So you've seen the cube, eh? ;-)
I threw out all the furniture and there is still odd behavior. I'm going to throw the whole house out next. Corruption must be ruled out.
.....................................
EDIT
It looks like it was something in the house. I can tell because Aniblocks now work properly. This is good. Knock on wood.
I compared the file sizes. The project file size in DAZ was normal, but the iClone project file size was huge beyond belief. I should have looked at this at the first.
I'll import the house into iClone by itself, and compare file sizes before bringing any props in.
EDIT 2
It's right snappy now. The iClone file size is miniscule compared to the old file, and in fact is 1/3 what it is in DAZ. CPU usage is normal now.
Thank you, gentlemen. It always helps to hear other people's comments. Reminds me of the drafting room.


"Less clicks good, more clicks bad."

Mike probably knows better than I do, but in Daz, when I've had giant cubes replace items, it's because Daz can't locate the geometry or other mesh files (like it's been moved on the disk or something). Be careful messing with that issue in Daz, because when I've had it happen it corrupted the original scene file and I couldn't relink things. I had to start over...

Hoping it works for you...

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Life-long learner and having waaaay too much fun with iClone! Youtube Channel: 3DChick
Book Covers: www.significantcover.com Largely Unfinished Fiction: www.nemontgomery.com

I built this set up over a period of time in DAZ. It's based on one of the Modern Home models. Every nail in the floor is an object. I've added the furniture to it one item at a time from a number of vendors.
I brought it into iClone one item at a time as well, either as OBJ or as FBX. I used it as a learning experience. I had no problems with that. This is what I call my "set."
Now, at long last, I've decided to animate some characters. This is when I began to notice wonky behavior. Some of it is just me learning new things. Some of it is not. Undesirable behavior in both programs, with the same objects, but of a slightly different nature in each program. I've noticed the iClone VRAM display going all over the place. In the past I've only seen it stable. Am I learning something new?

I'm using a lot of old props, some maybe 15 years old, just because I like their looks. I've learned though that not all of the older props behave well under all circumstances. For that matter, some of the new props are less than perfect, as you know. Did the giant cube replace the Comfy Chair in DAZ because the prop was NG (I say that because the cube was located and rotated just as the chair was)? and just happened to take the rug with it?

Animation is a time-consuming and fiddly thing, and I've already lost a couple of days of it. I hope to get to the bottom of this before I waste more time. I've deleted the rug and chairs from the iClone set and there is no change in the CPU usage. I am open to the possibility that the same objects and numbers of objects may be causing different issues in each program. The common thread is uncharacteristicly lethargic behavior. I've had iClone lock up on me more than once, and I've had DAZ crash more than once, both while using this same set. I'm not sure what I'll try next, but I will resolve this shortly.




"Less clicks good, more clicks bad."

Mike--thank you! I don't have Blender installed yet on the new 'puter. I have used it to decimate giant sets that wouldn't import into iClone but haven't tried this merge thing. When I get it installed, I'll have to try it. 

Thank you for all this info--this is why I love this community. 

____________________________________________
Life-long learner and having waaaay too much fun with iClone! Youtube Channel: 3DChick
Book Covers: www.significantcover.com Largely Unfinished Fiction: www.nemontgomery.com

I've done it that way as well but merging from Blender is actually easier/better since you can control Materials better (and get rid of ones no longer used).  But you are right, this is actually the way I was going to recommend instead of CC3 (for some reason I had this back asswards - I did it three different ways and this one was the easiest.  Blender merge is the best.  Sometimes the easiest is better than the best :>).

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Alienware Aurora R16, Win 11, i9-149000KF, 3.20GHz CPU, 64GB RAM, RTX 4090 (24GB), Samsung 870 Pro 8TB, Gen3 MVNe M-2 SSD, 4TBx2, 39" Alienware Widescreen Monitor
Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

Mike,
You're exporting the many-object sets into CC3 or Blender to combine into one. Is there a reason not just to use "merge subprop" in iClone? Does that not work for this? (Because yes, I've had this issue and not even known what the problem was...)

Thanks!

____________________________________________
Life-long learner and having waaaay too much fun with iClone! Youtube Channel: 3DChick
Book Covers: www.significantcover.com Largely Unfinished Fiction: www.nemontgomery.com

If you tell me what Daz set it is I can check it out myself.  (You don't have to and I won't check it if you don't want me to, but sometimes I can see things others can't).

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Alienware Aurora R16, Win 11, i9-149000KF, 3.20GHz CPU, 64GB RAM, RTX 4090 (24GB), Samsung 870 Pro 8TB, Gen3 MVNe M-2 SSD, 4TBx2, 39" Alienware Widescreen Monitor
Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

At the moment I suspect it may be one particular wayward prop.

I've got the same set loaded in iClone and DAZ at the same time. Same house, props, characters. I'm doing lighting comparisons.
I closed DAZ with the scene open so I could go back to a previous version. When I reopened it a giant cube was in the middle of my living room, and my rug was gone. The cube could not be selected, and I had to go back to an earlier file.

Now I'm going to go back to iClone, delete that rug, and see if it settles things down. It's a guessing game now. I don't want to recreate the whole set, but I will if I have to.


"Less clicks good, more clicks bad."

It was a very odd thing, but apparently this has been around a LONG time (at least three or four years).  I had one file with one prop in it that whenever I used it would bring my machine to a crawl.  Dennis and I thought it had something to do with transparency (still an issue at times) but couldn't pin it down.  So then I got my new machine, this supposedly "wonder" (fastest CPU and GPU available currently) and it didn't help with this at all.  Not even slightest.

So then I'm working on ANOTHER scene and I took a basic set I had that worked just fine but was a single object and I broke it down (using Blender) into a hundred or so because I wanted to manipulate them separately.  Lo and behold my wonder machine wouldn't handle it.  Same polys, same maps, but now a hundred or more objects compared to one and I could hardly move around.

Which led me to investigate my older prop.  Once I combined all the hundreds of sub-objects (using Blender) into a dozen or so suddenly the prop worked wonderfully, even though it looked exactly the same (it WAS the same - same polys, same maps, just a dozen objects compared to hundreds).  So the veil has lifted from my eyes.

This is VERY different from any other 3D software I've ever used.  In any of those (Max, say) you can have hundreds of objects with no slow-down whatsoever.  But iClone doesn't work that way and I think it's a bug (or at least badly written code).  And it explains SO much to me now, so many times I could not for the life of me figure out why a set that only took up 1-2GB of GPU RAM would just not work properly, when I had other projects that were 9-11GB that worked fine.

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Alienware Aurora R16, Win 11, i9-149000KF, 3.20GHz CPU, 64GB RAM, RTX 4090 (24GB), Samsung 870 Pro 8TB, Gen3 MVNe M-2 SSD, 4TBx2, 39" Alienware Widescreen Monitor
Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

Hey - Mike! - This is a great tip! Thank you! - You may well have saved my sanity!

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Please be patient with me ..... I don't always 'get it' the first time 'round - not even the 2nd time! :(  - yikes! ... 

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