Making SU files smaller

[ashscott]

What are people's suggestions for minimizing the data size of a SketchUp file but still maintaining its visible integrity for rendering, It seems that rendering crashes with too large a file, probably due to memory constraints on my computer.

Any suggestions appreciated

[Rich O Brien]

Hi,

Have you purged the model for unused materials? And did you make components and groups? That's where I find the biggest size reduction lies but if the textures you used are high res you might find that they might need some altering on Gimp or Photoshop

why don't you upload the model and members can look to see the problem?

[Aerilius]

Maybe the file could be too large for this...
For minimising filesize, make components, components, components (if the exporter to the renderer supports components). But this won't reduce the geometry that has to be displayed or rendered.

You can do much with the level of detail. Small objects do not always need to be to detailed, the same goes for far-off things. So for example for Google Earth, a dome made from a circle with 24 or 48 edges is ok, but for a small column or smaller things, I use only 6 or 5 edges. Often this would need some remodeling and is too much time-consuming. For faster results, you can try the polygon reducer plugin in the plugin section of this forum.

If nothing can be done anymore, the last step I do is deleting everything that will not be rendered (so keep only the frontsides of a building, this way, I only had to render 20000 roof tiles instead of 40000).

[Alan Fraser]

Also, don't try rendering to any high resolution with Anti-aliasing still checked. It's far quicker and better quality if you render twice the size you need then scale down in an image editor.

[thomthom]

@alan fraser said:

Also, don't try rendering to any high resolution with Anti-aliasing still checked. It's far quicker and better quality if you render twice the size you need then scale down in an image editor.

I think when he says "render" he means a third party application like V-Ray or similar that render the scene - not exporting 2D image.

[ashscott]

Sorry - by render I did mean ray-tracing, does this mean I should leave anti-aliasing on??

Thanks to everyone for the replies

[Gaieus]

Still it's not the same which render engine you are using for ray tracing. It all depends on that engine as it may or may not support high poly count, SU components and such so your "strategy" should be up to that renderer. Anyway, if you use any external renderers, AA should be set there (if needed).