Maya crashed AND deleted my previously saved .obj file

[kristofer.aguillard]

I'm a freshly graduated game design student with still a lot to learn before i can get into the industry. Im working on a model from zbrush that i was able to retop and export into substance painter for baking. I had to bring my high into maya as my retop was resized to make it easier to work on and i needed to resize the high. Again, all i did was resize the mesh to the same size as my low. When i went to export the high out again at the correct size, maya crashed. When i opened it back up and tried to re-import the high in, nothing happened. Tried to open it in zbrush and substance. Again, nothing. I went into my files where the high .obj is and there is no more data on the saved file. Just a 0 byte file. My high is now completely gone and i don't know how to get it back other than starting from scratch. What's going on? what should i do? is there a way to get my high obj back?

[mspeer · Accepted solution]

Hi!

Do I understand this correct, you imported an OBJ file and then exported it by overriding the same file you imported, you did not choose a new name for the edited version?

You also did not save the Maya scene before the export?

In this case, if Maya crashed before the new data was completely written to disk the data is gone, there is no way to recover the file, you have to recreate it from scratch or from your last backup (or saved iteration).

To prevent data loss like this:
1. Do incremental saves (as often as suitable) and from time to time save or export in an additional format.
2. Create backups.