Solved What factors have a greater impact on load times?

[supperGR]

Every time loading my scene it gets stuck at this part:

• Restore atom contents. Note that large save files may take a while...

for around One minute.

I'm curious, what is the main thing that affects the loading speed of this part? This sounds silly, as I'm well aware that any content can affect the loading speed, but I'd like to know what affects it more, so that I might be able to make compromises on the scene content.

Like the number of atoms, or logic complexity, or textures, or number of plugins used, or timeline, or something else?

Thanks

 

[hazmhox]

Loading speed is tightly connected to your gear. Do you have SSDs for VAM?

In general, if it holds longer on that part, it means you have a large json file for the scene. So I'll assume you're loading something with mocap. For instance, Midnight Moves is quite "light" for the atom count and the overall scripting, but the longest part is loading the mocap.

More or less: script, atom count, scene complexity does not matter much. The biggest "hog" in VAM is animation data, and "flat" textures, ie: non assetbundle textures that needs to be cached and loaded on the fly for characters and clothes for example.

One note tho: I'm saying scene complexity does not matter... up until a point. If you have thousands of atoms and a 50mb json file for the scene. It will obviously be longer to load.

 

[supperGR]

Yeah I'm using SSD, pretty sure its because of my scene itself
It does contain a 5mb josn mocap timeline and the scene's json file was 15mb which are both not that small i guess?

When we talk about texture, which has a greater impact, quantity or size？

1. Added ten basic geometries to the scene, and used simple texture maps to compose them into ten different styles, and I used ten trigger buttons to switch between the ten styles, so I got 10x10 which is 100 texture files, but each file size is kept under 30kb; at the same time, in order to be able to trigger, I need to save vap preset files for each style for each geometry, 20kb for each preset file, which is 3mb+2mb in total.
2. There are a single texture file in my scene that is 5mb in size, and ten basic geometries all using this texture

When I load these two scenes separately, which one might load faster?

Sorry for my English, I don't know if I have describe it clearly...

It occurred to me when I was looking at the scene files that maybe I could delete all the preset preview images, so that the original 20kb vap preset file (with vap and preview images) becomes 5kb, which in the above saves 1.5mb of space size, but would that help with loading speed...

 

[hazmhox]

Both for textures. Especially if they're not optimized into assetbundles. Big textures are long to process. 100 texture files even small will require several passes and will still take a bit of time.

Vap presets do not matter. They are not loaded by the scene, they are read at the trigger execution.

At the scale you're talking about. You should not have a 1 min stall. But I suspect without cache created, the 100 texture files will be longer as it as to create 100 cache files and load them.

As for the anim, a 5/15mb file should not be a big problem.
What's your overall gear? CPU/RAM/GPU.

 

[supperGR]

Laptop: AMD Ryzen 7 5800H / 32.0 GB RAM / RTX3070 / WD_Black SN770 SSD

Sorry for the two scenarios above, that was just giving an example..
Back to reality, I do have some similar texture files loaded into my scene, but I'm also using five sets of PBR texture maps, totalling 36mb in size
When I unzip the var, the Custom/Atom folder is 63mb in size, I assume it contains all the texture files, does this size affect the loading speed?

I'm afraid there's more to the situation than meets the eye, I just felt stuck at this stage with a long wait that felt like a minute or so, so I just measured with a stopwatch that my scene (containing a default female character) running in a relatively new Vam (102 vars in addonpackages) Stuck for one minute and 27 seconds at this stage:

Restore Atom Contents. Note that large save files may take a while...


This is my scene, could you please take the time checking my var files? maybe there is something wrong with my packaging? Or is there too much logic in the scene? As this is my first time doing a scenario and my first time packaging it, it was all very confusing at the beginning, and after sorting it out before I release it, there may still be some rubbish left...

 

[hazmhox]

Sure! I'll check it out : )

I'll get back to you as soon as I can!

 

[supperGR]

My savior!!

 

[Femcore]

That scene looks very nice. Well done.

