What Contributes To Scene File Sizes?

Prince Wao

I have one scene in which I use Faveral's Beaune Courtyard environment with only one building deleted to allow light into the cobbled courtyard. There are oodles and oodles of props in the scene - trees, potted flowers, window-box flowers, benches and a well - plus 42 of my own characters and 19 Now Crowds Billboards (29 actual characters), and the file size is 113MB. The camera is set high so as to get the other 3 buildings and maximum characters in shot.

I also have another scene based on the Beaune in which all buildings but the L-shaped hospice have been removed as being a closer up image only a part of the hospice is in view, plus all props except 4 trees and 3 flower boxes have been removed, the cobbled ground has been removed, there are no Billboards in it, but there are 38 of my own characters (4 less than above), the only new things added being a stage morphed out of a primitive cube with a wood shader, Whitemagus's Realist Grass Centre and 1st Arc Ground, plus the props for a rock band. So while this scene has a heck of a lot less in it than the former it's file size is 10MB larger at 123MB.

Though there's far more in the semi-aerial shot it's file size is smaller than the close up shot, which is 'anti-intuitive', so even though I'd assume any one character or prop has a single file size, could it be that the file size of a character or prop reduces when viewed and rendered at a distance? Remember, I'm talking about the file size of the Scene in the Scene folder, not the size of the render - though the render of the apparently simpler scene is 2Mb larger than the more complex one.

 

 

Leana

No, the file size will not change depending on the camera distance, you will get the exact same number of lines saying "load that asset in that place and apply those parameters / morphs / surface settings to it".

Your scene can include several cameras anyway.

I assume the stage you built from a primitive was morphed using dFormers or mesh grabber? If so, all the geometry modifications will be saved in the scene file as there's no existing morph asset to reference. That would make the scene heavier. Same if you used the geometry editor.

Doc Acme

Well, hate to break it to you but 113-123Mb is actually small when you start getting into things like Ultra Scenery Creator or furred creatures.  Mostly it's the image maps for textures.  Daz handles morphs differently than other programs so don't know if they contribute or not. That is a bit odd on your Less is More issue though.  There might be some things texture-wise getting "left behind" that you're not aware of. Hard to tell.

Hopefully someone can shed light on that.

 

Havos

Is 113 and 123MB the compressed size? Duf scene files are compressed by DS by default.

If that is the compressed size both seem very high. Even complex scenes for me rarely go beyond 10-20MB. My guess is that there is some figure and/or props with both scenes being saved with their geometry. A number of things can trigger this, here are a few:

a) Auto fitted clothing.

b) Fit control.

c) Altering the geometry using the geometry editor.

d) Some hairs always seem to do this.

e) Added primitives.

If this happens and the affected figure/prop is high poly then the final scene file will be much bigger.

 

Having said all that, there are a lot of variables in how much space an asset needs to save its state into the scene file, for example the amount of material zones, and/or the shader being used. As such simply looking at the number of assets in each scene would not give you the full picture.

Prince Wao

Havos said:

Is 113 and 123MB the compressed size? Duf scene files are compressed by DS by default.

If that is the compressed size both seem very high. Even complex scenes for me rarely go beyond 10-20MB. My guess is that there is some figure and/or props with both scenes being saved with their geometry. A number of things can trigger this, here are a few:

a) Auto fitted clothing.

b) Fit control.

c) Altering the geometry using the geometry editor.

d) Some hairs always seem to do this.

e) Added primitives.

If this happens and the affected figure/prop is high poly then the final scene file will be much bigger.

 

Having said all that, there are a lot of variables in how much space an asset needs to save its state into the scene file, for example the amount of material zones, and/or the shader being used. As such simply looking at the number of assets in each scene would not give you the full picture.

Yes, the files are the duf. The large figure (which I don't consider small as someone wrote above) maybe due to the scene being saved at 4000 x 2500 pixels. Re the MB figures I gave above for the renders, they're saved as TIFs. Re the aerial scene with oodles in it I wasn't surprised by the Scene file (duf) size, while I was surprised the simpler scene was higher. It may well be the stage I added as it's large - I just morphed it from a primitive cube using the X, Y & Z scales - then it's a parquet flooring shader I used on that.

