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Optimizing load times (particularly characters)

CederienCederien Posts: 32
edited July 2020 in Technical Help (nuts n bolts)

Since I'm revamping my PC infrastructure I also want to take the opportunity to reorganize my DAZ Studio Content. One of the tings I often heard, but only experienced in the last year or so is that having lots of chars, morphs, etc. can lead to very long load times. Since I never had very many characters for earlier generations it never showed, but now with G8 I experience load times of around 40 seconds per char (loading from a regular (if fast) HD). I can't put my entire runtime on an SSD (well, maybe just maybe I could (perhaps leaving out the billboards and stuff), but I would like to retain some space for games and other software). So I'm wondering if those load times will improve significantly if I move the relevant files to SSD. My guess is yes, as it does not appear to be a computational bottleneck. At least the CPU remains pretty much in idle mode while loading content into DAZ. If that's true then the next question is which files do I need to move to SSD to speed up character load times as much as possible. Obviously all Characters of the problematic Generation (i.e. G8 in my case), and all creatures based on them too. Morphs as well obviously and also scripts like: https://www.daz3d.com/skin-folds--creases-hd-for-genesis-3--8-female or https://www.daz3d.com/musculature-hd-morphs-for-genesis-8-male
But how about things like this: https://www.daz3d.com/ultimate-iray-skin-manager or https://www.daz3d.com/bold-brows-fibermesh-for-genesis-8-males ?
What about poses? I don't think they affect load times of characters, but I'm not 100% positive.

Anything else that I missed which should go on the SSD as well? I'm also welcoming  all other tips on minimizing load times (aside from the obvious like going a bit more conservative about installing chars and morphs and making sure there aren't any errors or to many warnings while loading).

 

 

Post edited by Cederien on

Comments

  • TheKDTheKD Posts: 2,677
    edited July 2020

    I moved my g8f content to my 960 evo nvme ssd at one point as a test, noticed no difference in load speed from my large HDD.

    Post edited by TheKD on
  • CederienCederien Posts: 32

    Hmm, ok, thanks, that's not very encouraging but good to know.

  • kenshaw011267kenshaw011267 Posts: 3,805

    It isn't so much that loading a figure takes a lot of computing but that it takes a lot of opening files.DS has to find all those morphs that have been installed and attach them to the base charcter.

    So to speed up load times your best option is figuring out what you can live without and uninstalling the rest.

  • CederienCederien Posts: 32

    *Sigh* Kinda worried that might be the case, odd design. Why would I spend money on stuff I don't want to have ready to use? Guess I will have to try and work with symlinks I can easily set and remove to link content as needed. Bit of a pita. DAZ wants us to keep buying new characters, morph packs, etc. but their software isn't really set up to handle that much content. Is it just me or is that somewhat like biting the hand that feeds you? :p

    Anyway thanks for the input.

  • TBorNotTBorNot Posts: 369

    I'm not sure that Daz3D has anything to do with the problem.  Sometimes a figure takes a long time to load, and other times it's fast.  If it was the complexity, they would *all* be slow to load.  I think what we see is actually a "silent" file timeout, like when you try and load a Poser prop and it can't find a surface property. Similar to a network drive that keeps spinning down to conserve power, the first time you access the drive it seems like your computer is slow, but it's just waiting around.

  • brvsnbrvsn Posts: 213
    Cederien said:

    *Sigh* Kinda worried that might be the case, odd design. Why would I spend money on stuff I don't want to have ready to use? Guess I will have to try and work with symlinks I can easily set and remove to link content as needed. Bit of a pita. DAZ wants us to keep buying new characters, morph packs, etc. but their software isn't really set up to handle that much content. Is it just me or is that somewhat like biting the hand that feeds you? :p

    Anyway thanks for the input.

    you have also another option.. you could use Content Sets feature.. basically you need to install the stuff you really need/want into folder A (or folders, I don't know how yyou manage installation folders) and morphs and characters you use less or want to test to folder B.. then set up the first set from Content Manager and confirm by applying it.. Finally copy the main sets and add the folder B to the new set. Apply again to make daz saving it..

    from this moment you can switch between the two set whenever you want, without even closing daz studio..

  • TBorNotTBorNot Posts: 369

    Aha!  Started poking around.  It's not the database at all that is growing without bounds, it's the log file!  Yes, you have warnings, and that's fine.  Appending the warning to a massive log file takes time (shouldn't, but it does.)  I just moved the log file to a new name, much more perky for me.

  • jbowlerjbowler Posts: 779

    The latest 4.14 beta includes some timing messages.  The telling one is the timing of loading "Character Addons". the following is for inserting the Genesis 8 Basic Female into a complete empty scene in a freshly started instance of DAZStudio:

    2021-01-02 21:00:46.729 Finished Loading Character Addons
    2021-01-02 21:00:49.643 File loaded in 1 min 32.6 sec.

    That's pretty much all the load time.

     

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