MAJOR BUG in 2.62 - loosing Actions

OMG, I lost days of work with 2.62 (Linux, 64bit)

I animated my rig, created 4 actions for it… Saved, exported into the game, quit Blender. Then I needed to adjust animation length. Loaded my .blend file again. The only Actions I’ve had were the very first one created and last active one. Everything else was gone.

F************************… … How could that happen and why no one else reported something like that?!

Not a bug, just a (nasty) new default, was changed some time ago. Creating new actions will not automatically set a fake user for old actions. Make sure the ‘F’ next to the Action name is enabled.

OMG!!! That was pretty nasty sucker punch from Blender Foundation :confused: I am using Blender for commercial production, so a lot of work got lost.

How do I disable that crap so I don’t have to be looking for F next to Action’s name all the time? Thanks.

I feel your pain. I had the exact same thing happen to me awhile ago (in my case I only lost one animation because I accidentally clicked the close button). Personally, I think that whole fake user/orphan paradigm needs to go.

going through the user preferences, but so far i haven’t found a way to make to change the default…

Blender Foundation, you were so good up to 2.62 ! Why do you suck so badly now?! :no:

This is the exact reason why Blender can’t be found in the production line of big studios. It will never be there, unless BF will get straight and stop adding such “changes” for the sake of changes, and never mention that in the release logs. :mad:

Blender 2.62a has to be released to fix that issue!!!

wow, relax man.

I agree, it’s not really proper behavior (I can’t seem to remember their rational behind this change). We can always request for a change. Or at least an option to change the default.

I don’t believe anyone has yet filed a bug on the issue.

Open Blender, use Help > Report a Bug and contribute to make sure things aren’t overlooked in future versions also.

I’ve had mixed responses with filing bugs; sometimes things happen, other times I get reasons why they don’t think they should change anything (including “it’s a feature”, “we’re waiting on Bmesh” etc). But at least I’d raised the issue. No one appears to have done so for this missing actions problem and it does seem like an easy oversight to fix… report it.

yeah… I have too lost a few actions after realizing that I have to press the f Button manually now! :slight_smile:
But when you know that the f(fakeuser) button is important I don’t see the problem…

Yeah this is one of the pitfalls of using fast developing, fast fixes and changes upon request, open-source Blender. It can be a part-time job just trying to keep up with the changes… and that’s if you know where to look for documentation (if it exists).

This change has a doc trail, starting with the 2.60 release log > animation system improvements. It was an easy one to miss. I scour those logs!

http://www.blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-260/

It links to: (change is hiding in #5)

The change was done after this poll (13 replies):

Here’s a post after a disturbance in the force was noticed:
http://aligorith.blogspot.com/2012/01/help-my-animation-stopped-working-26.html bottom of page.

I got lucky finding Aligorith’s blog btw. I think I stumbled upon that through a google search last year. There’s lots of info in there about the animation system changes of the past year or so. It’s a personal blog so you have to use his tag links to find the good stuff.

Here’s another site I use in the effort to keep up. Thanks to MiikaH we now have an easy way to see the revision commit logs after a long time waiting since the last site with this feature went away.

Here I’ll just post his blog post. Find the links/rss feeds and more around there.
http://www.miikahweb.com/en/blog/2012/03/03/more-svn-log-updates

This kind of info and links should be a sticky thread here somewhere. Or is a non-sticky buried somewhere around here already? Or is it on a blog somewhere already? Probably. Who knows? It’s the nature of the beast I guess.

-LP

Only 13 people agreed from the massive body of Blender users, and the change has been introduced? I take it as they don’t create more than one Action… Or don’t use Blender for any other purpose other than a hobby…

DarkPlaces game engine is open source too, and sometimes changes introduced upon request. However, developers make sure that the change will not jeopardize the previous works in any way.

Submitted to the bug tracker.

Oh, this is one of the pittfalls of open source. Everybody gets to voice opinions about dev. but very few actually do - and sometimes the will a few dedicated users can invoke drastic changes… I’ve saw lots of really stupid decisions made like that when I was involved with the Ubuntu Community… :eek:

No need to insult people you don’t know, motorsep.

It probably won’t get changed back. The good news is that old files with actions containing fake users will still work just fine. New actions require one additional click to save them for other uses. If anything, it makes actions more consistent with other datablocks in Blender; no other datablocks had fake users by default.

And it’s not even a bug, so no point in putting it in the bug tracker. Occasionally I manage to put something in the bug tracker regarding ‘unexpected’ or ‘undesired’ behavior, but this should always be from a general point of view. Personal preference won’t be enough.

Though I much prefer the old way, I understand sometimes we need to ‘reset’ the way we think & work with blender.

Wow, what an insidious change.

New actions require one additional click to save them for other uses.
That is not the problem.The problem is that it was not communicated properly to anyone and that it causes people to lose data.

If anything, it makes actions more consistent with other datablocks in Blender; no other datablocks had fake users by default
The whole datablock user/fake user things is a completely insane hack. Every new blender user has to go through the rite of passage of why, unlike in every other program under the sun, data in blender simply gets lost if it is unreferenced (likely losing work in the process).
Now the reason for that change that will cause people to lose work is that it makes things more consistent? Are people still able to put things in perspective here?
A proper fix goes like this:
There should not be “fake user”-buttons at all, that’s none of the users business! Data should not be lost by default. If data is unreferenced, if people seriously have trouble with dangling animations (because you cannot delete stuff properly in blender, btw) then there should be an operator to clear that data.

Humorous statement considering the fact a) understanding datablocks is understanding Blender and b) that one of the most frequent support questions regarding actions prior to this change was “Why can’t I delete an action?”

Hmmm. But this is still the most valid point:

Data should not be lost by default.

When creating a new action, you’re not telling blender to delete the old action… but to create a new one.
Removing something should be a separate conscious action by the user.

Come on, what century do we live in? We created computers and robots to help us, to enhance our abilities, to replaces certain functions. Why on Earth do we go back and de-automatize the process ?! Small things like that should be automatic. Otherwise let’s go back to stone age and do everything manually.

Oh, sorry BF, I was out of sleep, lost all my works and was very very very angry. Didn’t meat to insult you guys.

P.S. I am still furious and will probably stay with 2.59 release.

a) understanding datablocks is understanding Blender

There is absolutely no need to bring up reference counting to the user level. I’m pretty sure other programs use reference counting, that doesn’t mean the user has to manage it. People shouldn’t have to understand this aspect of datablocks, and I’m pretty sure most people don’t really understand it, especially when it comes to linking data from other files.

and b) that one of the most frequent support questions regarding actions prior to this change was "Why can’t I delete an action?

You can’t delete things properly now, either. This change fixes nothing. What do you expect now, the most frequent question is going to become “Where did all my animations go?”. Which of these is worse?