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By TimothyMasters - 4 Years Ago
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Just as IC8 was released my life turned upside-down and is just now starting to stabilize, so I'm just now starting in with IC8, and I've already run into a crazy issue. I had been working on a project in IC7, a 43 second video whose iProject file is under 500 MB. I loaded it into IC8, made no changes at all, and saved it again, the exact same project now in IC8 format. This iProject file is over 5 GB! Why is the IC8 project file about 12 times larger than the same project in IC7? This will make backups a nightmare. Does this happen to everybody, or is it perhaps just something unusual about my project?
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By facr73 - 4 Years Ago
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That's one reason I'm still using IC7.
One of the other reasons is that a converted motion in CC4 is to big compared with 3DXchange. I got a 200 MB file for an exported motion that in 3DXchange is less than 20MB(!)
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By animagic - 4 Years Ago
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I'm also working with an older project and in my case the iClone 8 files are about 1.5 times those in iClone 7.
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By TimothyMasters - 4 Years Ago
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Well, it just got even more insane. I decided to try a different, slightly smaller project. Its IC7 iProject file is 400 MB. I loaded it into IC8, which took about ten minutes. BTW, scrubbing the timeline is perfectly smooth in IC7, and crazy jerky in IC8. I have a late-model i9 processor and RTX 3090, but IC8 brings it to its knees. Anyhow, I saved that project, unchanged. It took FIFTEEN MINUTES to save it, and the resulting iProject file is 33 GB! That does it. IC8 is simply unusable for me. Unless and until they make it faster and smaller, I'm back to IC7. I'm glad I saved it.
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By animagic - 4 Years Ago
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This doesn't sound like normal behavior.
Could you try loading one of the sample projects that comes with IC8 and save it as a custom project? The file sizes should be about the same. If they are not something is not right.
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By Data Juggler - 4 Years Ago
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I will take the contrarian side on this one. I bought a 4 gig external hard drive last year for $104, so if you don't have hard drive space, it's a good investment.
My poker room is 1.03 gig in IClone 8 with 7 tables and 6 characters. IClone 7 won't open with 5 tables and six players most of the time.
My biggest complaint though, is one of my projects had a long motion and IClone 8 tried to convert 13,000 motions and I had to kill the process with Task Manager or it would have taken hours.
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By animagic - 4 Years Ago
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The motion conversion is indeed something else...:unsure:
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By TimothyMasters - 4 Years Ago
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I just loaded the Volumetric Light project that came with IC8. Their iProject is about 18 MB. When I saved it, unchanged, the saved file was over 60 MB. I then exited IC8, restarted it, and loaded and then saved the file I had just saved. It was the same size (a little over 60 MB). So the blowup happens on the first save, apparently not on subsequent saves.
Using an external drive for backup is not an option at this scale. I save incremental versions of my project, so if I seriously mess up I can easily go back to an earlier version. Using 30-40 GB for each version, not to mention other projects I may be working on at the same time, would require an insane amount of storage space. Plus, I don't want to wait 15 minutes every time I save a file; I save often when I work.
Apparently there's something about these two projects of mine that lets them save efficiently in IC7 but require insane size in IC8. Maybe tech support will notice this thread. If not, I may file it with support. I can't see any logical reason that a project that produces a video well under one minute should require 33 GB of space for its iProject.
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By animagic - 4 Years Ago
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It would be a pity (and a waste of money) if you were not able to use iClone 8. Support seems to be your best bet at this point.
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By Kidder - 4 Years Ago
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I posted on this when IC8 was launched, here is the post and what I found out:
https://forum.reallusion.com/514808/IC8-Bloating-File-size-on-multi-character-projects
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By TimothyMasters - 4 Years Ago
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Thanks for that. I'm going to submit a tech support request. Honestly, I cannot use IC8 if its saved iProject files are 30-40 GB and take 15 minutes to save.
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By Kelleytoons - 4 Years Ago
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I'd be curious if you could try one thing (not that it's a suggested workflow, but to see if it would help with support): if you have characters with animation, could you save the tracks out (collect clip) then delete the animation from them and save the file. THEN load the file again and load those collected clips back to them and save again (obviously as different files).
