Marvelous Designer Support

Objective

This article describes why Marvelous Designer project file .zprj and garment file .zpac are corrupted and how to prevent them.

Failed to read the Project file: Unzip error~

Problem Situations

• When launching Marvelous Designer, get an error saying failed to read the project file.
• When opening a project file saved on the computer, it says it is unreadable.
• When trying to save the file, it says it can't be saved.
• Opening the file takes a long time and eventually fails.

Causes and Solutions

Case 1. Disk Full... Actually

• If disk space is insufficient during the process of designing and saving garments in Marvelous Designer, file corruption may actually occur. So make sure you have enough free space on your PC's drive.
• We recommend that you have at least 20GB of free space to install and run Marvelous Designer. You can make free space by deleting or backing up unnecessary files.
• See also: Marvelous Designer System Requirements

Case 2. Mechanical Malfunction and/or Connection Failure

• File corruption may occur due to physical failure, disk error, or poor connection.
• You can check disk status through the built-in disk management app or disk management utility on Windows and macOS.
• In case of physical failure, contact your company's IT support department or the place of purchase.

Case 3. No Permission to File Read and Write

• All computer operating systems, including Windows and macOS, have permission to read/write your files. If you do not have or only have partial permissions to read/write, Marvelous Designer file corruption may occur. The following post explains how to gain read/write permissions for Marvelous Designer files on Windows and macOS. Disk access rights required when Marvelous Designer running
• If you are a corporate customer, please contact your company's IT/Security department.

Case 4. Blocking File Read and Write, or Data Tampering by Security Apps

• Certain security programs, such as antivirus and Internet communication monitoring tools, may restrict Internet access and file creation of software such as Marvelous Designer. In their detailed settings, change the Marvelous Designer Internet access and file read/write settings to "Allow".
• In the case of enterprise companies, they often use stronger security solutions than those described above, and in some cases, the files themselves created by Marvelous Designer are tampered with. For corporate users, please contact your IT/Security department.

Case 5. Two or More Marvelous Designer Running Simultaneously

• If you use two or more Marvelous Designer at the same time, there is a possibility that the internal data of the Marvelous Designer project file may be lost or corrupted.
• All you know that it's a good way to save file often. And if you need to save the final result, save it with only one Marvelous Designer running.

Case 6. External Storage Connection Failure

• File corruption may occur while reading or writing Marvelous Designer files on external storage such as USB stick or portable hard disk. Although these are convenient, in reality, physical detection failures and connection failures are relatively frequent.
• When transferring files between an external device and your PC, it often appears that the file-transfer has been complete, but in reality, the all data has not been completely transferred. To check whether the file was completely transferred, simply compare the file size.
• In summary, allow plenty of time when exchanging files with external storage devices.

Case7 Network Drive or Cloud Sync Failure

• If you use a NAS and various Internet cloud sync services, Marvelous Designer files may be corrupted during file transfer over the network. Additionally, cloud sync services may have problems that removing or damaging files on the local computer during the sync process.
• If you use a cloud sync service, set it to sync only specific folders, excluding folders and directories referenced by the Marvelous Designer. For example, disable syncing your Desktop and Documents folders.

Read More

1 For example, the size of the zprj and zpac files, including Marvelous Designer basic t-shirt and basic avatar, is approximately 20MB. If your files are smaller than expected, it means the internal data may be corrupted. If your project file is less than 1MB in size, it cannot be recovered because all clothing data inside the file has been lost.

2 When recording animations of flashy, heavy garments, the project file size will be very large, and this animation recording data may be fragile in some user scenarios. If you are recording a long animation, dividing the entire scene into sections as shown below will help prevent file corruption.

File Recovery

If you would like to recover your file, please send us your problem file as is via Contact Us.