If the texture is linked for all materials, only one image is loaded into memory per texture slot and saved as project getting saved. So there is no impact at all....
But, I just discovered another horrible bug with iClone, where un-linking and linking texture back converts JPEG images into PNG.
In my testing I had 1 JPEG image 3.3 Mb in size applied to the Base Color of the iClone Cube.
I did replicate the cube 10 times, attached 9 cubes to the 10th and saved the project. The saved project size was around 4 Mb.
Which is good! Meaning the Base Color texture is referenced only once for all 10 cubes.
Next, I unlinked all Base Color textures and saved the project again. Suppose I should have the project size around 40 Mb. Right?
Wrong! The project size was over 130 Mb! I opened one of the textures in Photoshop from iClone and looked at the cache file in temp folder.
The very same file was now in PNG format and the size of it was 13 Mb. What a hell for?
I linked all textures again and saved the project. The size of it is now 14 Mb (instead of being original 4 Mb).
Imagine if you work with heavy loaded project and the texture size is growing as you link and unlink it, taking up valuable VRAM and disk space.
I already had 3 tickets opened in FT for similar matter. But you can't win optimization battle
:blink:
Whoever is working on iClone 7.6 please make sure this bug is taken care. Thank you :)