All my mesh folder content is gone

[kaankircali]

After working 2 weeks, Unity suddenly deleted my mesh folder and its content then create a emtpy folder. It just gives an error that some items need to deleted from dll kind of message and all meshes deleted where I was not even deleting a mesh! I was just deleting prefab!

All my work is gone? How I can get back those meshes?

[Kurt-Dekker]

Check your recycled bin and see if anything is retrievable.

I’m sorry you’ve had this issue. Please consider using source control in order to guard and protect your hard-earned work.

Personally I use git because it is free and there are tons of tutorials out there to help you set it up.

Here’s how I use git in one of my games, Jetpack Kurt:

2 steps backwards

Yeah, what Praetor said is it… Debug.Log is your friend, and also since this is animation related, you can open up the Animator window when you expect the animations to go, and actually visually see where the state machine is, see which state it thinks it is in. You can combine this with Debug.Log() output at the locations where you set the animations to be what you think they should be, and that should lead you to some intel. I highly recommend setting up git source control. It really plays ni…

Using fine-grained source control as you work to refine your engineering:

When to make a separate object or class/script? Help me think like a programmer! (Example in text.)

This is a reasonable initial approach. The problem is you have listed the parts, but you haven’t really listed how they interact, and even if you did, it’s still sorta up to you how to organize it. Only YOU will know how to organize it, and the only way you can tell is to do the work. I recommend this: first, develop ALWAYS with source control (such as git), and every time you get even the slightest thing working, commit those changes with good commit messages. Then move to the next thing, c…

Share/Sharing source code between projects:

Your techniques to share code between projects?

I have found that bundling your own code into DLLs only serves to slow down your workflow. I base this on several years of experience dealing with other teams well-intentioned packaging mishaps. With games, it is almost always useful to reach into library code, make a temporary tweak to isolate a problem, and then revert it. With DLLs this is impossible, making workflow harder and more brittle. I prefer to share source code at the C# level. That way I can reach into libraries trivially and inje…

Setting up the right .gitignore file:

Removing IL2CPP_cache from Project

Not sure what you are “auto generating” with… I usually start from one of my other projects, or a gitignore example online, and reason about all the parts inside it, and start from there. Like any other configuration change, after you make it, pay attention for a while to make sure it is what you want. You can always clone the repo somewhere else to verify that the correct files are being tracked. Doing so to a brand-new computer is the acid test to make sure you can still build the project. …

[kaankircali]

@Kurt-Dekker

Check your recycled bin and see if anything is retrievable.

I’m sorry you’ve had this issue. Please consider using source control in order to guard and protect your hard-earned work.

Personally I use git because it is free and there are tons of tutorials out there to help you set it up.

Here’s how I use git in one of my games, Jetpack Kurt:

https://discussions.unity.com/t/807568/3

Using fine-grained source control as you work to refine your engineering:

https://discussions.unity.com/t/826718/2

Share/Sharing source code between projects:

https://discussions.unity.com/t/719810/2

Setting up the right .gitignore file:

https://discussions.unity.com/t/834885/5

Hi Kurt,

Thanks for the advice, usually I do it manually by copying the content of critical files. But to be honest never thought it will happen to mesh files. I have project files from Blender but in any case it is frustrating.

I will check your workaround.

[Kurt-Dekker]

There are no “mesh files” from a standard Blender import. Unity imports a Blender file as a series of different assets depending on what you put into it in the first place: GameObject, MeshRenderers, Meshes, Materials, etc.

All Unity does when it imports a blender file is call the Unity-BlenderToFBX.py script (located in your installation of Unity) and imports stuff.

If you recently upgraded Unity, around Unity2019 or so, they changed what they imported, so it will reshape EVERYTHING in your imports and break 100% of your prefabs if you have extra things like Camera and Light in your blender files.

Is that what happened?

If so, you can easily tweak the import script back to the way it was before, changing the one that Unity installs. You’d need to sort out any permissions to edit the file with your operating system.

There is a line in the above python file enumerating what will get imported. Make that line look like this:

exportObjects = ['ARMATURE', 'EMPTY', 'MESH']

Then reimport all and it should be back to the way it was before the upgrade.

ALSO: USE SOURCE CONTROL!

[kaankircali]

Actually I am doing it through fbx export not blender file. It is much more easier for me to share files thorugh various applications.

I closed the project after I went mad. Now I reopened it and understand not only “Meshes” folder, also “Materials” folder and unfortunateley “Editor” folder with my editor scripts are gone.

And I just tried to delete a prefab and all this happened. Try to recover but no chance.

Anyway as you said key is “SOURCE CONTROL” Now I am reimporting everything back, and setting up source control.

Thanks Kurt.

[PraetorBlue]

100% on the source control front!

That being said double check that you haven’t simply accidentally dragged these folders/files inside another folder. I’ve done that many a time and it can be quite annoying and frustrating to repair.