbs file to link to an alias - absolute paths are the shittest thing in the world

gnoop

Aliases make just different sort of troubles IMO.    I have  a few  masks  rendered from cryptomate AOV and save them in a folder  "renderoutput"   which is aliased  in SD .   Then  I do a new version  and have to keep previous render  . I do  a new "renderoutput2"   folder  and  re-aliase  SD to this new folder.  But since  aliases in SD are global  and not specific for each sbs file  it messes al my older sbs files  or I have to create a long list  of aliases  I quickly loose track of.

IMO aliases should be unique for each sbs file. That way  it would be helpful.     Dealing with Substance projects is just another layer on unnecessary complexity .      But this notepad trick  is so simple and obvious.     Surely could be just a python script  doing same right from SD interface , a single button.    I'v been   regularly asking them  to do so for a decade already .   My hope on chat GPT now.

poopipe

I see. that isn't what aliases are for.
Aliases exist so you can reference packages from libraries, move the libraries and not break all your downstream sbs packages

You seem to be trying to repurpose the same graph with different inputs. sbsmutator batchtool, automation toolkit or the editor python API will all allow you to that.