PS CS4 3d model layering issue

Hello

I started using CS4 a few weeks ago to develop some new clothes, working directly on the 3d mesh as well as in 2d layers in a the usual way. I worked on them for several days, closing the files and reopening them with no issues at all.

Today I came back to them to do some additional work, and I find that each file has only one "flattened" 3d object layer (not sure if that is the correct term). They show my previous work, but all the additional layers that I created for the various parts to the clothing are gone.

If I mouse over the texture "sub-layer" in the single layer in the file, I see a thumbnail of the texture.

Can I assume that there is no way for me to recover these unflattended layers?

Lastly, I had been saving these as .psd files with no issues. Should I have been saving them as .psb files, instead? Is this possibly related to what happened?

Thanks in advance y'all.

I've never seen that happen before, but I'm afraid the answer is probably yes, there's no way to recover the layers if they really were flattened. And yes, the sub layers are supposed to be PSB files. The full document itself can be either PSD or PSB. Usually it will be PSD.

I don't know for a fact changing the format of the sub layer files would cause this problem, but it seems the likely culprit. It's best not to change anything from default unless you're certain there's a benefit in doing so.

You mean it's referencing more than one file? If so, maybe I moved them...that would no doubt screw things up mightily. But one would think that it would throw and error message if that were the case.

I believe the apparent PSB's are embedded data within the master PSD, and they're created on the fly as temp files each time you open them. I don't think there's any way to move or otherwise change them when the main PSD is closed.