How to save various files?
mdlark1966
Posts: 103
I was wondering if there is anywhere I can look to learn the best ways to save files as I work on them. I notice that the tutorial for this is missing from the video tutorials page, so I was hoping someone here could help me out.
I have been using DAZ for several years to create figure reference for my job illustrating comic books. I've just been sort of stumbling through, figuring things out as needed, and I'm sure I'm doing a lot of things "wrong". Every time I create a new character, I have always saved it as a new scene. For each "costume", I save the figure in the clothes as another scene. Then, each time I pose that figure for reference, I save it as yet ANOTHER scene (sometimes save pose presets, if I suspect I will need that pose again). The result is that my hard drive has filled up fast, and I'm sure this isn't the smartest or most efficient way to do things and organize my files.
If anyone can point me to a good tutorial on this sort of thing, or can simply tell me what I should be doing to make my life easier (and hard drive less full), I'd appreciate it. Thank you!
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
224 S 200 W, Suite #250
Salt Lake City, UT 84101
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2024 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
However, as long as you are using items that are already assets in DS format the size diffrence will not be enormous.
Thank you, Richard! Good to know that the size of the files won't change that much. I guess that means that I can mostly just keep doing it like I have been doing it. It ain't pretty but it works!
I hate contradicting richard, but he's wrong on this one regarding the file size.
the size difference between the different files types can vary significantly.
A compressed pose file, generally only takes up 4kb, uncompressed it's around 36kb +/-.
A character preset around 1mb(uncompressed), depending on complexity(shader information, morph data etc) and character base.
a clothing preset(wearable preset for saving purposes) can be a few KB to several MB depending on the clothing in question.
A scene file,or even scene subset, even with just a single character, clothed posed, with hair, can run a crazy gammut depending on base mesh used, the number of character morphs installed, morph dials installed, lights, the particular clothing and hair, the render settings, etc etc etc. can easily get into the multi-Megabyte range.
Compressed you might be looking at 100KB, uncompressed 1.4MB, or it may be way larger or way smaller.
So depending on whether you save compressed or uncompressed, what your particular setup is, saving everything as a scene may not be the best option, if disk space is a concern.
a quickie solution to make the drive less full, besides getting a new one, would be to run the Batch convert(it's a tab unto itself) to compress all the files.
the only draw back to this is if you have a tendency to manually edit files, which i do, you'll either have to run the plugin to decompress all the files or just winrar or 7zip on individual files as the need arises.
Assuming there's no embedded content (imports/spawned morphs that have not been saved as assets, weight maps for dForms, dForce or the like, etc.) I would have expected a relatively modest difference - not none, a scene is storing more settings and a longer list of assets than a preset, but not a huge difference in absolute terms. That is down to expectation rather than measurement, but I do wonder if your larger scene fileshad embedded assets in them.
Nope, no embedded assets.
The example numbers i used are based on the G3f Starter essentials asssets with Willow for g3f by Miherelle applied
the scene numbers were based on loading the willow preset character, the basic wear outfit(wearable) preset and toulouse hair .
Character left in T pose with default render settings, no lights no cams.
just based on the sizes of files in the starter essentials the size variation can be huge, relatively speaking. Keep in mind that i'm thinking of these files not just on a space on drive level but on the amount of code present in each file as i have a tendency to edit manually.
Pose:3KB
Charcter preset:84KB
Hair:8KB
Clothing:14KB
Scene:110KB
All those numbers are the compressed versions as DS defaults to compression.
Now, just to fry yer bacon and show that sometimes presets are larger than scenes, look at the default g8F materials preset present in the starter essentials.
That file alone comes in at 142KB
Load up a base g8f(84KB), basic wear preset 1(38KB), toulouise hair(9kb), save, scene size:124KB
Preset exceeds scene.
the uncompressed numbers.
G3f base:252KB
Basic wear preset:191KB
Toulouse hair:88kb
Pose preset:36KB
willow:1,055KB
willow scene:1,401KB
willow mat preset:2,528KB
Your "embedded content" line got me thinking so i did a bit of primitave testing.
Load a primitive cube, 1m 10divisions, save scene and the geometry data is present in the scene file. saved size:81KB(Uncompressed)
Save the same cube as a support asset load that cube resave, size drops to 22KB(uncompressed)
That looked good till i did a bit more digging.
The additional DSF file(s) plus the scene file actually totalled more than the original scene alone, by 2KB.
now the overall savings in a scene file size with repeated use of the block would be great, but for a one off, it's better to use the scene and skip the additional work.
Think i need to do a bit more research on this and see how much stuff i can break.
Yes, the total of asset and a single reference would be bigger than a sceen with the embedded asset, I wasn't arguing that they should be avoided to save space - just citing them as something that would be likely to increase a file's size compared to one with only references to pre-existing assets. I'm not surprised that individual types vary somewhat, since they will have different numbers of settings, but the degree is a little surprising.