The curse of Frame 4

jim_doria

Hi all - 

I don't really do animation in Daz Studio, so I use the timeline as a way of storing multiple still frames inside of one file. I'll arrange characters, props, etc. then use keyframes to take a "snapshot" of the vignette. (I know this is not the "approved" way to use the timeline, but I think it's still something a lot of people do?) 

For some reason my file sizes always balloon when I add frame 4.

I kind of noticed this in passing for a while but never took the time to really make sure what I thought was happening was really happening. I thought there might be other explanations like I'd changed keyframe interpolation or added some large morphs like Fit Control. Or I didn't take note of the previous file size and so wasn't really sure when the change ocurred.

But today, I had a scene - a set, some props, 3 figures (G2F, G3M, G8F). Not too heavy, the file size when I had 3 keyframes in the timeline was 10,995 KB. With 2 frames it was 10,775 KB, so the change from 2 to 3 was not that great. 

Then I added a keyframe for the camera and each of the figures on frame 4. I just added the keyframes on frame 4, didn't even re-position anything. Saved the file and it is now 130,206 KB!

If I delete the 4 keyframes on frame 4 of the timeline and save the file again, the scene file size goes back to 10,995 KB.

What the heck is happening on frame 4 to make the file suddenly swell to more than 10X its former size?!

Has anyone else encountered this issue? A quick search of the forums didn't net me anything.

Thanks!

jim_doria

UPDATE: I thought I could beat the curse by limiting myself to 3 frames or less in a file. I could save 10 versions of the same setup with 3 frames each and still not take up as much space as one file with 4 frames.

So I took my frame 3, copied all the keyframes to frame 1 and deleted everything at frames 2 and 3. New file size 10,567 KB. Overall project frame 4 became frame 1 in the new file.

Then I added keyframes for overall frame 5 at frame 2 position on the timeline. Save file.  238,652 KB! And when I delete the newly added keyframes and re-save, I don't get back to the former file size. Now the file is 27,293 KB with just the one frame. It's like DAZ Studio is punishing me for trying to fix the problem.

So it's not restricted to just frame 4. But now I'm even more confused. Where would I even start to troubleshoot something like this?

crosswind

There should be no surprise if you just created key frames on no figure from frame 1 to 3.... but at frame 4, you created key frames on figures... then all properties of all figures would be written into DUF file...

Depending on the number of active properties that each G2/G3/G8 has in your Daz Library, you may open your DUF file to check the number of coding lines, more or less it should be 10 times than the DUF file with just 3 keyframes.

And it also depends on the Property Types that you choose on the timeline, the "size of DUF file" may vary...

jim_doria

@crosswind

There should be no surprise if you just created key frames on no figure from frame 1 to 3.... but at frame 4, you created key frames on figures.

But that is not what happened. Each frame of the timeline has 4 keyframes on it, one for the camera and one for each figure.(There's also a couple for a door opening / closing). My workflow is pose figures --> save --> set new keframes for all figures on the next frame of the timeline --> pose figures --> save. I'd understand what happened if there were no keyframes other than the last one.

It's going from (approximately) 12 keyframes to 16 keyframes total that causes the size to explode. (Or per my 2nd post, from 4 keyframes to 8 keyframes total.)

EDIT: And I guess I should add that the only thing changing between frames is the poses of the figures. Basically just new pose dial settings for each figure. It's hard to see how even an extreme change in the pose parameters would inflate the file so much. 

crosswind

Check Property Types  first then open those DUF files to thoroughly check the "difference" in each colding section, you'll understand how DS saves them accordingly, which makes file size bigger...

I ever made a scene with one figure dancing and singing animation + dForce simulation, with appr. 3500 key frames, then it took nearly 40 mins to save the Duf file of 3.2GB file size...

jim_doria

There's really no way to compare the files. The larger one is 702 MB of text uncompressed. My file compare tools fell over and died when I tried to open them both. I'm certainly not going to read them. The problem isn't worth that kind of effort.

I just wanted to see if anybody had the answer already. To me going from a 200 KB difference from keyframe 2 --> 3 to a 200  MB difference from keyframe 3 --> 4 (when I create the keyframes the exact same way each time) didn't make much sense.  

WendyLuvsCatz

how are you people getting such massive file sizes? 

I do animations of 1K frames or more and unless I save a long dforce sim or import an obj mine are minsicle (I send them over my wifi between computers )

the animations are mostly just long sections of text in the duf of transforms

dforce on the other hand saves vertex information as are imported objects

my 1K+ scene files are all under 400MB BTW the ones over 100MB are Dforce sims over 100's of frames

WendyLuvsCatz

if you save your imported objs as support assets props then the big file is saved in data under your name product and your scene duf will remain relatively small as it just references it

(you will need to load your saved props in the scene and delete the imported one)

crosswind

WendyLuvsCatz said:

how are you people getting such massive file sizes? 

I do animations of 1K frames or more and unless I save a long dforce sim or import an obj mine are minsicle (I send them over my wifi between computers )

the animations are mostly just long sections of text in the duf of transforms

dforce on the other hand saves vertex information as are imported objects

my 1K+ scene files are all under 400MB BTW the ones over 100MB are Dforce sims over 100's of frames

Because I used to have 38K+ morph assets (properties) on a single G8F and they were saved with keyframes and the vertices position data of all dForce garments on the figure was stored with each keyframe as well..

Then after that time, I knew how to "optimize" the selection of Property Types on the timeline...

crosswind

If one opens DUF file to check how the scene data are saved by DS, he/she will better understand... and know how to better "manipulate" and "optimize" the scene...

Richard Haseltine

I very much doubt you are setting one keyframe per figure - you are most likely setting one keyframe for each property oneach none on each figure (depending on settings it may only be a subset of that, but if it was only setting keys on the abse figue it would achieve very little).

WendyLuvsCatz

I still find this staggering 

I certainly use morphs in my animations and still don't get huge scene files as the vertex information for those morphs are all in data under the various PAs etc who created them

unless again I created them myself using morphloader and didn't save them as a morph asset and apply them.

I of course don't use Fit Control or mesh grabber and that might be what's causing this blowout 

any morphs I create are usually in Carrara and/or Zbrush and saved and applied afterwards 

my fibermesh hair files are massive but again not saved in the scene file itself.

one would need to know what you actually have in the scene that's causing frame 4 to increase the file so much

a morphloader import would blow it out so presumably a mesh grabber or fit control adjustment would too as basically an unsaved morph load

crosswind

Nah... what PAs created and saved are just Base Geometry data rather than vertex position change data after simulation, espcially on each frame when simulation with Animated Range.

A simple case : no animation - File Size: 2.2MB. with 150 frames dancing animation + dForce simulation of 1 piece skirt - File Size: 42MB ( x 20 ). Simulation data is save with each frame...

WendyLuvsCatz

that's expected the 3+ GB was what I was shocked by

crosswind

WendyLuvsCatz said:

that's expected the 3+ GB was what I was shocked by

Indeed ~~~ pretty challenging.