Only one thing I noticed: you use pretty large images (their resolution) in the description and they seem to be png files. Both makes for larger file size and (at least on my slow connection) long loading times.
Maybe in your scene you also use png where alpha channel is not necessary? Or larger resolution than necessary? You talked about 30kb and 20kb, so it does not seem as if the images in your package are too large but I thought it's worth mentioning.

 

[supperGR]

That scene looks very nice. Well done.

Only one thing I noticed: you use pretty large images (their resolution) in the description and they seem to be png files. Both makes for larger file size and (at least on my slow connection) long loading times.
Maybe in your scene you also use png where alpha channel is not necessary? Or larger resolution than necessary? You talked about 30kb and 20kb, so it does not seem as if the images in your package are too large but I thought it's worth mentioning.

THX Boss!
Sorry to be such a pain in the arse about your reading experience lol

Actually, for my first time posting a resource, the first step was to find a Benchmark to learn the general norms of posting on the site such as image sizes, and of course, of course, I needed to find the best posts to learn from!

So guess what! I came up with this post from @hazmhox Scary Mary - The Ghost in my Panties which impressed me a looooot.

So I tried to prepare my post using the same horizontal resolution which is 2560px LOL, and yes, I did notice the slow loading speed, then I realise it's not a suitable Benchmark for me (as his post only has two PNGs lol) but @hazmhox's typography design is awesome anyway

PS: Yes, the post has quite a few unnecessary png images I admit!

PPS: Almost all png and jpg that appear in my scene are highly compressed, almost..

PPPS: I suddenly remembered that I wanted to ask @hazmhox how he managed to separate the human hair from the jpg perfectly in his post

 

[Femcore]

No worries. You are doing great.

And it was the same for me when I started making content.

After my first resources I realized that I used png in all descriptions and exchanged them. Even in the scenes/packages I had some larger png files where not necessary and exchanged them as well. I hope I catched them all.

But yeah, I did not need the alpha channel of the png in my descriptions so jpg was enough.
And it looks great with the usage of transparency in your description and in the one from @hazmhox. But you are right: He only has it twice.

 

[hazmhox]

PPPS: I suddenly remembered that I wanted to ask @hazmhox how he managed to separate the human hair from the jpg perfectly in his post

Studio Maestro alpha shot feature : )

PS: I'm currently testing your scene.
PPS: thank you for the kind words! <3

 

[hazmhox]

So!

I'm at a 0.50secs loading from start to finish. Including final asynchronous texture load.

This does not seem very "not standard" for a scene like this:

• You have 300+ atoms
• You have a LOT of UI
• You have complex scripts all over your UI and misc interactions between all of those
• etc etc...

From my point of view, my 0.50secs loading is not incoherent, it seems somewhat normal : )

The only thing I can suggest is to install a new VAM, completely fresh and try to install your scene only and also clear the cache. If you end up with somewhat the same results, this means you're "topping" the loading speed your PC can do.

But honestly, this does not seem crazy.
You'd say you have a 5mins loading, yeah that would be concerning. But at 1min somethin', that's pretty ok for me. Especially for that much atoms : )

 

[supperGR]

No worries. You are doing great.

And it was the same for me when I started making content.

After my first resources I realized that I used png in all descriptions and exchanged them. Even in the scenes/packages I had some larger png files where not necessary and exchanged them as well. I hope I catched them all.

But yeah, I did not need the alpha channel of the png in my descriptions so jpg was enough.
And it looks great with the usage of transparency in your description and in the one from @hazmhox. But you are right: He only has it twice.

Now the png and jpg images in my post are all compressed!

Save 90% on Internet access!

Mission accomplished!

 

[hazmhox]

Very nice scene btw.

 

[supperGR]

BIG THX AGAIN!
It's great to know that there aren't too many problems, apart from a big mess of atoms and complex logic... This scene witnesses the whole process of how i learning Vam, trying out almost every plugin in sight! In Chinese we call it: Shit Mountain!

Thank you both for your time!

Good day or night!

 

[hazmhox]

In Chinese we call it: Shit Mountain!

Hahaha I'm glad I learned that! Very funny :']

Thank you both for your time!

Good day or night!

Have a great day! Keep up the good work, you're on the right track. Making more optimized scene will come with time : )
Cheers! <3