Looking for script to reduce texture sizes in DIMs, before install?

FrankTheTank

I know there are scripts to reduce textures once they are already installed. But are there any scripts to reduce textures sizes of image files in DIMs?

The reason for this is that I've noticed DIM file sizes getting humongous lately, for things that don't even make sense. For example a recent DAZ freeblie that consisted of some beach props, chair, umbrella, lotion, etc and the DIM is over 500+MB. The textures are all 4K!! Why?? That's insane.

I have older stonemason sets, even newer ones for that matter, that don't even clock in at 200MB and thats for a whole environment and they look fantastic closeup. There's no need for these insane texture sizes. I've also notice the same thing with a lot of other stuff coming out lately, so not picking on DAZ for this, it seems theres a trend to include huge textures now.

So what I currently have to do is download my DIMs manually, unzip them, then manually downsize the textures in Photoshop, then resave them and make new DIMs. Its very tedious and time-consuming. It seems like a script should be able to handle this easily. 

Is there some product in the DAZ store, or some freebie script out there, that can do this task? If not, I wish DAZ would include file sizes for products, because I just won't buy anything else that is huge in file size due to ridulous texture sizes. 

kenshaw011267

How short of storage are you? That's an awful lot of work to save a couple hundred Mb's.

barbult

Things are getting carried away with file sizes. That beach party freebie has eight 26 MB normal files for lounger cloth. I mean, is that level of detail necessary for an object that large? All the textures are PNG files. They are very large. I wonder if any compression was used at all.

NorthOf45

You could always re-sample them outside the zip and put them back in (i.e., 4K down to 3K or 2K), if you never want to use the originals, then install normally. Be careful of any presets that specify file bitmap dimensions, like LIE presets. Kind of obscure, but it will change the tiling effect.

FrankTheTank

NorthOf45 said:

You could always re-sample them outside the zip and put them back in (i.e., 4K down to 3K or 2K), if you never want to use the originals, then install normally. Be careful of any presets that specify file bitmap dimensions, like LIE presets. Kind of obscure, but it will change the tiling effect.

thats literally what i do currently in photoshop as i thought I clearly stated above. So far I haven't run across it causing any problems, knock on wood. I'm looking for a scripted way to do it faster,

kenshaw011267 said:

How short of storage are you? That's an awful lot of work to save a couple hundred Mb's.

It adds up quickly when you have a lot of stuff. And its quite common now, and for people like myself who typically render NPR style at a max res of say 1080p, I have no need for these huge textures. Its not visible in what I do. 

Obviously, others have needs for them, so I am not suggesting PAs should stop providing them. I'm sure a lot of people like the big textures for closeup work. I just want a way to downsize easier, becuase I find myself doing it so frequently now. Either that, or DAZ needs to start listing download sizes in the ad copy, before i buy. So I can determine if I want to make the purchase.

My most recent purchase is a terrain environment which basically looks like a big hexagon game board, and its over 800MB. So thats another one I'm going to downsize

Another thing I've noticed is that when PAs throw big textures at a problem, its usually a sign of something that is not going to render well for me.Thats been my experience so far, as it seems that the seasoned PAs know now to keep file sizes down, and optimize in a way that they don't lose any noticeable detail. So big file sizes is a red flag for me to not even bother buying something as 9 times out of 10 I will be dissapointed with it and return it. 

Taoz

barbult said:

Things are getting carried away with file sizes. That beach party freebie has eight 26 MB normal files for lounger cloth. I mean, is that level of detail necessary for an object that large? All the textures are PNG files. They are very large. I wonder if any compression was used at all.

PNGs do not use lossy compression, but has 10 levels of lossless file compression (as in a zip), where 0 is uncompressed and 9 is the highest compression.  The difference is small between level 1 and 9 though, a level 1 is about 50% larger than a level 9.  An uncompressed level 0 though is huge in comparison - it can be 30-50 times larger than a level 9, depending on the content.

It seems that many do not know that PNG compression is lossless so if they save using level 0 to avoid any compression you do get some huge file sizes.  But since the quality is exactly the same at all compression levels, there's no point in using level 0.

WendyLuvsCatz

some sets have 8K textures even for tiny elements 

and they are not that detailed 

it's ridiculous 

TGF scene optimiser

NorthOf45

TGSNT said:

NorthOf45 said:

You could always re-sample them outside the zip and put them back in (i.e., 4K down to 3K or 2K), if you never want to use the originals, then install normally. Be careful of any presets that specify file bitmap dimensions, like LIE presets. Kind of obscure, but it will change the tiling effect.

thats literally what i do currently in photoshop as i thought I clearly stated above. So far I haven't run across it causing any problems, knock on wood. I'm looking for a scripted way to do it faster,

 

Sorry, it was late, and I didn't write what I was thinking. You can batch convert with IrfanView (it can resize) or something similar. It has all sorts of options to optimize or preserve quality. It would still require manual intervention, but photoshop sounds like overkill. If everything is in the same format, a batch for each file size (4K to 2K , 2K to 1K), or whatever is suitable, would help reduce your workload.

FrankTheTank

NorthOf45 said:

TGSNT said:

NorthOf45 said:

 

Sorry, it was late, and I didn't write what I was thinking. You can batch convert with IrfanView (it can resize) or something similar. It has all sorts of options to optimize or preserve quality. It would still require manual intervention, but photoshop sounds like overkill. If everything is in the same format, a batch for each file size (4K to 2K , 2K to 1K), or whatever is suitable, would help reduce your workload.

Thanks for the tip, IrfanView with it's batch convert options will definitely save me some time.