Question too much timeline to load, but why?

[Vamtucket]

Can someone direct me to info about how many timeline animations I can have in one scene? I've noticed that if I add too many, then the scene will save but not load back up. But I can't figure out what the limit is... like it doesn't seem to be affected directly by time length. What can I do to maximize the amount of timeline information I can have in one scene? Does it help to have all the animations in the same plugin (separated as segments)? These types of questions. thanks

 

[MacGruber]

Scenes have a file size limit. If you mocap animation with high precision (= lots of keyframes) the file size grows quite quickly, since storing such data as JSON is quite inefficient. So, what you need is less keyframes.

If I remember correctly, Timeline had a compression feature that tries to remove unimportant keyframes. And you can also control the precision during mocap recording. (But I might be confusing things here, probably check the Timeline wiki)

 

[Saint66]

Can someone direct me to info about how many timeline animations I can have in one scene? I've noticed that if I add too many, then the scene will save but not load back up. But I can't figure out what the limit is... like it doesn't seem to be affected directly by time length. What can I do to maximize the amount of timeline information I can have in one scene? Does it help to have all the animations in the same plugin (separated as segments)? These types of questions. thanks

The scene size (or animation size) limit is around 500MB.
What you can do if not tried yet: reduce the keyframes with Timeline, size will be much smaller.

So its not the number of animations, its about max filesize

 

[Vamtucket]

Scenes have a file size limit. If you mocap animation with high precision (= lots of keyframes) the file size grows quite quickly, since storing such data as JSON is quite inefficient. So, what you need is less keyframes.

If I remember correctly, Timeline had a compression feature that tries to remove unimportant keyframes. And you can also control the precision during mocap recording. (But I might be confusing things here, probably check the Timeline wiki)

Are timeline animations the main source of save file size? If not, what other things should I think about for optimizing? thanks for help

 

[atani]

Timeline animations can take a lot of space if they're mocaps as this can mean thousands of keyframes. Non-mocap Timeline animations are normally just a few MB, there's a lot fewer keyframes.
Overall in VARs, usually textures are the main file size takers, just take a look at some looks, they're usually over 100 MB in size.

"Optimizing" is too broad, needs a focus for it to be meaningful. If your focus is in reducing disk space use, then you want to start at culling looks you don't want, they're likely the larger file size takers.

 

[Vamtucket]

Timeline animations can take a lot of space if they're mocaps as this can mean thousands of keyframes. Non-mocap Timeline animations are normally just a few MB, there's a lot fewer keyframes.
Overall in VARs, usually textures are the main file size takers, just take a look at some looks, they're usually over 100 MB in size.

"Optimizing" is too broad, needs a focus for it to be meaningful. If your focus is in reducing disk space use, then you want to start at culling looks you don't want, they're likely the larger file size takers.

thanks for response.... for creating a scene that is saved locally as json file, do the skins and clothes textures etc go into the file size? I'm currently looking to create the largest json file that I can that vam will open and so far it seems timeline is main thing I have to think about

 

[atani]

A JSON file is a text file, images are bitmap files. If you are using a image in a scene (JSON) it will be referencing the path to that bitmap file - eg: Custom/Images/myImage.jpg - it doesn't include the image itself in the JSON.
The increase in size of the JSON will just be by adding the path to the image, marginal increase of a few bytes, and is independent of the size of the referenced image.

 

[Saint66]

thanks for response.... for creating a scene that is saved locally as json file, do the skins and clothes textures etc go into the file size? I'm currently looking to create the largest json file that I can that vam will open and so far it seems timeline is main thing I have to think about

Just try the keyframe reduction, it can do miracles

 

[Vamtucket]

Just try the keyframe reduction, it can do miracles

View attachment 310925View attachment 310926

Thanks this is just what I need to do. If I take an animation that timeline has imported from a mocap, what reduction settings do you recommend?

 

[Saint66]

Thanks this is just what I need to do. If I take an animation that timeline has imported from a mocap, what reduction settings do you recommend?

I mostly leave it on default, depends on the given animation. Sometimes I go higher, sometime as low as 6 frames per second.
You'll have to try, some anims get wonky if going too low, some don't

 

[Vamtucket]

I mostly leave it on default, depends on the given animation. Sometimes I go higher, sometime as low as 6 frames per second.
You'll have to try, some anims get wonky if going too low, some don't

After reducing the keyframes, the message log says that the key frames get reduced 95%, but when I export this animation... the file size stays the same. When I then try to further reduce the key frames... I can but it seems to keep the info from the original animation (like so I could restore back to it). Am I missing a step? Like how to do I clear out the old animation restore to info so I can see a significant memory file size change. thanks for any help

 

[Saint66]

After reducing the keyframes, the message log says that the key frames get reduced 95%, but when I export this animation... the file size stays the same. When I then try to further reduce the key frames... I can but it seems to keep the info from the original animation (like so I could restore back to it). Am I missing a step? Like how to do I clear out the old animation restore to info so I can see a significant memory file size change. thanks for any help

Thats weird. After reducing the keyframes, I just export it (with another name) and filesize is accordingly reduced.
It's just that straight forward to me. I have no idea why it doesn't worrk for you.
Maybe ask for help at Acids discord channel -> https://discord.gg/8EVPaGef

 

[Nawen]

Is there a way to recover a scene that goes over the 500mb limit, just to temporarily load it or something so it can be reduced or fixed?, Just did hours and hours of work, backed up the scene and saved over the backup just to find out that they are both too big and I lost weeks worth of work and motion captures.

Or a way to load timeline animations from separate scene, so I can make a new empty scene and just import the animations to reduce them?

 

[atani]

Is there a way to recover a scene that goes over the 500mb limit, just to temporarily load it or something so it can be reduced or fixed?, Just did hours and hours of work, backed up the scene and saved over the backup just to find out that they are both too big and I lost weeks worth of work and motion captures.

Or a way to load timeline animations from separate scene, so I can make a new empty scene and just import the animations to reduce them?

Only if you're lucky enough to find a point where you can break up the scene JSON and still keep it valid.

 

[FreeMaster69]

Thanks this is just what I need to do. If I take an animation that timeline has imported from a mocap, what reduction settings do you recommend?

I spoke with acid bubbles a while back on discord about reducing keyframes that are imported from mocap/scene animation because I had 2 problems. 1. too many keyframes and 2. after reducing keyframes the animation looked pretty bad as the mocap can be kind of ruined if you use only default reduce settings.

He advised me to uncheck the (remove flat sections) and the (simplify keyframes) boxes which did turn out to be the main reason mocaps looked bad after reduction for me.

(Round key time to fps) checkbox is up to you but having it checked makes it much easier to edit the anim after, as all keyframes will land on an exact selectable number in the scrubber for example- 1.000 1.200 1.400 1.600 rather than something messy like say 1.361 1.564 lol.

For the max frames per second slider I usually set it between 5 and 10 but for very complex moves like the head and hands you can select just those 2 and reduce with more than 10 frames per second.

Also acidbubbles has a session plugin that does basically tell you when a saved scene will not load again.
Acidbubbles.Dev Tools 14 select ForwardUnityLogsToSceneLogs.cs. When you save a scene check the error log so you can make adjustments if there is still too many keyframes.

Dev Tools - Plugins -

Dev Tools ? Like my plugins? Sponsor me on Patreon and get early access to new versions! https://www.patreon.com/acidbubbles ? Need help using this plugin, or want to discuss? Join us on Discord! https://discord.gg/VtUpPkb For most of those...

hub.virtamate.com

Hope this helps.