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224 S 200 W, Suite #250
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© 2024 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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I am in a similar situation, and I commisserate with you LenioTG...
Back in January, I upgraded my system:
Ryzen 9 3900X + X570 + 32MB RAM (GTX 1060 6GB GC... holdover from previous system until my Daz-fu gets better)
Windows Drive is Sabrent NVMe 4.0 1TB and MY DAZ Library is on a 2TB Sabrent NVMe PCIE 3.0. Download Drive is WD Black 6TB
My G8F Load times are Horrendous (IMHO) probaby 5-7 Minutes. Everything else loads quickly without issue. I have a ton of characters and morphs. My work flow sounds a lot like yours... I have spent a HUGE amount of time in custom categories getting most of my assets where I can find them, and unistalling something I have is unappealing.... though I could probably unistall some G3 Morph assets (and as soon as I do, I am sure I will need them :(
Point is, your hardware upgrade is not going to solve the G8 load bottleneck... it will help, but not solve it.
***NOTE***
My apologies. I hit reply too quickly (I replied at the end of the first page, as I didn't see it went to 2 pages!)
Regardless, I finished reading the entire thread now, and especially your conclusion....
Sigh....
I think my only option is to follow your path and delete assets. I don't want to tell tales, but I have A LOT of figures and Morphs...i am embarassed to type the actual number. To get to the 100 mark would mean a massacre took plass amongst my DAZ Library...
I won't name PA names, but a LOT of them are Similar And Suspiciously Equivelent to others in my collection... and they must go....
I had opened a new thread, with just the guide, to avoid this kind of confusion, but they deleted it and moved the post here, where I guess will be submerged by other comments, being much less helpful than it could have been, also given the time I've spent writing that.
In any case, people who are reading page 3, can find the guide at the bottom of page 2: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/411446/why-does-it-take-so-long-to-load-figures/p2
Your hardware is top of the notch! :O
Well, then it's confirmed that the most important factor is how many morphs you have installed.
I absolutely agree, only yesterday I have noticed how many figures looked exactly the same, and they probably were from the same PAs you're not mentioning.
Also, many products have morphs in them, and I hadn't even noticed that.
I have spend a whole day and a half rummaging through every single product I had, and deleting around 1/3 of those. But I went much heavier on figures and morphs.
For example, I had bought some packages with a ton of morphs, that I had never used. Now, only Zev0 and RareStone's remain basically.
It hurt to delete stuff I had paid for, but now I'm glad I did it. The overall experience is much smoother.
I have checked my old characters, and there's something missing in all of them.
When it's eye color, I can easily replace that.
When it's skin textures, I have a backup of all of those.
When it's morphs...well, that's a problem. But they look almost the same without a few morphs, because I combine a ton of them when I create a new character. There was just a single case, on an old character, that required me to reinstall a product, because it was composed by just three morphs, and she looked very different without that morph I had uninstalled.
Well... I had a blood bath. Removed about half of my G8Fs..... Got rid of some rendunant morph sets for G8 as well.
I cut my load time for G8Fs from 5.30 to 2.09 So that is better than half.
just a quick tip: also use the sets from content manager directory.. you can basically install less used stuff to a new directory, copy and past the content set, change the cms folder and add the new content folder to both daz and poser slots..
this way you can have a "quick" set with stuff you use everyday and a "full" one..
That's great to hear! :D
That's a nice idea!
It would take a bit of time to set it up, and it's only useful for figures and morphs.
The problem is that you use them in other characters you do use everyday, so the products you may use that way are very little, and you'd need to move them once you use them in the creation of another custom character.
So it's not really viable for me!
Not to beat a dead horse, but Jay Versluis (WP Guru) just made a interesting video on this topic - How to reduce Loading Times for Genesis Figures in DAZ Studio and has a suggestion for a workaround. It basically involves installing assets in multiple locations that you can... "turn on/off" the mapping to that essentially "doesn't load" morphs or characters that you are not using. Its pretty simple, ( and can be done on the fly) and the video is easy to follow and is only about 11 minutes long.
Cheers!
Thank you for sharing PJWhoppie!
We've considered that option, but for many creators is not viable.
In my case, when I create a character, I don't even look at the library where a figure is installed (I have just two), I just select the ones that I think fit the situation.
If a story I'm working on has 10 characters, and each of them has been built with morphs from 10 different packages (and that's an understatement), I basically need the whole library.
