Can't Carrara 8.5 Pro no longer handle large scenes?
Rhian-Skyblade
Posts: 223
I filed this to Tech Support, but would love to know also - Has anyone else of you the same problem that Carrara 8.5 can't reload larger complex scenes?
I created a couple of scenes in Carrara 8.5.1 Pro recently, and it appears that everything larger than 3,5 GB cannot be loaded anymore. (See screenshot)
While I work in the scene, I can render it and save it - all is well. As soon as I close it and want to re-open it - it no longer works :-( many hours of work went down the drain.
Is there a fix, how I still maybe access my car files. They are not compressed. I dunno why they break. I even tried saving a scene in two different folders (hard drive) - same error *sigh*
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haven't reached 3gb file size yet.
do you save everyting internal?
i been using use local, but no idea what it means.
save external creates .tif files,
Local: Content texture files remain in their original location, just like with DAZ Studio and Poser and most other apps.
Internal: Embeds the textures into the file so that the original files are no longer needed.
Yeah, big difference when it comes to file size. Fenric says that Carrara can have difficulties with compression too, so he urges us to not use compression in the Save As dialog. I've used compression faithfully over the years - but have just recently decided to switch. But all of my older compressed (Large) scenes are opening without troubles.
I always save everything internal. Used to do it the very day I came to use Carrara. Saves me a lot of "re-applying" textures after a system overhaul.
As I wrote, before Carrara 8.5 it worked just fine. My scenes even could have like 5 - 6 GB in size. It just took extremely long to load - but it worked. I also can still load older Pre-8.5 scenes without that error.
It only happens when I create now new scenes in Carrara 8.5 - either it doesn't save everything or it doesn't like its own files :-(
what else has changed?
like mixing duf characters into the mix?
using duf files seems to be unpredictable, some times works without issues, sometimes is weird.
That would drive me nuts.
So you must be using compression, then? There's a whole thread on this somewhere. Something about using WinRAR or other decompressor/compressor to decompress the file outside of Carrara first, then try opening it again. P3dO can also change the compression status of a .car file if you have the pro version.
I am not using compression. That's why my files tend to be so large. I followed here Fenric's hint a long time ago. So no chance with that good old zip/rar trick.
Alone a normal posed, morphed and geared up Gen 2 character needs about 3 GB of uncompressed file size... (I use the Pro Version)
But yeah, I am using in my scenes normal Poser Props and Figures, Carrara Native props/objects and also Daz Studio Duf Stuff...(Gen 2 Character and Clothes). And here I thought Carrara 8.5 was supposed to work fine with Daz Content O_O
This is really getting frustrating.
woes. i haz plans to use g2m, too. replacing all my leading m4 men.
g2 women, gn creatures.
forget which thread it was, the advice was to gear up G2 in DS first and save as subset.
going one step further and changing his ds shaders to a plain gray.
Yeah, it seems that a lot of "Cannot load File" issues seem to revolve around Genesis 2. I've had that at least once too. I don't think it has to do with scene size, unless it has to do with scene size + Genesis 2. I've actually stopped saving Genesis 2 figures into scenes. After not being able to express my main Rosie character as well(or easily) as I could with her V4 counterpart, I've actually put Genesis 2 on hold and just went back to using V4 and M4 again. I really like those models. Then I use Genesis 1 to make all sorts of other people which I cannot get out of my Predatron's LoRez collection. So I'm sorry that I don't know of any clues as to working with Genesis 2, which came out just after the 8.5 upgrade.
What makes me wonder is - when working on my Genesis 2 male character - I gear him up in Carrara. I heavily modify clothes (playing Frankenstein here).
So I use Duf Files (Gen 2, Clothes, Morphs), I use Poser Props, I use native Carrara content (objects and other things) - I save this file and all is well. I can reload them anytime without issues.Textures & Shaders are planted manually - since I made the texture myself.
I create a scene - importing my character into it when I am done - making everything render-ready - saving it - rendering it - when done, I close it - one day later I re-open the file - BAM Error hits.
I guess it is a size problem. That at some point he cannot save more than maybe 3,5 GB in a complex scene...
Just for kicks, try setting up a similar scene, doing the same thing dropping in your character(s), but changing to "Local" instead of internal during the save.
I know this isn't what you want to do, but if it works....
Saving locally, without compression, this .car file is only 256MB
and this one is 521MB
Neither use any kind of background imagery - all being 3D assets. That second one actually has an entire city chunk all detailed out with extra cyberpunk-style elements. The first one is all geometry, but the figures are all LoRez figures, but there are nine of them.
