I'm finally working on a project again. An issue I'm running into is that the props I've made with substances are slow to respond in iClone.  However, if I load them into CC3 and then export them, they look the same but behave much better in iClone.

The difference is 13MB in size when iClone saves it, but 1.5MB in size when CC3 exports it.
The other difference is that the 13MB file has the entire "Substance" section available under the material section in iClone.  The 1.6MB file does not.  I believe CC3 strips some substance characteristics, but they both look equally good for my project.

I start with substance materials because I use the "PBR Mixer 3" substance tool to create the prop initially.

Is there some way to save the prop from iclone as the stripped-down 1.6MB version?  I've tried baking textures and a few other random things, but no success. It would be much faster to save it that way in iclone rather than loading each one into CC3 for exporting.

Thanks!


- Keith

"Baking" the texture(s) in iClone should do the job.

Be sure you do it for all the textures.
Also be mindful of what resolution you bake them at.

ADDED...

And also be sure to DELETE THE SUBSTANCE from the prop.  Baking does not actually delete the Substance like you might assume.

I did a test using the "horse head chess pieces" in the Substance sample project.
a) Saved the prop as-is...  7.7MB
b) Baked textures at 256x256...  7.2MB
c) Baked textures at 2048x2048...8.9MB
d) Baked textures at 1024x1024... and deleted the substance...  1.2MB

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iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
Desktop (homebuilt) - Windows 10, Ryzen 9 3900x CPU, GTX 1080 GPU (8GB), 32GB RAM, Asus X570 Pro motherboard, 2TB SSD, terabytes of disk space, dual  monitors.
Laptop - Windows 10, MSI GS63VR STEALTH-252, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 (6GB), 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD

Thanks SO much, Viking.  Deleting the substance from the prop was the step I was missing.  Thanks again!

- Keith

You're very welcome.


Speech time...


I remain unconvinced that baking the textures makes any noticeable difference on your graphics card.

I base this on tests I did a long, long time ago, and nobody and really ever proven me wrong on that.  So there is a lot of belief that you benefit from baking your substances, but unless it is a huge substance material, and you delete it, I see little to no benefit in baking the textures.  Okay, I believe one possible benefit of baking substance textures is you might have a slightly faster project load time since you don't need to "regenerate" the textures every time you load the project.

Clearly the net load on your system memory will be lower, as demonstrated in my test a few minutes ago, but that's usually not the problem for most people.  Usually people run out of graphics memory (VRAM) long before they run out of system memory (RAM).

Either way, whether you baked the textures or used the raw substance, the same textures get loaded onto your graphics card, and that is where you are likely to be limited by memory.  So the texture SIZE will be important, but the "substance" aspect of it really shouldn't affect your ability to hold the project on your graphics card.

Lastly, remember that once you delete your substance, you lose the ability to easily modify it.  So that's a potential "cost" to deleting the substance.

Anyway, I'm glad I was able to help
Good luck, and have fun.

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iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
Desktop (homebuilt) - Windows 10, Ryzen 9 3900x CPU, GTX 1080 GPU (8GB), 32GB RAM, Asus X570 Pro motherboard, 2TB SSD, terabytes of disk space, dual  monitors.
Laptop - Windows 10, MSI GS63VR STEALTH-252, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 (6GB), 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD

Thanks. I understand about losing the ability to change the substance. I'm not overwriting the originals.

As far as system performance after baking (and removing substance), I can tell you that:
Loading prop:
Baked: ~1sec
Unbaked: ~4sec

Selecting prop in the viewer:
Baked: instant
Unbaked: about 1 second of "busy cursor" before I can interact with the prop.

Moving prop:
Baked: instant
Unbaked: lags about 200ms behind.

All of this is with no strain of resources on CPU, Memory, Disk or GPU. They're all hovering at normal levels.  And the props behave this way even if they're the only prop in the project.
So, for me, this is very helpful.  Perhaps the PBR_Mixer tool is the part that is making it so laggy.

- Keith

Thanks for the great data.
Much appreciated.

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iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
Desktop (homebuilt) - Windows 10, Ryzen 9 3900x CPU, GTX 1080 GPU (8GB), 32GB RAM, Asus X570 Pro motherboard, 2TB SSD, terabytes of disk space, dual  monitors.
Laptop - Windows 10, MSI GS63VR STEALTH-252, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 (6GB), 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD