Saving characters with lots of morphs is too long

Philor

Ok, this may look like a newbie question but I have been using Daz Studio 4 for more than 4 years so… What is the most efficient way to save (G3)  characters in 4.9 ? I know (I think…)  the principles behind scene presets (my favourite way) character and wearable presets and sometimes I use figure/prop assets (for tests with non G3 clothing and similar stuff). My problem is that as I have now a horrible number (in the hundreds) of morphs in G3F, loading one is extremely long (almost one minute or more if using anatomical details requiring LIE action) even with a recent and powerful computer. This is in stark contrast to G3M who is loaded almost instantaneously and even good old V4 which was previously a slow motion process compared to genesis 1. Is there a way to get rid of unused morphs at some stage in the saving process ? For the first time this morning my computer ran out of memory due to Daz… (Well I was trying to test the limits : rendering in Iray a whooping group of 15 different G3Fs with a Titan X 12 GB) I had managed to save the scene (rather fast, less than 1 minute but loading it later was painfully slow, around 10 minutes, Daz collapsed after 10 minutes during  the Iray rendering process, never passed 0%). I know a possibility is to tune down resolution, but it somewhat defeats the purpose of having a catalogue of ready to be shot G3s (The Hollywood producer syndrome). My question is NOT how to render 15 G3 in Iray, however (there are tricks for that), BUT how to save characters without losing time from daz computing  an almost endless path to the relevant morphs even when not in use (Studio is not so smart here).

Really I hope I have missed an important step somewhere. Maybe it is a newbie question, actually...

Thanks for any clue or experience sharing.

SpottedKitty

Philor said:

Really I hope I have missed an important step somewhere.

My first guess would be that all those G3F morphs have been saved directly into the G3F figure, instead of saving properly as a Morph Support Asset.

The difference is that leaving the morph data in the base G3F figure will bloat the files used to load the figure into your scene. If you save as a Support Asset, then the morph data is saved properly into the /data/ folder (the same way as morphs you buy in the DAZ store, or the ones built into the figure) — in this case, only the morph dial is added to the figure when you load it, the morph data is not loaded unless the morph's default value is non-zero. This allows a base Genesis figure with lotsandlotsandlots of morphs... like mine... to load quickly, because the morph dials have a tiny storage overhead compared to the actual morph data.

WendyLuvsCatz

I have suspected this is going to prove a huge issue over time for all the figures.

With V4 and below morphs were injected after or loaded with powerloader but from genesis on figures included all the morphs in the data file which is getting rather large.

I use the genX disable ability for those morphs for this very reason and think maybe all morphs need a similar utility where you have a choice  saving a prefered character that only keeps the needed ones, OK you can not then dial up new morphs on that character but you can still load a new one to replace it with the full set maybe if needed keeping those morphs loaded.

I am sure such a script could be written by someone like Dimension3D and would prove popular unless there is one already out there I do not know about?

SpottedKitty

ToeJam said:

but from genesis on figures included all the morphs in the data file which is getting rather large.

Terminology check here — do you mean "data file" as in the individual morph files stored in the /data/ folder, or do you mean the figure's subfolder inside the /data/ folder itself, which contains all the mesh, UV and morph data files? It might not seem much of a difference, but it can cause confusion.

Remember what I said upthread — if a morph applied to a figure has a default value of zero, the morph data will not be loaded into your scene unless the morph dial is adjusted, and the dial data is much smaller than the morph data. Loading a completely zeroed G3 figure should take about the same time, no matter how many morphs you have installed.

Exactly the same thing happened in pre-Genesis days, the difference was that the morph data was stored in separate folders that were almost never alongside the figure data. The current arrangement of keeping everything in the /data/ folder together as much as possible is much more logical, simplifies some D|S functions, and is less accident-prone.

Philor

Thank You all for your interest in my question. SpottedKitty, your mentioning of morph support assets is exactly the way Daz Studio should work... But, my impression is that most vendors do not work that way. I really would like to load a light G3F and "insert" the saved character. How can one regain this "virgin" G3F or avoid polluting one with unnecessary morphs ? Should I reinstall Studio (oh no...) and rebuild my whole complex file system (I use only manual install with specialized folders). I understand now that my habit of saving characters in scene presets is bad but maybe due to my bloated G3F... I also wondered if compressing the saved files (automatic by default) had an impact ?

SpottedKitty

I'm not really sure about any of that, maybe we'd better wait for an actual expert (I only play one on TV...) to show up in this thread. Note, though, that in cases like this where the problem is content-related, "reinstall Studio" is never the answer — your content files and (if you use Smart Content or Categories) your Content database are not affected by reinstalling, so your manual file system (I use one as well) will not be touched unless you deliberately delete your content files.

Philor

Ahem, after a few methodical tests I think most of my loading "lag" is not due to the number of morphs... the results of checking my loading time processes were instructive.

- a basic G3F : 25 s

- a basic G3M : 30 s (I was surprised here, I had the impression it loaded faster but it may have been a psychological quirk compared to the longer time of the female G3 scenes presets)

- one of my standard G3F actress in scene preset format (with character morphs, textures, hair and 3rd party anatomical details) : 48 s (may vary between the characters from 40 to 55 s)

- loading a character preset in a basic G3F (never do that...) : 55 s and a awful result (distortion and so on)

- loading a character preset (my "light" actress, bald of course) : 12 s (and in some cases 10 s) !

I was so baffled that I checked an approach with creating a scene preset from a character preset with hair added : the result a great 12 s !

So it is clear that my problem comes from the third party anatomical geograft which hangs the loading process "building projection map". It is in fact good news as this part is not visible most of the time, I just wanted my G3F complete... I should try a wearable preset eventually but it may not be worth the effort.

By the way any opinion about my loading times is welcome....

WendyLuvsCatz

SpottedKitty said:

ToeJam said:

but from genesis on figures included all the morphs in the data file which is getting rather large.

Terminology check here — do you mean "data file" as in the individual morph files stored in the /data/ folder, or do you mean the figure's subfolder inside the /data/ folder itself, which contains all the mesh, UV and morph data files? It might not seem much of a difference, but it can cause confusion.

snip

I will admit I am approaching it as a Carrara user where the saved car file result is a vast file over 2GB for a single figure as it carries self contained all the morphs as read from the data folder with all the UV information as well, in fact loading new from duf format every scene has become a necessity if using these figures ( not Genesis 3 as that does not work in Carrara), I also occasionally use Poser, probably it is less of an issue in D|S and with Genesis 3.