Losing Custom panels on TVPaint crashes Topic is solved

[johnfromncl]

I have spent most of today modifying and saving brushes.
Each new brush is placed into a Custom panel which I export (without changing its name) and then I save TVPaint - again without changing the file name. I have had two TVPaint crashes and each time on bringing TVPaint up again it has reverted to the version of the panels before all of today's work. Totally unexpected. Strangely, the TVPaint file itself has all the created frames - it is just the panels that are lost. (Bringing up one of the automatically saved versions does not help - it is still the old panel versions.)
My versions of TVPaint and Wacom are up-to-date and in my signature.
My questions:
1) What additional steps do I need to do to prevent these loses? (I'll try renaming both the panel and the TVPaint file that I am saving.)
2) Is there a way of retrieving my work - I cannot see anything obvious?
It is questions 1 and 2 which are most pressing. But there is a third question: 3) Are these sorts of crashes expected?
Thanks.

[johnfromncl]

Updated action for now. (I'm assuming the following will work!...)

Reading around it seems that File > Quit of TVPaint after exporting the custom panel and saving the TVPaint file, may cause the panel changes to be kept, so that even if a crash happens later on my brush-creation efforts and updated custom panel won't be lost - at worst (or always?), the status of my panels as at my last exit of TVPaint will be what is reverted to.

It would be good to have this confirmed.

This does seem a bit long-winded, and like others have requested, it would be good to be able to create a backup version of the preferences file (assuming that that is where the panels are kept) from within TVPaint as a more elegant longer-term solution. Or should TVPaint be doing that 'making permanent' itself at perhaps every saving of a TVPaint file, if changes to panels have been made? Setting a number of backup copies that are easily reverted to would then also be nice.

A final point - if my assumptions above are correct, then those custom panels are not actually exported to a separate file when I go through the exporting action - otherwise how come the changes I had made were not kept? (It is all a little confusing...)

A similar feeling issue / related issue?, is that I have my TVPaint stretched across two screens (the Cintiq and my iMac) - if I start TVPaint without the Cintiq on, then my panels are all scrambled, with no quick way (that I know of) of getting back to how they had been...

[Svengali]

Do you know about .tvpx files?
These are files to which you manually save and preserve the custom panel and all of its buttons. If you don't know about how they work already, here is a link into the TVPaint Documentation:
how to create a tvpx file to save a custom panel and its button content...

When I create my .tvpx files I usually store them in the GEORGE subfolder so I can find them again, later.

Once you have filled out the .tvpx form for a given custom panel, any time in the future you want to update the tvpx with added buttons, you simply press "Export as TVPX..." and it overwrites the previous .tvpx custom panel version. You also have the option to change the .tvpx filename so you can have incremental versions of the custom panel contents, over time.

If, for some reason one or more of the buttons disappear from the custom panel, all you have to do is drag the .tvpx file over the TVPaint window and it will reinstall the panel and all of its button content.

sven

[johnfromncl]

Many thanks Sven
Much confused thinking on my part - including that unticking and then re-ticking a custom panel seen in the Custom Panels tab would bring up the latest stored version. (And then even more confused thinking when that did not work...)
On losing those buttons after the crash, dragging the exported .tvpx file onto the TVPaint window is the step I was failing to do.
(On the plus side, I've got in lots of practice with modifying brush settings...)
Many thanks again
John