Can I clean out the morph directory?

[Koryu]

So... I've been working in VaM for a while now and I've accumulated quite an impressive number of morphs... so many, in fact, that there are seventy-three-zillion Breath1 morphs (Among others... some 200 PAGES of "others")...

Can I just go into the Custom/Atom/Person/Morphs/Female directory and delete the duplicates? maybe move them around into one folder so it's easier to see? Or will this mess up characters I've made... Does VaM know the difference between Breath1 and Breath1 and Breath1? Or does it just pick whichever Breath1 is in there and apply it? I mean, I assume there would be a difference between Breath1 and Breath1 (V4)... but I even now have three or four Breath1 (V4) (And a few Breath1 (V2)s....).

Thanks!

K

 

[Juno]

The age old issues of morph duplication. So when vam fails to locate a morph it will just search the folder then the vars to find a same named morph and it will then just use the first one it finds. You could indeed just delete the duplicates if all the duplicates were exactly the same morph but in my experience that is not the case at all and there are plenty of same named morphs which in fact are not he same morph. Every time I do a morph clean up at least one of my models will not look right as a result as vam will use different morphs from the original model.

 

[DJ]

What juno said.

But what you CAN do safely is open the package manager, filter for "morphs", then go through each one, making sure the "preload morphs" box is unchecked.

IMO, this box should ONLY be chacked if the var is a an actual morph pack that you downloaded specifically to add the morphs to your collection. But too many var creators check it, so those model specific morphs that you never manually use end up cluttering your morph collection.

By unchecking the box, Vam can find and load the morphs when you load a model that uses them, but wont load them otherwise.

 

[DJ]

The other thing you can do is download and run the standalone "morphology" application. This allows you to clean up your morph menu by dragging and dropping morphs from one category to another. It's just a pain in the ass when you open the morphs dropdown list and there are, for example 6 differently maned categories of leg morphs. With this application, you can move all those morphs into a single category.

This only works on morphs in Custom\Atom\Person\Morphs. Morphs inside vars wont show up.

Be warned it is a little buggy. I find it crashes if you try to move more than 10 or 12 morphs at once.

 

[ZRSX]

Does VaM know the difference between Breath1 and Breath1 and Breath1? Or does it just pick whichever Breath1 is in there and apply it? I mean, I assume there would be a difference between Breath1 and Breath1 (V4)... but I even now have three or four Breath1 (V4) (And a few Breath1 (V2)s....).

Just to add a clarification: looking at the version (V2, V4...) is not enough. The version is relative to the package the morph comes from.
You should hover or click on the little box icon next to the version: it will tell you from which package the morph comes from.

It's totally possible for creators to name their morph the same way (it's not like if "Breath1" was incredibly creative): those morphs from different packages should be different morphs.
I say "should" because it's possible that some creators would repack an existing morph (which is baaaaad). What DJ said would fix it in this case.

On my side I only have 1 morph named "Breath1" and it's coming from the must-have Spacedog's "Import_Reloaded_Lite" morph pack (which is a legit morph pack and should have "Preload morph" enabled).
If your other "Breath1" morphs come from scenes or looks packages, untick "Preload morph" or remove them altogether.

 

[DJ]

Just to follow up on what ZRSX said, if you click on the little box next to the morph name, that package will open up in the package manager and you can then untick the "preload morph" box. I make it a habit to look for new morph categories popping up in my morphs collection. When i find one, the morphs inside almost certainly come from a singe var with that box unchecked, so I'll check it to correct the issue.

Note that after doing so, the morphs will still be visible until you restart (or hard reset) the program.

 

[Koryu]

All of this was awesome! Thank you all so much! I'm at some 200+ pages of morphs now... it's so hard to deal with... and I can only "Favorite" or sort by name ("Leg")... so now I will begin working on this!

-K

 

[Jiraiya]

Sorry to dig up an old post, but does unticking this box "preload morph" also help with the FPS drop from having many morphs in your VaM install?

 

[SlimerJSpud]

I started a similar thread just recently, but don't have a definitive answer yet.

Question - Too many files in Custom\Atom\Person\Morphs

I've read through some of the threads on the topic of morph bloat. Currently, I have 10,000 files in Custom\Atom\Person\Morphs\Female! What I want to know is, where do these files come from? Does Vam make a copy of morphs locally whenever Preload Morphs is checked on a var package, like it's a...

hub.virtamate.com

 

[Jiraiya]

I went through and unticked that preload on every var.
WOW.
what a difference. I didn't notice it so much in frame rate but I did notice it in everything else
load times are amazingly decreased. Not just initial opening VaM but menu operations later on.

It's worth it just for that. The whole experience is faster and smoother now with preload off on all the var files.

Sadly, the benchmark is crashing for me at the moment. It gets past the mirror and hair sim parts but then I think is trying to load a new scene with 2 people? It just sits waiting on loading one of the person atoms forever. So I can't give actual numbers as to how much it improved the frame rate.

 

[SlimerJSpud]

I have some morph packs in vars that I like to use, but the ones that are specific to a scene, I also turned off. It helped. What I still don't know is if any morph I favorite ends up with a copy in the Morphs folder.

 

[atani]

Morphs set as favorites end up as a 0 kb file in a "favorites" folder, not the morphs themselves.

 

[DJ]

IMO, the only vars that should preload morphs are actual morph packs.