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Backing Up and Archiving Scenes

It is good practice to back up and archive your work. One way to is save incremental copies of your scenes, to creates a history of your work process.

Saving Incremental Files

There are many ways to save incremental versions of a scene as you work:
  • File > Save Incremental (+) (Alt+Shift+S)
  • Preferences > File Preferences > Increment On Save
  • File > Save As > increment button (+)

    • Each of these methods renames the current scene by appending a two-digit number to the end of the file and increasing the number each time you save. For example, if you save a file named myfile.max and then save it using incrementation, the saved file is named myfile01.max. Each time you save the file the name is incremented, producing myfile02.max, myfile03.max, and so on.

Note: If you turn on Increment On Save in the File Preferences panel of the Preferences dialog, the current scene is renamed.

Using Autobackup

You can automatically save backup files at regular intervals by setting the Autobackup options on the Preferences dialog. The backup files are named AutoBackupN.max, where N is a number from 1 to 99, and stored, by default, in the \autoback folder. You can load a backup file like any other scene file.

Archiving a Scene

3ds Max scenes can make use of many different files. When you want to exchange scenes with other users or store scenes for archival purposes, often you need to save more than just the scene file.

Use the File menu Archive command to pass the scene file and any bitmap files used in the scene to an archiving program compatible with PKZIP software.

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