Everything Gone!

Well, today i decided I would try out the newest version of blender. I’ve been using a different version but for some reason kept pushing this off. Today, i downloaded and installed the newest version of blender and opened it up. Looked around it for a second or two, then decided I would open up a project i was working on earlier today. All of my projects were gone. I dont remember any warnings saying “we’ll destroy all of your hard work upon installation” but i may have over looked that, idk.

Anyone have any idea if it was moved somewhere, or what could have happend to it?

I’m sure this is in the wrong section, I’m sorry. I didn’t really know where to put it, also didn’t waste much time worrying about it.

Are you sure that there is nothing on your hard drive? Can you navigate to the directory outside of Blender and check that your project files are still there? If they show on the hard drive, then you might just be accessing the wrong directory or as the wrong user.

Blender doesn’t delete stuff, it’s still there somewhere. I don’t know where you originally put your files but by chance if you save in it’s “personal configuration” directory (which I seriously doubt) it may have created a new directory like /2.57/ where the previous version would have been something else like /2.53/ for example. So the upgrade would “undo” your personal config settings by creating new config settings and project history (copy them from the 2.53 directory to the 2.57 to carry them forward). Even your old config settings are still there, so you can recover them.

Your best bet, search your hard drive for *.blend and locate your files.

Searching .blend is a great idea, will do, and reply. I went to where my old files were in the blender foundation/blender 2.49(i think) and i made a folder in there. The 2.49 folder is completely gone and there is a shiny new 2.(whatever it is now) folder.

ok, searched the whole pc for .blend. It did not return any of my projects as a result. This is really wonderful.

Just a note, the 2.49 files will not “copy” forward to preserve config settings. If you want to restore your user preferences you will have to open your 2.49 .B.blend file with Blender 2.5x and then press CTRL+U.

We’ll get you through it, just keep asking questions if you have them and let us know how it’s going.

Did you uninstall 2.49?

Thanks for the help by the way, but no. I did not uninstall Blender 2.49.

Well, then I definitely think they should still be around somewhere unless you actually deleted them from the disk (house keeping or something). Possibly a virus scanner for whatever reason quarantined them (which I also doubt)? Not that I think it matters, but what OS are you on (Windows)?

Hehe, helping is no problem … loosing work always sucks, with luck it can be saved.

I’m using vista, and I didn’t delete them by my hand. I was working on a project, thought about the newer blender versions, Downloaded the new version of blender(with the project still open.). Once the download was done, I saved and closed the project(So there should deffinatly be at least one project.) Installed the new version of blender, went to open the project and its gone, along with all of my other 5 years of work. I knew I should have bought another external hard drive.

You know, I can’t remember the details but there is something confusing with vista/win 7 with 2.49 to 2.5. I think 2.49 was old-school and didn’t make use of the new Win7 stuff (C:/Users/<User Name>/AppData and put that stuff elsewhere. All the same, searching the root drive C:/ should have turned up the .blend files.

I’m curious, if you open up 2.49b you should have your project history and such still, can you open one of the files there still (in 2.49)?

The 2.49 is completely gone, no 2.49 file. Gone, not there. There is no longer a blender 2.49 file anywhere on my pc.

Download 2.49b and see if you can find your files then

i figured it out no worries, i put the projects folder in my .blender folder. and since the folder is called .blender it hid it from the blender program(since “.” folders are usually hidden folders.). I didn’t see it when I went and checked it outside of blender the first few times, which is odd. I would think i would have seen it. So im wondering if the installed moved it, installed blender and moved it back, and since i had alot of crap in there it took a while to move it back? I don’t know, but im happy now.

while i still have a post here, is there a way to get blender to look like the old blender? The setup is terrible on the new version.

You can do everything as far as layout goes to change 2.5 to 2.49 layout EXCEPT horizontal button window - that part is buggy at the moment.

Please enlighten me! I desperately want the old interface back! XD

1.) Open up 2.49b, change nothing.
2.) Save the file as anything (Default.blend for example).
3.) Open up 2.5x and open the saved file (Default.blend). Make sure “load interface” is checked.
4.) Press CTRL+U to save the user preferences.

That will get you mostly there, you may need to then go through each panel and right click -> and select Horizontal layout if you want to change orientation then scale the panels as needed. This will get you close.

@asian.monkey: Glad to hear you recovered your files!

TY Quandtum, im really happy they’re back! I did what you said and the setup is much better(Well, i really just opened an old blank .blend i had saved for the setup.). I think blender shouldn’t move things around so much in the newer versions, and rename things. Like IPO used to be the animation block but now its f-curve, really confused me for a sec. lol.