Modelling effiency, reducing file size
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I really need some help and advice on how to model more efficiently, and thus reduce my file sizes. I know that a lot of my file size is due to the number of textures I use, but I also know that a more experienced modeller could produce the same model much more efficiently, with a much lower poly count. I'm using every trick that I know of, but I'm really struggling to keep my models under the warehouse size limit, and it gets very frustrating at times. If possible, could someone take a look at my '56 Ford model in the warehouse http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=af13c8c266cbb1d1c5ac8ef48cf8e67d&prevstart=0, and maybe offer some advice? Because of it's size I can't upload it here, and don't know how to make it available other than the warehouse. Thanks in advance.
(there will be a check for a million dollars in the mail to anyone taking the time and trouble to help me out. just don't cash it till after payday)
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Just thinking aloud before even looking... have you used cleanup tools? what about the photo textures? they probably weigh a lot.
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@solo said:
Just thinking aloud before even looking... have you used cleanup tools? what about the photo textures? they probably weigh a lot.
Which cleanup tools are you referring to? As far as the textures, I try to keep their size to a minimum, reducing their JPEG quality as much as possible while still achieving the result I want. And yes, they do weigh a LOT, I've done that KMZ thing and sometimes they account for a quarter of the file size
(or more). But hey, that's the only way I enjoy modelling, so it's something I have to live with. I'm looking for other ways to cut down the file size, and I know that my modelling techniques are far from efficient. That's where I need help. -
Do you model with symettry? (only model half and join afterwards), using components?, and I'd suggest using one texture (baking them in a 3rd party app)
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@solo said:
Do you model with symettry? (only model half and join afterwards), using components?, and I'd suggest using one texture (baking them in a 3rd party app)
I mirror components whenever possible. Not sure what you mean by "using one texture (baking them in a 3rd party app)". I do edit my textures using two different graphics programs (Photoshop CS3 and Digital Image Pro), both before and after applying them to the model, but what do you mean by using "one" texture?
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Well I'd advise going a lot easier on the mesh density and letting SU's smooth function take the load instead of using geometry. It looks like you have 24 segment circles running right around the steering wheel; you probably wouldn't notice the difference with a quarter of that.
I'd definitely advise against modelling the treads. Each wheel is around 25,000 faces...that's a whopping 100K on the whole vehicle...2/3 of the total number. Use an image like the one attached (a whole 102 faces...although that would increase with a decent hub cap)
They are beautiful models, though. I guess you'll have to balance the pleasure you get from fine-detailing with a little more practicality.
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Using the tyre as an example, you can look at using a repeat component to create the wheel. Make the wheel as complex as you like but then only use a few degrees of the full 360, make that a component and then copy it as an array. This will reduce the file size but done too much will affect the speed of SU. I posted about the compromise some time back, i'm on my phone so a little difficult
to search for it, If i find it I will post the link which explains more.Edit: Not so hard to search
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=79&t=33149 -
But I do use repeat components, all over the place, the tire, the steering wheel, everywhere I possibly can.
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As you can see
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@alan fraser said:
I'd definitely advise against modelling the treads.
But the file size decreased after modelling the treads
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Well you must be using pretty large images then...or applying them to very complex surfaces, because the tire I uploaded...which has a decent looking tread on it..is only just over 100K.
OK, with a little more modelling on the walls and hub...and an image for the hub, it would end up a little larger; but maybe only twice its present size, certainly not 1MB.I suspect that this is the real culprit. The skp format bloats horrifically with UV mapping information...far more than any other format I've come across. And you have an awful lot of separate textures on that car. A good illustration of this is if you save the file as a V3..the mapping will go all to hell, but the filesize will drop by nearly 3MB. I can only advise that you keep the surfaces you intend to map images to as simple as possible.
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@alan fraser said:
Well you must be using pretty large images then...or applying them to very complex surfaces, because the tire I uploaded...which has a decent looking tread on it..is only just over 100K.
OK, with a little more modelling on the walls and hub...and an image for the hub, it would end up a little larger; but maybe only twice its present size, certainly not 1MB.I suspect that this is the real culprit. The skp format bloats horrifically with UV mapping information...far more than any other format I've come across. And you have an awful lot of separate textures on that car. A good illustration of this is if you save the file as a V3..the mapping will go all to hell, but the filesize will drop by nearly 3MB. I can only advise that you keep the surfaces you intend to map images to as simple as possible.
Are you saying that the file size increases if I apply a texture to a complex surface as opposed to a simple surface? I had never heard that before. If it's true it's very disappointing because I use textures on a lot of complex surfaces.
Well, I guess I'm just stuck with my large file sizes, because I'm not about to simplify my models to the point that I no longer enjoy making them, just to keep my file size down. My only option is to refine my modelling techniques and learn how to use fewer polys to get the results I need. I suppose that will come with time and experience.
Thanks to everyone for their input and suggestions.
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@unknownuser said:
Are you saying that the file size increases if I apply a texture to a complex surface as opposed to a simple surface? I had never heard that before. If it's true it's very disappointing because I use textures on a lot of complex surfaces.
Yep, that's exactly what I'm saying. I remember pointing out to @Last many years ago that the size of a skp increased inordinately when images were added, but nothing much seems to have been done.
I ran some tests on just one of the wheels:-
Size of wheel with hubcap mapped...808KB...including the 48KB embedded jpeg.
Size with hubcap texture deleted...759KB (Exactly minus the image size...but the mapping info is still there despite the lack of image)
Size with colours deleted also.....no change. In other words, this is the untextured/uncoloured clay model, but still containing UV info.
