Extremely long figure load times - ways to fix?
Rod Wise Driggo
Posts: 2,321
I might have finally done it. Probably due to an ever growing library it now takes ages to just even load a simple G3F. Just checked my default runtime where everything from DIM goes into. The folders inside are a mess by the way due to lot's of spelling mistakes, and a few PAs not using main folders to save there stuff into and so on. Anyways, so I checked the main folder "female" under data/DAZ 3D: way over 6 GBs, way over 10.000 objects. And that's just the stuff purchased from DAZ as I have non-DIM products in a different runtime which I sort-in manually. So that might be the bottleneck, right? I mean to display a figure and have all its morphs in parameters, all those morphs needs to be loaded or at least looked for upfront.
So, are there any ways to optimize this (besides changing my spending habit)?
Can morphs temporarily be disabled not to load and to speed up things?
Or is the only way to uninstall unused morphs altogether?
Thanks in advance for any ideas.
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Comments
It might help if you quantified "extremely long".
G3F loads in about 40 seconds for me, but virtually all other G3F/V7 based characters load in about 20 seconds.
FWIW, my content is on an external USB3 drive. My content folder shows 850000 files and 522 GB. G3F folder is 18.7GB, 150000 files
I will agree that it seems very long until you actualy time it.
Morphs can cause longer load times. Gen x has features which allow them to be disabled.
If you can disable, then how easy is it to reenable them? An will that cause other problems which can be just as problematic. You would have to remember which Actors requires which shapes or morphs.
On my system: (Times were taken from my DAZ Studio Log File) These are only for loading the the Actor into a blank scene.
For comparison here are the load time for other Actor Scene Subsets:
All the subsets above have underwear, saddles and hair
Looking through the logs, and there were several errors where the system couldn't find PBM Files, called by other files, for G3M and G3F. I have also noticed that if you load any Genesis 3 Actor into a empty scene, it appears to act like you are loading a New Scene, when you loaded it into an existing scene it doesn't do that.
If you are loading and Gen4 Actor, Subsets are the fastest way to load the Actor.
I would look at the Logs, (Help > Troubleshooting > View Log File…) and you can see exactly how long it is taking to load a Actor, but what minor errors.
Also if you have everything on one drive, (System, Library, Program, Cache, etc…), you might think about using separate drives, it could speed things up.
The centaurs load a bit longer than the 'regular' G3 characters, but not unbearably so. But I've found that V4 & M4 takes quite a bit longer to load these days. (Yes, I still play with them :-) )
If you save V4 and M4 out a Subsets (with the Morphs you most commonly use), the subsets load very quickly.
I have several V4/M4 Characters saved with clothes, hair and poses, and they load faster then a Fresh Gen4 Character.
If yo have saved characters which use LIE, either on the original figure or a geograft, then the load times can be comparitively very long.
My way of rectifying long LIE load times is to save the materials/textures as my own in a different folder from the Temp one in the App Data folder.
I use the Scene Optimizer product now - it automatically bakes the LIE textures so the scene loads much quicker fro then on.
Checked my logs. G3F takes 1:50 minutes. Have my main runtime on an external USB3 drive. Same goes for a second runtime for all stuff purchased elsewhere and a third runtime storing some my saved scenes and presets. There are several error messages ("could not find output property" and so on) but I guess the long load time might be mainly due to all the morphs & figures installed. At least studio has to load those to make the dials available, right?
G3F .....File loaded in 0 min 11.7 sec. And I haven't got the fastest of systems and I have loads of morphs installed.
The error messages you are getting are probably the key to your extended load times.
Hmm, I'll uninstall the few things which are listed in the log but still think that it's just the size of my library. We'll see.
G3F loads in 45 secs for me. Dayanara (FWSA) loads in 25 sec. Cailin HD (Raiya) loads in 25.5 sec. LY Adair HD (Lyoness) loads in 28 sec.
My content is on an external USB3 drive and is 497Gb (739243 files). 286 Genesis 3 (and X7) Characters. 106 related morph packs.
Machine is an I7-4770K w/ 32GB ram. Win 7
I don't think it's the size of your library.
Okay, the computer geek wants to ask a few questions:
You have a USB3 drive, is the drive plugged into a USB3 Port?
USB3 is backwards compatible with USB2, so you can plug a USB2 device into a USB2 port and a USB3 device into a USB2 port.