It would require way too much time to install and uninstall stuff, to map and un-map folders. And it would heavily limit my creativity to be stuck to just a library per figure.
In the first page there's a guide I've made! With the right hardware and content, I went down to 30 seconds, and that's bearable at least :D
I've been using SSDs for C drive and for data for years.
I removed all characers as an experiment as they are in their own library.
It went from 44 seconds to 11 to load the default G8F; I didn't touch morphs, despite having a lot.
... But tbh, 44 seconds isn't a problem to me; I tend to know when I'm wanting a character, so I load it and continue doing stuff - no time wasted, no frustration at the massive 44 seconds it takes.
My advice, manage your time.
Alternative; have a library with all characters except new ones. And a serperate library for characters you are using now and/or new ones.
If you want a character in the not attached library, it's easy to hit F2 and add that library.
The simple way is to keep your assets backed up. Then when you start a new project you select the assets you need and create a content folder with them. When you switch the project you switch the content folder. Simple as that, fast, reliable.
+++
--ms
Everyone should be backing up, but we'll get someone posting that they've lost their work and not backed it up.
... So obviously your method isn't for them. And it's similar to what has been suggested already.
Always good to remind folks that backing up is indeed really sexy.
I was wondering why the load times were so long. I have a NVME 2TB SSD, 128 GB RAM and a Core I9 so it seemed strange to me. In the beginning Daz loaded characters so fast but I had nothing installed. Oh well I don't mind doing something else while a scene loads. I just load the file and come back to DAZ after a few minutes when it has loaded. Uninstalling packages also takes time. And then if you need something you have to reinstall which takes time. Or you might forget what products you have. No thanks I'll just live with the long load times. At least it loads lol!
Its "A" way for sure. While I keep a backup of my stuff for security reasons, it is only helpful for a load time reduction/clutter solution if you have a work flow that is really specific... As in, "I am going to create ___ from xyz asset".
For those of us with a more flowing style, having the asset stored in a zip file or something that is not easily accessible while working isn't the best solution. Case in point is that I might have an idea for a scene with a skinny female elf character trying to pick the lock of a treasure chest....
Unless I want to use the character asset "as is", then I am going to customize it by adding percentages of other chartacters or doing and undoing body morphs etc to make it more of "my own"...
If those assets aren't loaded cause they are zip/stored as a back up, my production flow stops... so I kinda want everything that I've paid for available while working. I am not working for a client, I am working for me, so as I start getting into it, that elf thief character I started to make ends up looking better placed as a Sith Lord with a light-sword... and I am off.. wait, but no, my sci fi assets are back up and......
Having a large number of files and folders under ...\Data\DAZ 3D\[Figure]\[Gender]\Morphs\... definitely has an effect on loading times, but i'm starting to think it's not the whole problem.
I would like to know, how DS is actually looking/searching for the files to read, since doing a search in the Content Library also takes relatively long, considering that it doesn't/shouldn't be looking at the textures or morph-files. Hopefully it's not using the Windows Indexing or any other counter productive "helpers" MS has invented to annoy the user with.
Searching in content library is crazy fast if the library is installed on an NVMe SSD.
PS: the quote from your signature is an old fake news! :(
https://www.computerworld.com/article/2534312/the--640k--quote-won-t-go-away----but-did-gates-really-say-it-.html
I have my library on SSD, only the textures (which it shouldn't be going through) on HD
Ps. I heard the 640k quote constantly back in -87 for buying one with 1MB of memory, easy to deny as the sources were on paper (magazines) that nobody held on to
Rather than uninstalling content, it would be better if we could manage it. Someone give us a tool to scan the content folders and disable selected morphs from loading. If DS could recognize a special extension like, MyMorph.dsf.no_load, then I think that would be best, than renaming morph files myself.
Thanks for this post, very helpful, and I am zipping some morphs I find I would never use.
...but I have 2 questsions I could not find in this htread.
Thanks for any responses ahead of time! :)
You're welcome! :D
I think it depends on the number of installed morphs in general, so it shouldn't matter if it's 10 packages with 100 morphs each, or 100 packages with 10 morphs each.
I think characters are just other morphs. But not all sliders are morphs: for example, I think the "Character 8 Body" is just a slider that controls other morphs.
Yeah, those damn figure load times. It's the reason why I constantly install and uninstall stuff and also why I install 3rd party stuff nowadays only with Content Wizard to create manual DIM packages which can then be also easily installed/uninstalled.
