Question Is there a way too open a scene that's "too big"?

[neoajdude]

Basically I've been working on a scene in Timeline, and it's gotten too big to open. I was going along, saving as usual. But when I went back to open the scene, it's too big and the error says I'm out of memory (I'm not).

I've ready that the Json has a limit in size before VAM gives up in opening.

But if I could just get in and reduce the keyframes in timeline, I'd be golden.

It's a lesson, obviously, to reduce keyframes before saving...but here I am.

Is there anyway to open a scene that's too big? I'd really hate to lose all this work. It would probably mean my retirement from making content, cause it's a lot of work to redo lol.

 

[Acid Bubbles]

Hi @neoajdude ! I'm aware of this problem, and sadly it's part of VaM's memory limit... I will work on a new method for saving those files separately but it's a lot of work. In the meantime:

1. Did you try to update to the latest VaM version? It has improved memory, and should allow for larger scenes before crashing (I think).
2. Are you comfortable with editing JSON files, or are you ready to? Maybe a little command line? It's going to be tricky, but you could "split" your JSON and try to salvage it, reduce your animations, and then merge them (or something like that).

 

[neoajdude]

Hi @neoajdude ! I'm aware of this problem, and sadly it's part of VaM's memory limit... I will work on a new method for saving those files separately but it's a lot of work. In the meantime:

1. Did you try to update to the latest VaM version? It has improved memory, and should allow for larger scenes before crashing (I think).
2. Are you comfortable with editing JSON files, or are you ready to? Maybe a little command line? It's going to be tricky, but you could "split" your JSON and try to salvage it, reduce your animations, and then merge them (or something like that).

Thanks for getting back to me! Just to be clear, I'm in no way blaming you or timeline! It's an invaluable tool, and I should have either done my research or been more proactive to reducing the keyframes (or maybe not going overboard with the animations and actually using the different layers...)

I updated to the latest version of VAM but I get the same results, just goes back to the main menu.

I'm fairly comfortable editing the JSON files, if I know what to do. I think Splitting them into two scenes and then merging them sounds like a good way to go. I don't suppose you've done it before, or have any tips on the best way to do it?

 

[neoajdude]

Hi @neoajdude ! I'm aware of this problem, and sadly it's part of VaM's memory limit... I will work on a new method for saving those files separately but it's a lot of work. In the meantime:

1. Did you try to update to the latest VaM version? It has improved memory, and should allow for larger scenes before crashing (I think).
2. Are you comfortable with editing JSON files, or are you ready to? Maybe a little command line? It's going to be tricky, but you could "split" your JSON and try to salvage it, reduce your animations, and then merge them (or something like that).

So I tried some tests to see if I could split the JSON file and then merge them together. I think I have a good idea of what I need to do, but I am running into some issues. I know you have better things to do than help me troubleshoot this. But I'm hoping you might have some quick insight into something I'm missing.

So I created a test animation with two animations. I saved the JSON twice.
In the first JSON, I went to the controllers under one of the animations and deleted them.
And then deleted the controllers from the other animation in the other JSON.

They still load fine, and play their respective animations (with the other animation name there, but the controllers are missing). However, when I try to merge load the other JSON...it just becomes that one. The animations don't seem to merge.

So I'm wondering if there is something else I'm missing? Would it be better to go through and delete the controller info instead of the controllers themselves? Or something else in the JSON I'm missing.

Sorry again for all the questions, I'll certainly keep fiddling around with it. But if you happen to have any insight, I'd love it.

 

[VamWizard]

Keep in mind that I don't know as much as Acid Bubbles, and I don't know if this will work, but while he doesn't post, you can try the following: For your test, instead of deleting the controllers, you should delete the first clip of the first JSON and the second clip of the second JSON. Load the scenes and see if there is only one animation in them (if that is the case, you successfully split it). To merge the two scenes, you should copy the clip from one JSON to the other (remember to separate the clips with a comma).

 

[neoajdude]

Keep in mind that I don't know as much as Acid Bubbles, and I don't know if this will work, but while he doesn't post, you can try the following: For your test, instead of deleting the controllers, you should delete the first clip of the first JSON and the second clip of the second JSON. Load the scenes and see if there is only one animation in them (if that is the case, you successfully split it). To merge the two scenes, you should copy the clip from one JSON to the other (remember to separate the clips with a comma).

View attachment 225220

Thanks for the tips! I actually tried that first, but when I merged the scenes it just loaded the other scene instead of merge. I'm using the "Merge Load Scene" option in the menu.

When you say copy to the JSON, do you mean have the scene open and copy in the extra scenes?

 

[neoajdude]

Okay. So I think I figured it out.

For anyone interested. I split the scene into two, with half the animations in each scene.

I then exported each of the animations from one of the scenes. Then opened the other scene and imported those individual animations.

That SEEMS to work, at least for my test scene. There's about 15 animations in my too big scene, so I'm gonna try it today and see how it goes.

Edit: New issue I have is opening a 600MB JSON file lol.

 

[VamWizard]

Edit: New issue I have is opening a 600MB JSON file lol.

Lol!
I think I understand why Acid Bubbles said "Maybe a little command line?" now.

The way I know how to deal with it is deleting all the animations but one from the JSON by creating a .bat that does that (doing that 15 times so that you get 15 JSONS each with only one anim).
Nowadays you can ask chat GPT to create the code for you.
Acid Bubbles probably has a more efficient way though

 

[neoajdude]

Lol!
I think I understand why Acid Bubbles said "Maybe a little command line?" now.

The way I know how to deal with it is deleting all the animations but one from the JSON by creating a .bat that does that (doing that 15 times so that you get 15 JSONS each with only one anim).
Nowadays you can ask chat GPT to create the code for you.
Acid Bubbles probably has a more efficient way though

Thanks again for the help! I actually managed to find a JSON editor that supports larger files (JSONbuddy for anyone interested). It takes forever to do anything, but it works. I think I might be able to salvage the scene after all!

 

[Acid Bubbles]

@neoajdude sorry I can't be here as much as I'd like but I do care and want to help, really So, what you CAN do in the future if you're ready to hold on and move up the learning curve, is use something like jq: https://stedolan.github.io/jq/

That would allow you to extract a piece of the JSON in a separate file.

Something like "jq '.[] | select(.id=="Person#1") | .plugins .... etc. ' json" (not tested but you should see the idea)

That would be much faster to run, but much harder to write unless you're willing to learn jq (I don't use it often enough to know the syntax by heart myself).

However once you have it written, you can reuse it as often as you like in the future on other scenes. You could even write a guide about it

Anyway I'm glad you saved your work! Losing stuff like that is painful.