The Blue Tongue on the left is USB3.
If your USB3 Deive plugged into a Hub? and then to the computer? If this is the case, is the Hub a USB3 Hub and is it plugged into a USB3 port.
Do you have any other USB devices plugged into that Hub or into your computer's USB3 ports, which are not USB3 devices?
Here is a Microsoft Blog about common USB issues on Windows. it is a little technical, but it might help.
My rule of thumb: UBS3 devices are plugged into USB3 ports, USB1 & 2 deives to UBS2 ports. Who cares if your keyboard is on a slow port, No human can type fast enough to effectively fill a USB2 pipe.
On the other hand a USB3 device plugged into a UBS2 port or being recognized as a USB2 device, could drop your data transfer rate to a Tenth of what is shoudl be. (USB2 is 480 Mbit/s while USB3 is 5 Gbit/s)
Hope that helps you.
@Haslor
Good points. My USB3 drives are plugged into a powered USB3 hub, which is plugged into a motherboard USB3 port.
Are there any USB2 devices connected to the hub. They might slow the data transfer.
Have you tried connecting the Drive directly to the Motherboard?
Content folder size doesn't mean much because not all content is involved in figure load times. Somebody with 5gb of G3F morphs is going to have longer load times than someone with 1mb of G3F morphs and 100gb of clothing. The idea that G3F load times don't get creaky with lots of morphs installed is bogus. The more morphs I have installed, the slower the figure loads. It's gotten pretty creaky for me, and my content drive is IDE 7600 RPM, not USB. Load times in minutes, not seconds. After I click to load G3F I go do something else.
Daz needs to work on a comprehensive solution to managing morphs. Something built into DS, not a 3rd party app:
1 a way to easily install and uninstall morphs.
2 a way to group morphs into packages, so the user can move those packages into and out of a character quickly.
3 most important, a robust way to create versions of the base figure that have their own "data" folder hierarchies, so different versions can be tailored to different character needs. This way the version can get you into the ballpark of the character you want to dial in, with only the needed morph packages included when you load it.
4 shows morphs in the figure as they are sorted in the parameters/shaping tab hierarchy, not the way Gen-X shows them (how they appear in Windows hierarchy). The latter is lame and forces the user to hunt around looking for the individual morphs, and doesn't allow for handling morphs as groups.
Really the handling of morphs has improved little since the Poser 5 days. It's antiquated and needs a drastic overhaul.
Basically, the whole "one figure to rule them all" idea is a bust. It results in a bloated figure that takes too long to load and is too slow to pose. As for the "check your error messages" thing, yeah, improve DS so it will automatically remove problematic morphs addons for me when I ask it to, and spit out a log of the changes made. Opening up a figure's hood and tinkering with it is not something I like doing. It's something I hate doing, and only do it because I'm forced to.
The author of Gen-X has, regretably, passed on, so now is a great time for Daz to step up and finally add proper morph management capabilities to DS. Gen-X was never very good in this regard, anyway. I don't even see any way to search for a morph, for example. If you want to disable a morph, you have to check in the morph's options for its location in the Windows hierarchy, then switch over to the Gen-X tab and navigate there by hand. Bring your notepad if you want to do much of this. To call that lame would be overpraise. It sucks.
Connect offers a way to uninstall entire morph products, and will prompt you to install if you load a sceen that needs a currently unavailable package.
I might refresh this thread as my G8F load times are now even worse then ever. OK, I have all Pro Bundles, zillions of figures and most morph products available so that might be the reason. Also I transferred already over quite some G3-morphs. Any ideas to optimize the situation? And no, connect is no option. I install everything from DAZ via DIM and from other stores manually.
Regarding my runtime I have one which DIM takes care for and a second one for manual installs. Both are on an external HDD connected via USB 3 directly.
You could check the log file for errors, and also consider uninstalling anything you don't use regularly.
If you haven't already done this, one thing you can do to improve performance is a setting with Animate2/AnimateLite (but you'll probably want to set this back to the default value when you're actively using animate). In studio, right-clikc on the tab that says AnimateLite or Animate2. Then click on preferences in the window that opens. In that window un-check the option "Auto add tracks for skeletal characters." Another thing to try is to temporary disable any third party plugins to see if they are causing any slow down. To do this, click on help->about installed plugins, then uncheck the box by various plugins to turn them of, or click agian to turn them on. Maybe try this and see if it gives youa boost?