Why are my scene save files so massive?

scaniax95

Ever since I updated to Daz 4.23 from an earlier version, my scene save files are huge.  Before updating, a character saved as a scene used to be around 7000KB or 0.007GB.  But now characters saved as a scene are anywhere from 4GB to over 20GB for a single character with no clothes, lighting or enviroments! 

Sure, I used a few more morphs on these newer characters but not 20GB worth of them.  And another weird thing is before updating I didn't compress the scenes when saving them, but with these newer ones I do, because if I don't, Daz tends to crash when saving.

Does anyone know why Daz is doing this?  I thought compressing files would make them smaller, not multiply the file size by several thousand.

The earlier and the newer characters I saved are all G8s and the skins, hair and even clothing are mostly the same. Only now they turn out massive.

Richard Haseltine

Custom morphs, imported from OBJ or baked from dForms? dForce simulations?

scaniax95

Richard Haseltine said:

Custom morphs, imported from OBJ or baked from dForms? dForce simulations?

A few more morphs than the earlier characters.  But it still shouldn't result in a 20GB file size.  And even without clothes the file sizes are huge. 

Richard Haseltine

But are the morphs standard morphs dialed in, or are they new morphs (not yet saved as modifier assets)? Also, had you made any changes to the models with the Geometry Editor?

scaniax95

Richard Haseltine said:

But are the morphs standard morphs dialed in, or are they new morphs (not yet saved as modifier assets)? Also, had you made any changes to the models with the Geometry Editor?

Don't know the difference about the morph thing, so I can't answer that, sorry.  No changes made with the Geometry Editor either.

Richard Haseltine

not simssilar tools (e.g. Mesh Grabber/Geoemtry Sculptor)? Essentially anything that adds new data to the scene that hasn't beens aved out as an asset (so that it has to be embedded). If you just load a base figure and save is that producing larger files than expected?

scaniax95

Richard Haseltine said:

not simssilar tools (e.g. Mesh Grabber/Geoemtry Sculptor)? Essentially anything that adds new data to the scene that hasn't beens aved out as an asset (so that it has to be embedded). If you just load a base figure and save is that producing larger files than expected?

No, loading and saving a base G8 character with nothing done to it is only 322kb.  

crosswind

As Richard mentioned above, do you have any dForce items in the scene... like dForce hair ? And did you ever simulate with a Timeline ?

jmucchiello

Mine are because I converted a bunch G9 figures to props thinking it would be faster. It is. Renders are blazing fast. But the DUF file is 100+MB packed. The DSON is hundreds of thousands of lines of numbers in DSON arrays.

scaniax95

crosswind said:

As Richard mentioned above, do you have any dForce items in the scene... like dForce hair ? And did you ever simulate with a Timeline ?

I think the hair is dForce. But it's the same hair I used on my previous characters. It's not simulated.   But again, I don't see why hair would increase the file size by that much.

Richard Haseltine

Remember that the scene size is not the total size of the data - it doesn't include textures, the geometry and morphs for figures if they are saved as assets, and so on. Anything that is created/modified from the saved state and not saved as a new/updated asset will instead be embedded in the file although many of those things will not alter the total memory consumption once loaded. A Timeline simulation will store the location of each vertex of the simulated models at each frame of the timeline, and hair in particular can have a lot of vertices (especially if it isn't using 0 segments with the new Iray curves). Why it has chnaged for ytou I don't know, but it is most likely one of those. Another potential issue is additional data objects - e.g. from something that passed through a syspoect with oine of the Octane plug-ins installed - if something in your scene has some of those then they can keep mulitplying and bump up the scene size.

crosswind

scaniax95 said:

crosswind said:

As Richard mentioned above, do you have any dForce items in the scene... like dForce hair ? And did you ever simulate with a Timeline ?

I think the hair is dForce. But it's the same hair I used on my previous characters. It's not simulated.   But again, I don't see why hair would increase the file size by that much.

