Working locally, and broken links from files that are on a network.

Andreas

In work, our projects are obviously on our network. But I prefer to work locally, so I pull the files off the network, and work off the copies, on my desktop in a working folder, as I have worked in studios before with a sensitive network that often crashed if we saved directly on to it repeatedly. That's alright for work done in Photoshop and Flash, but it is a problem when working with 3D Max, as all the links in the materials to textures on the network seem to break, especially if I started the file and uploaded it to they network after. Is there a free program out there that will enable me to update my desktop file to the network safely?

Ashaman73

Do you have windows vista/7 or linux ? In this case you could try to "rebuild" your network directory by using copies of some files and symbolic links to shared data.
Here you can read more about symbolic links in windows.

Example:

networkfolder
- workspace
-- textures
-- materials
-- Andreas
-- models


=>

local drive
- workspace
-- textures(link)
-- materials(link)
-- Andreas
-- models(link)

Andreas

Hmm, I'll look into that solution, and I'll see if that works Thanks. If anyone else has different solutions, feel free to pipe up.

thomasp

symbolic links do the trick for me. i'm using junction for this: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896768

Mark Dygert

If you mirror the network drive structure on your local drive you can use File > Manage > Asset Tracking to select a bunch of links, right click and set path. This should require you to only edit the first part of the path to switch it from network to local and back again.

There are some scripts on script spot that might help automate the retargeting, even if they don't work exactly like you need a maxscript could be written to re-target paths.

You also might be able to share out your local folder and set all of your links through the network.
So instead of: "C:\My_Project\models"
It would be: "\\PC01\My_Project\models"

This way people can open your max files on any computer and the links work and track back to your local files. This might cause a bit of a problem because your files aren't on the network which might be backed up periodically?