But I think this whole problem can only be adressed if DAZ is changing studio "a little", like
- Offering an option to load G8F plain, so without (additional) morphs installed
- Offering an option to only load the morphs a character has active thus ignoring all other morphs installed
- Offering an option to dynamically morphs for a character which is already in the scene to keep the number of initially loaded morphs as low as possible
By the way to avoid the long installing/uninstalling process I did the following
On my SSD with my content library I have to folders:
- My Live Library/Runtime
- My Maintenance Library/Runtime
In the second folder I have the data-subdirectories for the most important figures. So whenever I need/don't need particular morphs I just move them from live to maintenance or vice versa. Much faster than completely installing/uninstalling plus all the textures are still available.
That's a good idea!
Sadly, I don't think they care too much about creators like me, since we're not the majority.
I can't uninstall figures/morphs I've used, because I could need my old characters as a story creator.
Also, not many people spend as much as me, and have thousands and thousands of morphs installed.
In the future I'll try to switch to a Ryzen 9 5900X and to get my whole library on a PCIe 4.0 NVMe drive.
Even a few seconds make the difference when you're continuously loading and clearing scenes for work.
I'm running DAZ on a MacBookPro. From my perspective it is better to keep the morphs located in the "live" runtime/library low because of the massive impact on figure scene/figure load times. I was at a point where loading a G8F into a scene would take 10 minutes.
Im my experience studio is throwing two error messages if you load a scene where morphs are missing. Now if you install the necessary morphs in between the second error won't appear and the scene should load fine. For DAZ morphs/products studio offers to quickly install via Connect. Third party stuff is just referred to with install paths. So in my case if I encounter such a situation I just copy the necessary morphs over from my backup library to live, flag them, use them and once down use an automated action to delete the flagged stuff afterwards. Is a bit cumbersome bit still ways faster than waiting for studio to load everything.
That's not a viable solution for me. 99% of what I do is characters, with all kind of morphs, and I use Render Queue all the time, so nitpicking what morphs to keep where would be even a more massive waste of time :(
These two are absolute for me. That would make the workflow jump tenfold! A setting where you can turn off all inactive morphs, but turn them on again (when you're still creating a character). Then, when it is scene time, you can turn those inactive ones off again!
I've mentioned this idea before: Probably the easiest solution would be to offer a "commit" type function to DAZ figures.
When loading a figure, DAZ loads all the morphs in the Morphs folder and builds the dials. It loads all those hundreds of little files and does its calculations to sort and deconflict morphs and when you have A LOT of morphs, including a large character library, it compounds loading times.
Instead of loading all the individual morphs every time, DAZ should offer a "commit" function where it generates a permanent load file for that figure with the available morphs and will not load NEW morphs until requested or until another commit is made. This way, whenever a figure is loaded, it's only loading one DUF with all the morphs already listed and deconflicted. Whenever new morphs are installed, they're not available until you command it to be. There can even be a "test load" feature where it reloads a figure with all morphs so you can play before committing.
Just an idea.
If I delete all fitted objects (hair, clothes, etc) of the main G8M character, save this alone as as scene subset, then merge, the character loads instantly. The number of morphs, and I have a LOT of morphs active, has no impact. I'm going to say that the fit routine is firing early while loading, and this can create an "very deep" recursion.
That's because morphs are already loaded, so that's actually one more proof that morphs ARE the problem.
But we already know that, morphs are what influences loading times the most, no doubt about that.
Same problem here, tons of characters & morphs and G8f load takes long, deleting her takes forever.
My solution that I found is pretty simple.
I install all content manually (download , unzip to custom library path). Furthermore, DAZ installed a default MyLibrary on my SSD-C-drive.
Here is what I do now as a workaround:
I right click my main custom Library root title in the ContentLibrary tab and choose 'Remove base directory '.
That kicks her out of the DAZ search path.
Now, I go to the Default 'MyLibrary' content and load G8F or G8.1F, what takes now only a few seconds.
Then, I re-add my Custom library the same way (right click 'DAZ studio formats' in Contentlibrary Tab and choose 'Add a base directory'.
Now, I have all my content back available within seconds.
Same when I delete G8F from a scene, then I first unload my big custom library, then I delete the G8F figure what takes now again only seconds, and after her removal, I re-add my library again.
But the problem is basically poor coding, and DAZ should really correct that !
I made a freebie to help manage this a little better. There is a freebie thread here, if it helps: LINK