Saving Files -> Takes Very Long!

[peterparker242]

Hi,

i have a big scene at about 150MB, a lots of Polys (singleObjects), some Nurbs and about 30 Shaders. When i save this scene it takes about 5 Minutes to save??? When i look it up in the Windows-Explorer it goes something like 20mb - 35mb - 50mb and so on and takes about 5 Minutes to save. I tried it on local IDE-Drive, Network-Device and USB2-Drive. Everywhere the same. CPU usage while saving is always 100%. I tried optimize Scene-Size, but after half an hour (while looking for duplicated Shaders) i canceld.
I use winnXP, p4 2.5, 1.5 Gig RAM, maya7. Ram is on the edge while scene is loaded in maya.

Is that the normal behavior, or is anything wrong with my hardware. Does someone have the same problem?
Thanks for Your help, Peter.

[knowyouremeny]

Sometimes, things aren't stored in memory in a way that is very friendly with being able to save to a file.

I've never had a problem with long saves (over 30 seconds), but I have had 10 minute load times as maya was converting the file to something it can use inside the program itself.

Perhaps those with more experience than me have had a problem with saving as well, but I've only had loading problems.

[user_deleted]

you've probably tried this but have you tried saving as a maya binary instead of maya ascii? or vice versa. Also, you might want to check if your drives are fragmented and the old fascist, antivirus software, which can slow things down.

[peterparker242]

As knowyouremeny posted it seems like that Maya is processing something while saving. The funny thing is that maya says "100% saving done" but is still pushing data to disk and CPU usage is a 100%?! No Virus-Software active. Tried on diffrent drives. Tried with .ma as well, same thing. Loading and saving takes extremly long.

[user_deleted]

I tried optimize Scene-Size, but after half an hour (while looking for duplicated Shaders) i canceld.

You definitly have a problem there, as optimizing usually take few seconds.
What about "Hypershade/ delete unused nodes" ? Does it also takes ages ?

Try to select only the objects you need and "export selection" as .ma or .mb file to see if you have "dirty" nodes hidden somewhere.

Guyb.

[joojaa]

This sounds possibly like lightlinker gone mad thing, which absolutely positively wiill blow your savetimes.

Quation is have you done mutiple importting and or some complex lightlinking? If so consider deleting the entire lightlinker once you get it saved out as ma file. And then REDOING the lightlinking. By using sets instead of individual links for everything (a advice for further maya use allways try to do this), in complex scenes this saves ALOT of time and space.

[peterparker242]

Hi, thanks for your suggestions.
I tried everything i could think of and what you suggested. Nothing helps.
There is no light link in this scene (means, not manually setup any light links). No bad shader as i can see. The only problem i can see and wich may cause the heavy save/load times is the way the objects/polys are textured.
Its like 6000 objects, each has about 9 faces and uses two shaders. Shaders are assigned to faces not to global object. Shader 1 is only black lambert, shader 2 is noise for bump and 4ramp for color phong.
Can this cause the problem?

Peter.

[joojaa]

You dont actualy need to do lightlinking inorder for the lightlinker to go crazy (it just increases the chance)! All you nee dto to is exclusiveli import export stuff around. That is if you tend to use ctrl-c ctrl-v for copying stuff instead of ctrl-d theers ahuge chance you have actualy polluted yous scene witha lightlinker.

The only way to know this is to use a text editor and read the ASCII filiformat.

Anywwya do you use instances? But yeah i can see how a hierarchy of 6000 cubes could be a problem, bpersonaly id never do it thatway.

[peterparker242]

Hmmm, that sounds like it could be the problem. Thx, Joojaa. I

[peterparker242]

Could you please tell me how i identify a bad light linker in ASCCI, thx.

[joojaa]

If there are more then one shard containing teh name lightLinker andor many lightlinkler nodes or if the lightlinker istelf contains alot of data after its created.

[user_deleted]

QUOTE(peterparker242 @ 06/07/06, 02:11 PM) [snapback]239301[/snapback]
Its like 6000 objects, each has about 9 faces and uses two shaders. Shaders are assigned to faces not to global object. Shader 1 is only black lambert, shader 2 is noise for bump and 4ramp for color phong.
Can this cause the problem?

Peter.

Hi,
sorry to come back late in the discussion, I was trying to answer few hours ago but my internet broke on me ....

Having shader applied by face creates indeed thousands (in your case maybe tens of thousands?) connections which can result in huge files ... I had this problem in the past .
As a test try to apply the same lambert material to all your objects, delete the history, delete unused shaders and save (as a different name of course ...) to see if the problem persist.
If the file is okay, you'll have to reconsider your shading policy and find an other way to apply your textures (difficult to say more without knowing why you have shaders per face)

Hope it helps,
Guyb.