This whole render-file is about 4,1 GB in size (all internally + 2 Gen 2 characters)
A complete mix of Poser, Daz Studio and Carrara content. It's actually larger than you can see in my final image (see link). I had intended to re-use the scene one more time from a different angle. *sigh* and silly me saved it with the characters in it all over the original landscape file. Something I never do again.
http://rhian-skyblade.deviantart.com/art/Fallout-4-At-the-Edge-of-the-Glowing-Sea-580356809
I am currently working on another scene and will try your local option :) maybe that works better.
This one has a few LoRez figures, guys, girls, and kids, replicated all over this geometry and comes in at a whopping 96MB
Oh... and again, no background imagery. Uses realistic sky, volumetric clouds and Carrara terrain items. It's Woodlands tweaked out with this St. Peter's Basilica model by Yofiel
Hmm. I honestly do not know what's bloating my scene so. Probably the Daz Studio Content. My Poser (M4 & V4) Characters never created such large files. There it was more or less only my whole scene that went up to 5 - 6 Gigs... and there I used far more stuff than I did in my recent results.
It's saving Genesis 2 internally, I'd bet. You see, Genesis 1 and beyond use a different means for handling morphs. Generation 4, if you recall, would need to have their addon morphs INJected onto them, so we could pick and choose. Genesis, we simply install morph packs and they're accessible on any copy of the figure. It's set up to NOT add to the figure's weight (memory/storage-wise) until/unless its dial is used. I have a feeling that, by choosing Internal rather than Local, all of the available morphs are being saved internally instead of just leaving them in their default folder where they belong.
Currently working on a scene that involves this landscape. It's not fine-tuned yet. But I am getting there.
I still need to add my two Gen2 chars... Hopefully it won't botch it or I cry a huge river.
Are you using texture spooling in the preferences and the 64 bit version of Carrara? If so, try turning it off to see what happens.
Definitely keep saves of your scenes that contain no figures - just to be safe!
That's a great scene! That would work well as a backdrop or even rendered out as a spherical background! Then you're rendering your characters without the scene's geometry.
I had another thought, since it is an unexpected end of file error.
Save the scene before you choose the quit command when exiting Carrara. If you go to quit Carrara and Carrara asks if you want to save first, cancel out of the operation and use the normal save command. Fenric has said in the past that sometimes Carrara quits before all the scene's data is written, which can lead to this error. I would think that you would be particularly at risk due to saving large scenes internally instead of locally.
Speaking of which, Carrara will behave much more efficiently if you save locally. I know you don't want to, due to moving stuff around, thereby breaking the file references, but it seems kind of excessive to move stuff around so much it would create problems.
Texture Spooling? Where can I check if it is turned on?
Btw. I always save the scene before closing Carrara. I also usually make two different saves, just to be sure. (Lesson's learned from the past)
Thankee :) Trying that.
Will keep you updated.
@Dartanbeck. Thanks :)
I think I will make a spherical map from it. Using it as backdrop also crossed my mind, but somehow I do not get the results from it I wish :D
I'm with you. Backgound maps are so much more useful. Right now, I needed some added effects in my animation that would be really easy to make using Carrara. So I've set up my scene with all of the effects and the character, set everything in motion, including the cameras, etc.,
Then I saved it and deleted the effects and hid the character and rendered just the scenery with animated lights and cameras. Now I hit undo a few times to get the effects back into the scene, and then hid both the character and deleted the scenery, and rendered again with the earlier render in the backdrop as an animation, to render the effects onto the backdrop avi.
I ended up doing that again with the effects changed a bit to add more to the backdrop, simply by loading the new result in the backdrop. Turned out really nice. So now I brought the character back in, got rid of the effects (for now), and am rendering just the character over the earlier results. This was my project for the day. It's just about done, and then I'll see if I want to bring the effects back and render them in some subdued way over the character, or not.
In Howler, I can manipulate any of these resulting animations and mix them in various ways with the final result - even if all I need is a selection mask of the character or something else. We'll see how it all works out. I still have another character to render in front of everything else. It works really well and takes a LOT LESS TIME than if I were to try and render everything in one take. Plus each 'layer' of animation can be tweaked before and/or after the next one progresses, making it a really versatile workflow.
I agree that saving internally is NOT a good way to work
(Unless you need to manually transfer that scene to another computer which doesn't have any content or access to download that content)
Saving internally, forces carrara to convert every single texture map into it's own High quality format,. (this can produce a file that's 3 times larger than the original image)
And that's just the images,.. when it comes to 3D assets (including all morphs) then the file size can begin to get ridiculous.