I'd love to see what, if any, effect that had. Just from *some* information here it appears that the animation tracks might be the culprit. It would be great to isolate this and find out what's happening (I might try on my own as well - there is definitely something weird with loading old files and having the animation having to resort itself out - THAT alone shouldn't be happening).
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By Peter (RL) - 4 Years Ago
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Did you report this in the Feedback Tracker at the time? It is vital that issues be reported in the FT to get them investigated. It is fine to discuss the issues on the forum, but logging the issue in the FT is the best and quickest way to get issues resolved.
@TimothyMasters - please also remember to report any issues you find in the Feedback Tracker. Thanks.
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By TimothyMasters - 4 Years Ago
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Peter - Sorry, but I've never even used the Feedback Tracker... never really knew what it was for. So I opened a support ticket for this and supplied a link to a sample IC7 iProject file that is 400 MB but blows up to 34 GB, a factor of 84, in IC8.
This project has only two characters.
What is the difference between a support ticket and Feedback Tracker?
Tim
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By Data Juggler - 4 Years Ago
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A support ticket is customer service designed to make you feel better, and maybe answer the question if they know.
The feedback tracker is a site that none of us visit, so we do not see items to vote on. If the feed back tracker was integrated with this site so that people actually see the items it would be better for everyone.
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By 4u2ges - 4 Years Ago
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Data Juggler (6/29/2022)
A support ticket is customer service designed to make you feel better, and maybe answer the question if they know.
The feedback tracker is a site that none of us visit, so we do not see items to vote on. If the feed back tracker was integrated with this site so that people actually see the items it would be better for everyone.
Speak for yourself DJ! :D
I constantly visit FT (the link is right above in the menu) to keep track of the issues users are having and be aware of them in my personal workflows.
Not to mention that I have opened over 130 tickets in the course of 5 years since FT was introduced. :P
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By Data Juggler - 4 Years Ago
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I never noticed the Feedback Tracker link at the top..
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By Kidder - 4 Years Ago
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Peter: my original post was asking the question is this as per design or is it a bug, but I will list my new findings in FT.
Kellytoons: I will experiment with that more later and let you know, but I have found the collect clip is approx 10 times smaller in file size but characters have to be moved back to the correct postion manually, but will test further.
These are the results of my testing today using IC7 9.3 and IC8.1
I used the same file for both test to have an even comparison, it also included 9 FBX files from anima 4 for background characters, then removing animation slowly in groups to see the biggest difference.
Everytime I removed animation I saved the file so as to have a complete record and will screenshot it later and post.
IC7 results on left followed by IC8 results of file size, Hope this is fairly clear so far.....
IC7 V IC8 Results.
Base Test File has 19chars 8 x CC and 7x lowpoly G5 3 horses and (1 dead char with no anim)
109 props 2752 textures 2k or lower 449 materials. Only 1 viseme file andno expression animation. PC Spec used
CPU Ryzen 5950x GPU RTX 3090 24Gb 64 Gb ram Iclone 7 Iclone 8
Full file 1.92Gb 5.22Gb After removinganimation by groups
Anima 4 FBX exports 9 groups anim removed 1.79Gb 2.59Gb
Low poly Chars x7 animremoved. 1.77Gb 2.45Gb
3 horses anim removed 1.76Gb 2.38Gb
8 cc chars anim removed 1.70gb 2.13Gb
Camera and Light animremoved and made no change.
All remaining animationremoved using global remove anim 1.70Gb 2.13Gb No change
I then optimised thetextures in IC8
IC7 does not have this single click feature. IC8 1.56Gb ( pretty cool feature)
Opening colour swatchat full size IC7 3 secs IC8 31secs
An 88mb anima 4 Fbx file placed in an blank project IC7 = Project File size of 97Mb
Same file opened in blank project in IC8 = Project File size of 535Mb.
Is this IC8 being buggy or performing as designed with the new motion system?
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By Kelleytoons - 4 Years Ago
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Just based on your numbers it sure looks like at least one factor is the animation, and perhaps the way it's stored for avatars in 8.
