Quick tip: save loading time for Genesis
Just a super quick tip to make things quicker.
After you've loaded your Genesis up in the usual way from the Content folder, save it into your Objects tray. Loading it in future from the Objects tray will cut loading time in half.
For example, when I load Genesis1 up from the Content folder, it takes 1 minute and 7 seconds to load. But when I load Genesis1 from the Objects tray, it takes 35 seconds. For reference, I have nearly every morph possible for Genesis1, including tons of GenX2 morphs, so it's humongously loaded with morphs (which adds to the load time).
Before saving Gen1 to the objects tray, I like to make sure all my favorite defaults are already set up. For me, that means turning off collisions with hair, turning off collisions with objects, using Fenrics bone visibility tweak to get rid of bone visibility, load my preferred UV map onto it (I actually have several Genesis1's in my object tray with different UVs ready to go), and going through the rotation constraints and unchecking all of them bone by bone (otherwise applied poses won't look right, and even posing I won't be able to pose right either), as well as adding the morphs to correct the cornea bulge and to correct the iris depth. Takes a little time to set up, but once saved it's ready to go and a real time saver (and I don't have to worry about rendering a long animation and then realizing I forgot to correct the eyes, so they don't look right, etc...)
Comments
Good catch with the speed increase Jonstark. This is one of those performance gains that seem counterintuitive.
Alberto's morph eraser helps too
Some notes on this:
The speed difference for Carrara is due to it 'Not' having to access the database to load in the morphs you have installed.
Carrara saves All morphs' mesh data within the save. So if you look at the file size between Genesis from the default DS library compared to the Carrara save, there's a rather large difference.
This, of course means that any new morph installations or changes will Not show up in this save.
This can be a real boon to some of us because as I mention in my Genesis Morph Reduction article, we can tailor Genesis to be specific to a character, and then save it to the browser. Conduct the reduction process again for the next character, set up the character and save... repeat for more characters.
I've been doing this before Alberto's plugin. The main difference in methods is that my method is more of a manual, hands-on file cataloging, and the morphs that are not used also do not have a slider that simply doesn't work. The file size reduces in the same manner, for the Car file.
It can also be a real pain in the rump when we have a very specific character that's hard to transfer, and then we buy a morph addon that we really want that character to have, so we have to load in a fresh Genesis and build it up again.
I have an article which helps with this, but I've noticed that it doesn't always work as expected: Character Transfer Using NLA Pose
My new method might get me beat up in this forum, but it works well:
Design the character in Daz Studio and make several presets for it: Shape preset, Material Preset (less useful in Carrara) and a full Character preset. I also have a scene subset file saved for both Dart and Rosie, with their respective costumes on.
The advantage to this comes when we run into issues like above - we have a fully optimized Carrara character, lean on morphs, shaders just right, settings the way we want them to be... and then we buy a new morph set! Argh!!!
With the above mentioned DS Presets, we can at least get the character back onto a fresh copy of Genesis.
It's not always all about "Buying new morphs" either. I have made a special set of morph files for Genesis: Genesis 1 MorphForms +, which is very helpful for adjusting the arms, torso, etc., on animations because we don't have to edit the actual joints - the morphforms dials work across the whole time line.
Since then I've come up with more ideas to add to the MorphForms + for Genesis 1 - like foot correction when using generation 4 animations, etc.,
With my characters having DS presets, I can load in my Carrara save, add a new Genesis using my DS preset, and then transfer the clothing, dynamic hair, light rig, etc., over to the new Genesis. It's a lot easier and more efficient.
I hope you all find this info a little helpful.
thanks Jonstark.
I really need to sit down and work with genesis
My smart content won't work at all with carrara and somehow I have stuffed up everything in stuido as well
I lost my smart content as well .. so I uninstalled everything, deleted left over DS folders and then reinstalled DS 4.6
Smart Content back and I just left DS as is.. kinda like those ducks on a wall.. only good to look at.
Luckily, I've been clever enough so far that my content doesn't have to be ;)