How to reduce Genesis file sizes in Carrara?
Headwax
Posts: 9,996
Hi I have one genessis wearing hat shoes boots and jacket. In Studio he exports as around 26000 kb. In Carrara he is over 400,000 kb.
I guess it's because of all his morphs and the fact that most of the data is stored within the Car file, as opposed to Studio which must be storing them elsewhere.
Any ideas to fix this? Eg stripping out uneede morph data?
thanks in advance
also does Fenric's Shader fixer work in Carrara 8.5 ? (edit: Yes)
Post edited by Headwax on
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the latter, yes
Thanks Wendy, I am bri8ng in a Genesis from Studio with Benjamin shader and I get reflection en masse. Fenric['s shader fixer doesnt make a difference. Guess I should reapply shader in Carrara from original source?
I was wondering how many MB would my version of Benjamin weight in Carrara. I video-recorded my attempt. I removed unused materials and manually corrected the rest ones. Screen shot of the file info is attached.
thanks nice music too :)
I will rebuild my character in Carrara and see what the size is. Thanks for the reply. :)
My pleasure
My bare bones genesis male is 161,861 kb
I start off with the male, inject him with Benjamin and Benjamin materials, then morph him into basic child.
he is now 161904 kb
add these clothes made for m4 https://www.daz3d.com/musketeer-for-m4. except his gloves.
I don't do anything else and save it. My file is now 454,58600
I consolidate shaders etc and it brings it down to 397,993
In a separate file I load up all the clothes and save the file without fitting them to the genesis. The file is 60,286 kb.
This means that the injection files that Carrara is making for the clothes is adding 232395 kb
In Daz studio he was only 26000 kb fully clothed etc.
thanks for any other help :)
Vyusur - thanks for the video. Always interesting and informative. (great music, too).
This is not ideal, but one way is to save one-click or two-click components. For often-used characters, I bite the bullet and save with the big file sizes. However, an alternative would be to load and save from Studio as duf, and then load saved global shaders from Carrara;s content browser, etc. Will probably be doing the Studio preset save more often going forward.
- load the base genesis in Carrara and use Carrara's magnet tool and displacement brush to create the character morph that you want. EDIT - use any vertex modeler tools that you want with standard restricitons on vertex count and order.
- save as an obj
- In Studio, load the genesis figure and use morph loader, joint editor, etc. to add your custom character morph. Save as character preset. The new shape is available in Carrara but file size at Studio standard.
- Start new Studio scene (not sure restart is necessary). Load figure and use new custom morph. Load and conform any clothes, hair, props, etc. that go with character.
- Save as scene subset. Now you have the character and accessories avilable in Carrara at Studio save size.
- In Carrara, load character preset. Optimize the shaders for Carrara. Save the global character shader to your Carrara shader browser.
- In Carrara, repeat shader optimization and saves for each clothing item, hair and prop. (Can skip hair if using Carrara dynamic)
- If approriate, create and save Carrara dynamic hair for the character.
-------------------------------
- In Future, start a new Carrara scene.
- In Carrara, load from the Studio presets saved folder.
- In Carrara, drag the optimized global shader to the figure and each item. (also drag Carrara dynamic hair, if any).
Good news is that this will hold down file size. Bad news is that you will have to click and drag global shaders for each item that goes with the character each time you load (although that is just one click each).
Have not done a measurement of the relative file sizes but can add later today or tomorrow.
yes I too load all my characters presets from DAZ studio scene subsets but save carrara universal shaders and make any animations I want to reuse into NLA clips.
Thank you, Diomede, for the compliment and for the good advice to use magnet tool for morphing. Sure I will try it.
thanks Diomede, so is the trick to save as a scene subset rather than a scene? Or do I have the goose by the feathers? :)
Interested to see your relative file sizes thank you.
RE: save as
- not sure it matters if something is saved as a scene versus a scene subset, but I save as a scene subset.
- similarly, when I use the transfer utility to convert a V4 or M4 clothing item for use with Genesis, I save as a wearable preset, but others save as a support asset. Again, not sure it matters.
RE: magnet tool
- oops, it should just read to use the vertex modeler to morph as you please. I happen to like the displacement brush with revised brush settings and the magnet tool. Will go back and edit.
RE: Comparison file size
- Here is a simple G2F with only Hongyu bikini saved from Studio as a DSON as a scene subset, and compared to save from Carrara to the object browser.
- It took less than 2 minutes to load the DSON in Carrara
- It took about 9 minutes to save to the Carrara object browser
- DSON file size = 33.4 KB
- CAR file size = 219 MB
As far as I know the only difference between a scene and a scene subset is that when you choose save scene subset you get a dialog box where you can choose what to save in the file, the actual file is identical (unless you uncheck something), but I could be wrong there.
hya Diomede thanks again for taking the time to do that - very interesting, and mikael-aronsson, thanks too for the data
there was a trick recommended by PhilW - (been trying find the post (doh))
temporarily move the morph folders of morphs you not using in genesis (is in data folder),
before you saving genesis to carrara?
thank you Miss Tara :) will have a gander - fisrt I must discover what morphs I am using I guess !
philw not around lately?
Phil's away on vacation this week.
From my limited experience.... From DS saving as scene will save file under a group name (Charname), G2, actor... scene subset will save simply as G2, actor. The file size with be the same for either when loaded into Carrara.
thanks Tim , Misty and John :)
not sure if this is doable - found this on hivewire - echoing Mis Tara's post
and also a chap called Ken wrote on Hivewire
Great info head wax, Problem I have is learning how to do all that... been using, loading, only .duf files.
I'm guessing once you move the data then the duf file won't be referencing the unused morphs - but I guess badly - like I type :)
Looks like I was wrong... probably have this reversed... just saved as G2_test as a scene subset... loaded in Carrara as G2_test, G2, actor.
found truth on the less morphs is more in carrara
i fresh d/l genesis starter essentials. loaded base genesis male and dragged him to carrara tray.
his .car file is 35,567 kb
i guess, if you using several morphs to make your character,
you could bake it all into a single morph
*without any scaling, sometimes is hard to tell when a morph is calling on scaling.
thanks for that @Mistara , I'll have a gander :)
Baking... will I need my apron???
Tried un-installing/deleting G2F Essentials... then downloading and installing again... no luck still same sizo.
I think you need to install them to another library and not reference it with PostGreySquirrel whatever the database is
Thanks Wendy, Will do.
Had a play today, loaded up basicmale duf from daz folder, in vertex room removed all morph areas
and guess what, I can't morph him --- but he still poses.
injecting him with caracters gives me the sliders but no reaction
saves out as 47 mb as opposed to 161,000 mb - so getting somewhere - not sure where though
I opened th ecar file in Notepadd ++ and you can see whare the morphs are easily, but it's beyond me to delete them - too many