Same again but V3 (V3 does not support UV info)...334KB...Visually identical, but less than half the size of the V8.Conclusion: projecting that 48KB image onto the hubcap cost you nearly 0.5MB.
If I were you, I'd carry on enjoying the modelling. You can always post renders. One easy thing you can do (apart from being fairly critical about whether you really need that many segments in a curve you are about to extrude) is to run ThomThom's Cleanup script. I tried it on the entire vehicle, on its default settings. It got rid of 27,298 faces (you can see a load of unnecessary triangulation around the tail lights, for example). It also merged 14 materials and purged 4, shedding 0.5MB in the process.
The only visible change was that the windshield went opaque...easily remedied. -
Well, I just installed ThomThom's Cleanup plugin, got about six thousand errors when I opened SU, most of my toolbars went away, basically I'm screwed here. I'm sure it's a great script, all of his are, just something went wrong. Looks like a complete uninstall of SU is in order. Oh well, who needs sleep
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Have you updated the model at all since originally posting this? I'll assume the answer is no for the purposes of this post.
First, I'd have to question what Alan is saying regarding textures and file size. Sketchup will pack all of your textures into the .skp so if you have a 1mb image file as a brick texture, your SU file will increase by 1mb. However I don't see any evidence that applying that texture to a complex surface vs. a simple surface matters at all.
Here's a simple test I did.
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Created a sphere and made 99 copies of it (no groups or components). File size is 6,772KB
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Applied an asphalt material to one sphere (6,822KB)
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Applied same material to all spheres (6,820KB)
You'll notice that the file size actually decreased slightly rather than increasing.
As for your original question, I think your car is about as optimized as it could possibly get. Opening and immediately saving the file gave me a size of 14.7mb. I ran thomthom's cleanup script and got it to 14.1mb. Beyond that, I think you're doing everything right. Your components are organized very well, your textures are very small, and unlike what was suggested earlier I don't think your polygon mesh is overly dense. It's certainly a higher poly model than most SU models out there but if you compare it to a high end car model this would probably be along the lines of a high quality low poly model. I'd imagine this to be very acceptable for most rendering usage but overkill for most SU usage. For comparison a low poly car model from Dosch is about 3.5 mb and a high poly model is about 34 mb in .skp format.
In sum, I think you're doing everything right, so if you're running into size issues at this point, it's a SU problem rather than an issue you can change. In comparison to other modelers SU tends to have larger file sizes and slower save times. The only way to significantly reduce your file size would be to reduce your level of detail.
-Brodie
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Map the texture brodie.(position, rotate, etc)
I just did it on a bunch of spheres with whaat's uv tools and saw a 700kb increase between su3 & 8
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Hi Brodie, thanks for taking the time to try to help me out. Yeah, I've already resigned myself to learning how to get things done with fewer polys, seems to be my only option. Although the point may be moot, it's a little discouraging when you bust your butt keeping it down for the warehouse, and then nobody bothers to download the dang thing. Not sure what I'm doing wrong here, maybe it's the large file size, but hey, that's the way I model. Even if I managed to knock the file down by 50 percent, I would just use that to add more details. It would be a lot easier to not worry about the file size and just go for the gusto. That might be interesting, but right now I'm just gonna step back from SU for a while and get some other things taken care of, maybe see what life was like before it became digitized. Oh, for the days when all John Boy had to worry about was getting a new writing tablet
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Again, thanks for the input. -
Jeff, I'm not sure how whaat's tools work but I see no reason to use them on a car model at any rate. At most, it's a tip not to use that plugin if your concerned about file size, no?
Hellnbak, I don't know how long the car's been on there or how to help more people to find it. As of now it only has 66 views, but of those 10% of the people who saw it downloaded it. I might suggest a few more tags geared toward those whom it's marketed towards. Stuff like high poly, detail, quality, render, etc. If you spent the time building this from scratch you might even put it up on a pay site like turbosquid where people will better appreciate it and it may even make you a bit of money. It really is a very nice model but I wouldn't build stuff just to put it on the warehouse, personally. There's no monetary reward and google hasn't even set up a good enough rating system to make it worth your while in a purely ego sense (good modelers could be awarded points, get there models automatically closer to the top of the list, comments and ratings could be better displayed, etc.). Xbox and many others have made a good business out of giving people an ego boost simply by rewarding them meaningless points.
-Brodie
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Whaat's tool didn't add the weight. It the uv coordinates.
That's what Alan was talking about.
It's not only the size of the jpg that increases file size, it's the data saying how that texture is to be positioned.
Just randomly clicking on things with the paint bucket seems to just add jpg file size but once you start selectively positioning it, the skp goes up in size even more. -
Jeff is right; that's what I was talking about.
If you look at my original test of the wheel:-
V3 unmapped (ie raw geometry data only) = 334 KB
Hubcap image - 48KB
If the addition of an image didn't add any more than its own weight, that would give a total of 382KB...but the wheel is 808KB. The difference is pretty much all mapping info.A V8 unmapped model would probably be more than a V3, as SU is reserving space for all kinds of more recent stuff within the file format. You could maybe find out how big by untexturing and completely purging the V8 of all maps and colours, save it as a V3, open it in V8 then resave as a V8.
I agree, Hellnback's model is about as efficiently built as it's possible to be, given his preferred level of detail. None of the images appear to be particularly large either. The problem is simply the upload limit, given the degree to which UV mapping bloats a skp.
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