I'm concerned you can't collect the clip and just reapply it without your characters moving - I've tested this briefly and had no issues (but it was for an entirely different problem). I wonder if part of this (this much larger file size) is due to Motion Director. That's the ONE new animation thingee that now exists in 8 for avatars (since removing animation from props and cameras didn't make any difference in your file sizes).
I'll try testing this myself and see what's there but my gut tells me this is just something we will have to live with (with great new features comes new responsibi... ahem, file sizes).
Oh - and it's weird your anima file makes it so much larger. That's really just a prop, albeit an animated one.
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By TimothyMasters - 4 Years Ago
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There must be something 'special' about my two projects that really blow up, because from the comments from others I see relatively minor blowups. One of my projects, with just two characters and only a few props, goes from 400 MB in IC7 to 34 GB in IC8, a factor of 84! That is a total deal killer for me. I keep multiple backups as I work so I can always go back one or rarely even two iterations if I discover an error or change my mind about something. And I like to work on several projects simultaneously often. So requiring 30-40 GB for each project file is a complete deal killer for me, not to mention that it can take 15 minutes just to do a Save Project!
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By Kidder - 4 Years Ago
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These are the results from earlier tests, the Anima FBX files where definately bloating the most, but with nearly 4Gb of animation alone it really is not usuable long term, I understood that the new motion director was a tool to create large crowd scenes with maybe lots of avatars and the new 20mb low poly avatars from actor core was suppose to streamline the workflow keeping file size down, if we add motion to all the assets using motion director it can add 200mb for a 90 sec Clip, to each character making it pretty pointless optimising everything else to improve performance.
It was always the texture size and polys and amount of props per project that you had to be careful with to keep lag time down, these things seem to have been sorted now to some degree, with the sharing of textures and high end GPU's and the isolate asset switch.
Kellytoons: I have played with the collect clip using a 6 mb 90 second motion from mocap online, with collect clip it went to 31Mb and save clip gave me 81mb file, there was a greater difference before the update, the collect clip seems to have gone up while the save clip has come down.
The collect clip does go to the correct position so its a workable solution but really time consuming, and the difference now makes it less worthwhile, but still an option.
I did a motion director walk for 60 secs and saved as both the sizes were 29mb and 43mb so it has improved a bit since the update as I was getting 192mb for a 2 minute wander around in MD.
The anima files do seem to bloat a lot and I have tried saving the motion seperately it was 21mb animation file in my folder 7 baked characters @1k IC7 it went to a size of104mb with the fbx, but in IC8 it was 526mb.
Can't figure out why, as you said it is just a prop with animation, reasonably complex animation but 5x file size is make Anima less usable.
File sizes from earlier tests.
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By Kidder - 4 Years Ago
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TimothyMasters (6/30/2022)
There must be something 'special' about my two projects that really blow up, because from the comments from others I see relatively minor blowups. One of my projects, with just two characters and only a few props, goes from 400 MB in IC7 to 34 GB in IC8, a factor of 84! That is a total deal killer for me. I keep multiple backups as I work so I can always go back one or rarely even two iterations if I discover an error or change my mind about something. And I like to work on several projects simultaneously often. So requiring 30-40 GB for each project file is a complete deal killer for me, not to mention that it can take 15 minutes just to do a Save Project!
Timothy: Try using the global delete all animation in the animation tab at the top, then "save as" the file under a different name, compare the file sizes like I did, to see if it is the animation causing the problem, if the file size does not come back to it original size use optimise textures in the modify menu and see if that makes a difference, it would be interesting to know the cause of you massive bloating,
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By TimothyMasters - 4 Years Ago
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Thanks for that advice, and the collect experiments suggested by Kellytoons. But before I do all that I want to see what tech support says. I may be overly anal about this, but I really think it's the responsibility of Reallusion to figure out why a short video with just two characters and a few props requires a 34 GB iProject file. At this point I have no need for IC8; I kept IC7 and it works great for what I'm doing now. Unless I get no help at all I'm going to wait for them to figure it out.
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By TimothyMasters - 4 Years Ago
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Because I did not know exactly what Feedback Tracker is (and still don't, really), I submitted this problem to support as a support ticket. Should I still report it in Feedback Tracker, or is that redundant?
Can someone tell me the difference between Feedback Tracker and tech support? How do I know which to use if I have a problem? Thanks!
