I have a simple mesh consisting of 2 objects that I unwrapped and painted some colors on in texture paint, just to get an idea of the overall look. I saved the file at that point.Then I went back to edit mode and slightly adjust one of the objects without touching the other object. Upon returning to texture paint I find that whatever I painted on both the objects is lost. Only the names and base colors I gave to those texture images have remained the same. The UV unwrapped mesh parts are also in place. Why did this happen and is there any way to recover the painted part? Undo is not an option since I saved in-between mesh edits also and the history got truncated.
You have to save the images manually from the UV window…Or before a save you have to Pack the images to the Blend File. The images are only in memory until saved or packed.
You can try and see if there is still a Back-up…select File > Recover > Auto-Save and pick the file from the time you worked on the Blend…
1 Like
Thank you @RSEhlers. I will take note. What surprised me was that simply switching between workspaces and moving a few vertices around made the pictures go missing. I did not close the file or anything…
I tried to auto recover, but results are the same. There are picture names and base colors, but not my painting… 
Never mind… Good it was more of a sketch before real painting.
I feel like throwing up… this JUST happened to me right now.
No warning… nothing… I look up and hours of work gone… poof!
Why is this a thing?
Seriously wtf!?!?
Because Image Editors like Photoshop and Gimp or Krita and the like are working as a file document so when saving a file in those, they save the painting work as is because that is what they are at their core. Blender is not at it’s core an image maker/saver, it is a 3d object maker and saver. The Image Textures you paint to must be saved independently to disk to keep them as they are replaceable with any other image texture in relation to the object being painted. The workaround is to choose to pack the images into the file so that saving the file will also let you save the current image state inside that packed image file.
If you can remember that you are saving a file of 3d objects and that the 2d images are just assets to be saved independently, you can work out which method works best for you - saving them to disk at creation and then saving progress as you go, or packing them all into the file and saving them at close.
edit - in my Draw2Paint addon, there is an operator called ‘Save All- Pack All’ that works in the 3d view to either save the images to the locations they already exist in or pack and save the prorgess to the file itself.
1 Like
Hi Craig_Jones,
Thanks for the response. I’d like to give your add-on a shot. Where might I find that?
I totally get what you’re saying. I guess it’s kind of surprising to give users a tool, but then not support it because Blender is a 3D animation/modelling tool? Blender seems so much more now, that this statement about Blender seems a little old. If Blender wants to stick to that old addage then fine… but don’t pretend to be more than that. This issue seems to be a hole in the tool that can and maybe should be plugged up. I didn’t loose all my work because I closed down the file or changed the object or break the UVs, I was simply working away… then decided to make a small edit on another object. I then popped back to tex-paint the object I was initially painting and then discovered the image and all my work was gone. This simply should not happen (in my opinion).
My addon is here
If you would like, I can separate out the operator into its own smaller addon script so you don’t have to maintain a huge panel just to go use the Save all Pack all option.
Blender is my preferred painter above all others, in contrast to the way other people use Photoshop/Krita/MyPaint/etc. I prefer to use the procedurals in Blender to craft out interesting damage brushes and the way we can operate with the Stencil mapping is way cooler to me than most of the stuff out there.
1 Like