I initially had the scene crashing on rendering, usually when 27% in, and that's what made me check the file sizes as I thought it may be a RAM problem, but it turned out to that there was a glitch in one of the musician subsets: after first loading a guitarist I realised he didn't have a guitar strap, so I went back to the subset and added the strap, but I didn't render test it. After I replaced the strapless guitarist with the new one I got the crashes. It took a lot of trial an error deleting parts of the set and characters before I discovered it rendered okay without the guitarist. I went back to the subset to render that and it also crashed! So I had to create a new one and once that was uploaded to the scene the rendering was fine. I still need to add some audiences characters, plus ideally some more watching from the balcony, but I dread overloading it so I get more crashes as recent crashed scenes have ended up dumping between 7GB and 26GB of trash in the Daz Studio dson folder and in its temporary files!

jjmainor

Are you refering to the scene file itself, or the finished renders?

PerttiA

Sounds like you are also using Poser assets and/or other non-DS assets (re. dson folder and temp files)

The size of the savefile has no relation to how much RAM or VRAM the scene will use, normally the savefile just contains references to the DS assets used on the scene, but if you modify the assets in a way that DS cannot use references to recreate, then the modifications will be saved in the savefile.

Havos

Prince Wao said:

Havos said:

Is 113 and 123MB the compressed size? Duf scene files are compressed by DS by default.

If that is the compressed size both seem very high. Even complex scenes for me rarely go beyond 10-20MB. My guess is that there is some figure and/or props with both scenes being saved with their geometry. A number of things can trigger this, here are a few:

a) Auto fitted clothing.

b) Fit control.

c) Altering the geometry using the geometry editor.

d) Some hairs always seem to do this.

e) Added primitives.

If this happens and the affected figure/prop is high poly then the final scene file will be much bigger.

 

Having said all that, there are a lot of variables in how much space an asset needs to save its state into the scene file, for example the amount of material zones, and/or the shader being used. As such simply looking at the number of assets in each scene would not give you the full picture.

Yes, the files are the duf. The large figure (which I don't consider small as someone wrote above) maybe due to the scene being saved at 4000 x 2500 pixels. Re the MB figures I gave above for the renders, they're saved as TIFs. Re the aerial scene with oodles in it I wasn't surprised by the Scene file (duf) size, while I was surprised the simpler scene was higher. It may well be the stage I added as it's large - I just morphed it from a primitive cube using the X, Y & Z scales - then it's a parquet flooring shader I used on that.

I initially had the scene crashing on rendering, usually when 27% in, and that's what made me check the file sizes as I thought it may be a RAM problem, but it turned out to that there was a glitch in one of the musician subsets: after first loading a guitarist I realised he didn't have a guitar strap, so I went back to the subset and added the strap, but I didn't render test it. After I replaced the strapless guitarist with the new one I got the crashes. It took a lot of trial an error deleting parts of the set and characters before I discovered it rendered okay without the guitarist. I went back to the subset to render that and it also crashed! So I had to create a new one and once that was uploaded to the scene the rendering was fine. I still need to add some audiences characters, plus ideally some more watching from the balcony, but I dread overloading it so I get more crashes as recent crashed scenes have ended up dumping between 7GB and 26GB of trash in the Daz Studio dson folder and in its temporary files!

If your stage was a primitive cube then the physical size would have no bearing on the final size of the scene file. The number of polys of the cube would be relevant, which is likely dependent on the number of divisions you specified when it was created. Likely as not that is not the reason for your large scene, but something else.

Noah LGP

Maybe it's another good reason to use dForce simulation instead of Autofit.

Edit Scene Identification may also avoid to waste diskspace (Male <-> Female or Genesis 3 <-> Genesis 8).

Havos

Noah LGP said:

Maybe it's another good reason to use dForce simulation instead of Autofit.

Edit Scene Identification may also avoid to waste diskspace (Male <-> Female or Genesis 3 <-> Genesis 8).

You can use still use autofit, but you should save the converted clothing item as a figure/prop asset, after which it will take no further space in the scene file as a native clothing item.