Scene file empty

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I foolishly put approx 12-15 hours work into a scene and kept just one version of it saved. Maya didn't crash, I just opened it up as normal one morning, after saving it as normal the night before and the scene was completely empty. Outliner and layers empty too. It is essentially a New Scene. 

I've never seen anything like that before, I had even deleted history and frozen transformations without issue before closing and saving, the night before. 

The .ma file is now just 81kb. 

I'm using Maya 2017 on Windows 10 64-bit. 

Is there anything that can be done to retrieve the data? I should have saved versions, clearly, but if I could get some of it back that would help a lot. 

Thanks for any help!

[mspeer]

Hi!

Please upload the scene-file.

[Anonymous]

Hi,

Scene file attached,

Thanks!

[mspeer]

Hi!

This scene is indeed empty, but there is also no sign of an error or something partially left.

[john.paul.giancarlo]

do you have auto save turned on?  if so can you check in your project folder to see if there is something there?

also try checking your temp folder to see if by any luck the file got saved there !  look for any .ma or mb files with the date you last save !

normally stored here: username/appdata/temp

C:/temp (Windows), or under your Home folder in Documents/temp

let us know if you had any luck!

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Hi, yes, I'd tried all those things. Unfortunately I don't have autosave turned on. 

However, today I came to a revelation - What I think happened was I opened Maya and went File--> Save As instead of File--> Open and overwrote the full scene with the new, empty scene. What do I think that? Because I nearly did it again just now, that's why. This time I had multiple backup files. 

Sorry for wasting time. Feel free to use me as an example of one of the many reasons you save backup versions. If this is my one legacy in the Autodesk community so be it. I'll be that guy. 

Thanks all,

Mike

*The Incredible Hulk Theme Song plays**

[john.paul.giancarlo]

hahahaha well thank you for this !   I will write an article about this and save it to our ducuments . 🙂