Tim
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By Kelleytoons - 4 Years Ago
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FT is to report issues for the devs to fix in programs. As a VERY general rule it is hit or miss if they even look at it, let alone work on it or fix it. My experience has been that *perhaps* it will make it into the next version or maybe never. But it's worth doing.
A support ticket WILL get some response. It may or may not solve your problem, but at least they will work with you directly. You absolutely should file a support ticket for an issue you want resolved.
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By animagic - 4 Years Ago
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One advantage also of reporting to FT is that informs users who may have similar problems. Support ticket solutions are rarely reported back on in the general forum.
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By facr73 - 4 Years Ago
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The image bellow shows the size of 2 Projects in IC8. One with anims (4GB) and the other withot the anims (48MB)
Also the fbx used containing the anims and the motion extracted. And the motions with 46MB each in IClone 7 have 4-8 MB
Something is wrong with motion files that makes a huge file size.
facr
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By TimothyMasters - 4 Years Ago
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FWIW, Support just told me that they are able to reproduce my issue and agree that it's serious enough to pass on to their developer team. I'll keep you posted.
Tim
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By Kelleytoons - 4 Years Ago
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That's good news for all of us.
And, yes, clearly something changed with motion files that was not picked up in beta (my hunch is still Motion Director - it doesn't appear as if it were tested at all, or at least not enough).
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By facr73 - 4 Years Ago
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As I said preciously another problem with IC8/CC4 is the loading time of FBX files. And that makes it unusable to work with.
I have an FBX 54 MB with a motion in it and the times loading in both IC7, IC8/CC4 are:
IC7: 28s
IC8/CC4: 175s (2min 27s)
The FBX stripped of motions loads in both IC7 and IC8 in 2s
And converting the motion ro rlmotion makes a 500MB (CC4) file (60fps) -> Reconvert in IC8 (30fps) makes a 170 MB file.
The same motion in 3dxchange is less than 20MB
facr
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By animagic - 4 Years Ago
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Kelleytoons (7/1/2022)
That's good news for all of us.
And, yes, clearly something changed with motion files that was not picked up in beta (my hunch is still Motion Director - it doesn't appear as if it were tested at all, or at least not enough).
I hope they'll also look at the Anima animated prop files, which took a lot of RAM when loaded compared to iClone 7. This was reported during Beta, but I have no idea of the status.
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By genao87 - 4 Years Ago
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man I am having large files as well. seems like i have to wait until ICLONE 9 gets release for this to have a chance of being resolved.
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By TimothyMasters - 4 Years Ago
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As soon as I hear anything from tech support I'll post in this thread. Meanwhile I'm still using IC7. Having iProject files that are over 30 GB for a 40-second video is simply not viable.
Tim
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By TimothyMasters - 4 Years Ago
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Good news (sort of). I just got this from tech support:
After our team checking, it is a defect. But we will release iClone v8.02 tomorrow. This defect cannot be fixed in time.
But it will be solved in iClone v8.03.
Tim
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By wires - 4 Years Ago
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Thank you for the update Timothy, I suppose sort of good news is better than no news. :blink::ermm:
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By Kelleytoons - 4 Years Ago
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No, that's good news overall - it's too bad it isn't fixed in the newest update, but at least it's (promised) for the next one.
Thanks for raising this problem, Tim.
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By Peter (RL) - 4 Years Ago
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TimothyMasters (6/28/2022)
Just as IC8 was released my life turned upside-down and is just now starting to stabilize, so I'm just now starting in with IC8, and I've already run into a crazy issue. I had been working on a project in IC7, a 43 second video whose iProject file is under 500 MB. I loaded it into IC8, made no changes at all, and saved it again, the exact same project now in IC8 format. This iProject file is over 5 GB! Why is the IC8 project file about 12 times larger than the same project in IC7? This will make backups a nightmare. Does this happen to everybody, or is it perhaps just something unusual about my project?
UPDATE: The file size issue is being looked at and we will try to fix it by the next major update (8.1) or earlier if possible.
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By argus1000 - 4 Years Ago
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I just bought a 14 TB Western Digital Red plus 7200 rpm hard drive.
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