Richard has already explained why... Most of my scenes including animation plus dforce hairs and clothing have file size from 3GB ~ 10GB... just because of these.

tsroemi

One thing that bloats scenes terribly are autoconverted items afaik. So if you loaded a clothing item, say, that was originally for G3 and then use it on your G8 and the conversion dialogue pops up, this is when a lot of extra data gets stored inside your scene file. And I really do mean a lot, I've had massive scenes created that way. One way around it is to convert the item and then save it out into your content library, and then use it in a new scene. Might want to investigate in that direction, sometimes I use clothes and don't even remember that they were converted when I first loaded them into the scene.

Hope you can figure it out!

scaniax95

tsroemi said:

One thing that bloats scenes terribly are autoconverted items afaik. So if you loaded a clothing item, say, that was originally for G3 and then use it on your G8 and the conversion dialogue pops up, this is when a lot of extra data gets stored inside your scene file. And I really do mean a lot, I've had massive scenes created that way. One way around it is to convert the item and then save it out into your content library, and then use it in a new scene. Might want to investigate in that direction, sometimes I use clothes and don't even remember that they were converted when I first loaded them into the scene.

Hope you can figure it out!

Thanks for the tip, but for me it happens even when the character is completely naked.   

barcgwcc

Start with the base figure and add the items (hair, clothing, morphs) one at a time and then save it each time you do to see the size of the file.  You'll discover soon enough what the offending item is.

crosswind

scaniax95 said:

tsroemi said:

One thing that bloats scenes terribly are autoconverted items afaik. So if you loaded a clothing item, say, that was originally for G3 and then use it on your G8 and the conversion dialogue pops up, this is when a lot of extra data gets stored inside your scene file. And I really do mean a lot, I've had massive scenes created that way. One way around it is to convert the item and then save it out into your content library, and then use it in a new scene. Might want to investigate in that direction, sometimes I use clothes and don't even remember that they were converted when I first loaded them into the scene.

Hope you can figure it out!

Thanks for the tip, but for me it happens even when the character is completely naked.   

I'd like to further ask: Can you remember how long it took to save a scene file, let's say for the one with 4GB size or something like that ? 

scaniax95

crosswind said:

scaniax95 said:

tsroemi said:

One thing that bloats scenes terribly are autoconverted items afaik. So if you loaded a clothing item, say, that was originally for G3 and then use it on your G8 and the conversion dialogue pops up, this is when a lot of extra data gets stored inside your scene file. And I really do mean a lot, I've had massive scenes created that way. One way around it is to convert the item and then save it out into your content library, and then use it in a new scene. Might want to investigate in that direction, sometimes I use clothes and don't even remember that they were converted when I first loaded them into the scene.

Hope you can figure it out!

Thanks for the tip, but for me it happens even when the character is completely naked.   

I'd like to further ask: Can you remember how long it took to save a scene file, let's say for the one with 4GB size or something like that ? 

The ones around 350kb, with no clothes, only hair and morphs, usually took 2 seconds.   The ones you asked about, with the same hair as before but with a few more morphs and no clothes, takes 15-20 minutes to save.  It sits at 99% for most of that time.

crosswind

scaniax95 said:

crosswind said:

scaniax95 said:

tsroemi said:

One thing that bloats scenes terribly are autoconverted items afaik. So if you loaded a clothing item, say, that was originally for G3 and then use it on your G8 and the conversion dialogue pops up, this is when a lot of extra data gets stored inside your scene file. And I really do mean a lot, I've had massive scenes created that way. One way around it is to convert the item and then save it out into your content library, and then use it in a new scene. Might want to investigate in that direction, sometimes I use clothes and don't even remember that they were converted when I first loaded them into the scene.

Hope you can figure it out!

Thanks for the tip, but for me it happens even when the character is completely naked.   

I'd like to further ask: Can you remember how long it took to save a scene file, let's say for the one with 4GB size or something like that ? 

The ones around 350kb, with no clothes, only hair and morphs, usually took 2 seconds.   The ones you asked about, with the same hair as before but with a few more morphs and no clothes, takes 15-20 minutes to save.  It sits at 99% for most of that time.

Hmm ~~ I think the only way to quickly find some clues and the culprit is that you attach a file with big size in here if possible, i.e. Upload a file with, let's say, around 2 ~4 GB, to a file host, and share a link. We can help with investigating if you'd like...