File size very huge

[zza]

Hi,
some of my maya files are getting rather a lot of crap hidden inside them which takes up HUGE amounts of space... sometimes really bogging down the system.
I find that exporting selected usually fixes the mess, but it soon creeps back again...
I usually import other meshes into my scenes to check weights of cv's and stuff... Im finding that this is increasing the size of my files drastically...
I tried a test of saving the file as ASCI and reading the contents... basically maya tends to save enormous amounts of 'STROKE' data and paint weights info that is ages old... is there a way of cleaning this crap out without having to keep exporting selected each damn time...
(typical file is 18megs.. when i export selected it reduces to around 1meg )

[heydiddlediddle]

one solution, the simplest one i've found (with the advice of Dirk Bialluch), is to use the copy paste script in the mel section. select everything you want to stay, copy; file new; paste.
It's a common problem that optimize won't get rid of since it's empt nodes that rely on another empty node, or other nodes like that are somehow connected to another node, so it tricks maya into thinking it needs the nodes. worst we had was an 80 meg scene that went down to about 6 megs.

-Don

[nieder3d]

-copy paste or export selected works well fine ...
-but it is good habit to keep your scene clean as you work, after you do some work for the dat you should at least go through your Hypergraph and clean it up deleting any empty nodes... (so you don't run into the Bog monster..)

-just a suggestion

sid
sid69graphic@yahoo.com
"-if it wasn't for 'Y' we wouldn't be?"

[heydiddlediddle]

Not all the problems are visible in the hypergraph. Maybe you haven't run into this problem, but it's a common known issue with Maya that was discussed on the listserve with others at studios (non-students), and I've heard the same things from animators I know working on films and series in Japan.

-Don

[nieder3d]

-Yes, I've been there- typically with file sizes upwards of 150MB and more -not18MB, and you'll find alot of those empty groups and nodes have connections to those weight strokes if you select all the empty nodes and show up and down stream, you can catch nost of everything ahead of time before it gets barried - just made the suggestion as a workflow, process- keep it clean as you go!
-I understand your suggestion works great as well, but as they say- just a suggestion!..

sid
sid69graphic@yahoo.com
"-if it wasn't for 'Y' we wouldn't be?"

[tbriggs01]

The situation comes from repeated importing of files into a scene. The garbage nodes accumulate and each time you import they are doubled. In the outliner uncheck 'dag objects only' and you will probably see hundreds of junk nodes you can delete. Clean out the files by exporting all rather than just saving.

/*In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice they are very different*/

[zza]

thanks for the suggestion of unchecking the dag objects...
I've always been cleaning my files as i go by exporting selection. It mainly builds up because I use a lot of motioncapture and i can often have a scene with a dozen 18 meg files of mocap imported into one background scene for a cutscene.. (which ends up around 200 megs in total)
I was just curious to see if there was any other method of clearing out the mess rather that exporting selected.
(maybe there is a way using mel to select the dag objects and delete the unused stuff)
thanks guys,
zza

[gasman00]

I don't beleive you haven't heard this suggestion:
Optimize File. It does delete emptry nodes. If they are empty and connected to another empty node, they will still go - as long as they aren't used. It delete's all the useless set nodes, empty and null nodes, unused texture nodes, etc.
Another big helper is Deleting History on everything you can afford to. Especially tweaked surfaces, extrusions, filettes etc.

Peace

eJekted VFX

[morrisolmsted]

Another solution that has helped us here in our production is to select only what you want to keep in your scene through the Hypergraph or Outliner and export that as a Maya ASCII formatt, make sure you check everything eccept for the constraints option box. This tends to totally drop file size and clean up some other Maya UV and polygon problems. Usually before exporting I use the scene cleanup and delete unused shaders. I have seen a file that took up to 30 minutes to open drop to 5 minutes and run much smoother.

Definately worth the time it takes to do. One word of advise though, save a backup file to revert to if this somehow causes some problems.

Hope this helps,

Morris Olmsted
3D Designer @ Idol Minds LLC
molmsted@idolminds.com

[zza]

thanks for all the advice,
-ejekt, yes.. file>optimize was the first thing i tried..
(I should have mentioned that in my first post)
Optimize unfortunately doesn't clean out everything. It helps a little, but it doesn't clean out the mess you get from importing a dozen files into one scene...
Also im very good at deleting history as I work and cleaning up messy hypergraph nodes... it was purely a case of things in the scene like 'Stroke' data and the fact that maya hides the paint weights information somewhere...etc
Like I mentioned before... I already export the selected objects and that works fine for me, but i was curious as to any other techniques used to decrease file sizes..
thanks everyone..