Is having .vars or loose files better for performance?

[felixback]

I tend to like making custom edits/variations to stuff and .vars are very time-consuming to edit/save additions to, plus with VAR if trying to find a file, I have to flip between .var folder and custom folders.

So i'd prefer to just unzip all my vars to Custom, is this feasible? Will it sink performance?

 

[atani]

Unpacking should not be done unless you're willing to take on all the problems that lead to the concept of VARs. Over time your VAM will be a giant messy folder and slow as hell, errors everywhere.
What kind of variations are you talking about?

 

[felixback]

Unpacking should not be done unless you're willing to take on all the problems that lead to the concept of VARs. Over time your VAM will be a giant messy folder and slow as hell, errors everywhere.
What kind of variations are you talking about?

Often times clothing items only come in very basic designs, EG a T-shirt that is plain colours, I might make a few textures with logos or band names on. And a nice skin, I might create version of it with tattoos, bush, and suntans (at various stages on) to be saved in a more permanent way than decalmerger plugin.

 

[atani]

The tactics used will depend on your strategy for VAM, volume of changes and practicality. As usual, what works well in one way may be a problem in another way.

I have a VAR package with alpha textures for clothing which I created slowly over time. At first I kept those textures in my Custom folder and later decided to add it to the fitting clothes VAR to have it all in one place. The first one allowed me quick access but I could delete it by accident, while putting it back in the clothes VAR would be kind of safe but harder to reach and potentially overwritten with a new VAR version. My latest tactic was to pack all the alphas into a single VAR, which makes it safe and easy to share, especially because I make scenes and I don't have now to include that texture file, I can just reference the VAR.
I use clothing presets mainly when playing, so for me the differences in method used for where the texture is located doesn't matter so much. However, for scene making and maintenance it started to make, so I changed to what it is now.

Try out several methods, understand their pros and cons, and be prepared for changes along time. More importantly, make frequent backups of your VAM content.

 

[mastermike8800]

Not sure if this helps but I had an interesting experience recently. I've used the same convoluted Vam folder for years. I was in the process of creating my first scene Var file but to make sure everything worked I did a clean install and downloaded all the scene's dependencies and I swear I got like a whole 5-10 frames per second more than I got running the same scene in my old Vam folder. My scene did have loose sound files, images and textures that are all packed into the var file now. Perhaps that had something to do with it. From now on I'll have a work VAM folder and a play VAM folder.