Saving internally also forces carrara to save the Models as vertex bjects, and all the morph shapes for that model, that also includes Figures / Hair / Clothing.
So, it's not a good practice to save "internally" if you don't need to,.
With the advent of DIM and the ability to download assets, the need to save internally (to transfer to another system) seems more archaic
If you'r not "Transferring" these files,. then there's no need or benefit to saving anything internally, and several good reasons to avoind doing so.
Also make sure you remove any unused Objects / shaders etc. Before you save any scene file,
Think about saving "Complete dressed chatacters" in your browser / My objects / and save them there individually
3.5 GB makes it sound like a 32 vs 64 bit issue. I'm not really a Windows user, but I'm sure I read somewhere that 32 bit apps had a 3.5GB memory limit. May be significant, may be blowing smoke, but I thought I'd throw it out there.
I am running a computer which I call Render-Monster ;-) Makes no sense for me running a 32 Bit System.
I experimented a bit yesterday, after I got my finalized Render done.
The scene itself, without any Gen 2 Chars got around 3,2 Gigs - despite being saved locally O_O
I was using some Greebles City Blocks, Elements from "After the War" and City Ruins stuff, some dead trees from Lisa's Botanical / Flink and RD, landmass from Dartanbeck's Badlands (love that one! Still have a Lava Scene in the making). So the only smart content (DazStuio wise) that I added was "After the War". The rest came all from my Poser Runtime.
Ahh well... I probably clutter my scenes too much.
One thing I noticed now for certain - using "Remove Unused Objects" randomly turns Objects into cubes after a scene reload.
Hiya!
Reading the info on the first pic you did... you mention that you used ZBrush for "fine tuning"? I'm thinking that's where you are getting such gargantuane file sizes. If you take a 10k poly object into ZBrush, subdivide it a few times to get some good deformation detail, then try and export that back out (using GoZ or just .obj Export...doesn't matter), your object will now be exported with, literally, millions of polygons. That single object you took into ZBrush could be hundreds upon hundreds of MB in size all by itself. Multiply that by two characters and you hve GB's. Try doing the same 'scene', but don't take anything into ZBrush...see what that changes.
Next, Photoshop. In particular, your texture file workflow and choices. I'm guessing you probably have a lot of textures that are much to high-rez than they need to be. If you have a bracelet with a 1k texture, normal map, bump map and spec map, you now have a bracelet with about 16MB worth of texures that are likely to not matter at all (unless the bracelet is the focus of the scene). Multiply that by a hundred various items in the scene and you're over 1GB again.
Last, all the "set dressing" items...how many polygons do they have? If you have a simple 'box' that has more than 12 triangles, then it has too many. If you have three of these boxes off to the side, half in shadow, with no real focus on the scene other than to introduce chaos and evoke a feeling...it's overkill. You can get the detailed effect you are looking for with well-made bump, spec and normal maps, rather than tring to model in all that detail (like cracks, nails, and screws).
Anyway, maybe look into that stuff and see if it matters.
EDIT: I just looked closer at your last image...all those buildings in the background? Maybe render them without any of the other scene elements (figures, trees, ground, etc). Then delete all of them from your scene. Apply your rendered background buildings onto a flat plane (or planes, to help with some distance illusion, if needed). Rendering should be a LOT faster now, and your file size will be reduced as well.
^_^
Paul L. Ming
Awesome advice, Paul. I often forget to mention stuff like that when I'm going on about optimizing scenes and saving them to the browser. That kind of thing is exactly one of the most important parts about optimizing. I even scale down my main Character's skin maps... a lot.
Hi. I have a similar error when trying to open saved scenes over 2gb on a iMac 2014 i7 16gb. Although Carrara saves the files ok, when i come to open again I get a 'Not my file type error''.
I lost a whole days work thinking that all my incremental saves would work. I wondered if it was a iMac memory issue so have ordered another 16gb to bump me up to 32gb.
In the meantime,I have been saving each component of my scene to the object browser so i can rebuild it if the error continues.
I'm using 1 Genesis Male and 1 Genesis 2 female character with the Dream home set from DAZ.
Any advice appreciated :-)
To keep Carrara running nicely, if it is 64 bit, turn off Texture Spooling in the Preference. I think it's under Image and Scratch Disk.
To help minimize scene bloat, save the scene locally so that image maps, movie files, etc. are referenced instead of saved internally. Frequently use the Remove Unused Masters options under the Edit Menu.
For performance rather than scene bloat, I have read in the past that some people had good luck lowering the default number of Undos in the preferences.