File Size Increases Massively then Becomes Unworkable

[johan21]

BUILD: 3.7.18F(CUDA)(DX64)(educational)

OS: Win 7 Home Premium SP1

HARDWARE: (If applicable): N/A

BUG DESCRIPTION: File size grows steadily from 200 meg to 3 gig for no good reason and won't go back.

STEPS TO REPRODUCE: Unknown.

I've seen this reported a couple times, but various workarounds and suggestions others have suggested are doing nothing for me.

I started modelling 4 separate voxel characters in the one scene (I had my reasons, I wanted to sort of model them in a consistent way). Here is an earlier version of my 3b file with all 4 characters, the file was 210 megs and loads in 5 seconds (timed), and had no issues. During the modelling process I brought some obj files in from max and merged them as voxels. I've also posted a shot of my voxel tree structure.

I started to retopo, then uv, then paint one of my 4 characters (the man). Again, this all went well, and I exported my low poly baked model out to 3dsmax.

At some point I came back to my 3b file intending to continue with the second character, and suddenly noticed two very odd things. Firstly, some of the voxel layers had become ghosted as shown below, even though they were not in ghost mode (e.g. the man and woman are ghosted below, the children at the back are solid. I have deliberately pressed 'w' for wireframe in the screenshot). I have tried reapplying a new shader (apply to all visible), and unhiding all, but none of the view settings changes this. Second, my file size has become 3 gigabytes. Sure as you can see the voxel resolution has been increased. However I've gone back to a previous version with the same resolution which was only 863 meg. Moreover, if I delete 3 of the 4 characters, delete all the layers and objects in the paint/UV/retopo room, and click 'clear cahce' in voxels, and then save my file, it will still be no less than 2.7 gigs. I have tried clicking on a single voxtree layer and exporting as a 3b file. The file will be 3 gig. No matter what I do, I can't do anything or save anything that saves a file much less than 3 gig, and naturally any of these files are becoming near impossible to work with and regularly crashing 3dc upon opening, saving etc. I'm quite sure that If I saved a completely empty file it would be 3 gig as well.

Really look forward to the bug fix for this one.I'm going to try exporting all my voxel objects as obj files and try merging those back into a new voxel scene, but I'm kinda nervous about this happening again.

[digman]

Andrew, just fixed this problem...

Download 3.7.18H Windows version...

Mantis bug report

http://3d-coat.com/m...view.php?id=675

[johan21]

Excellent... that's what I call a fast response time (?!)

Downloading now.

[johan21]

Ok, well the new build wasn't a miracle cure for my old file (but I hope it will prevent a repeat in future), in that opening the old file and clicking save didn't reduce the file size.

The file size issue was resolved by creating a bundle of new voxtree layers, and 'moving' all my existing layers into them, clearing the voxel cache for good measure and resaving. This has reduced the file back to < 100 meg. This worked in either the old build 3.7.18F or 3.7.18H.

[kay_Eva]

another guy who had this problem figured it out, and it's the same thing I did to my problem files - even though the size seems to increase strangely though I'm not sure. Anyways do this:

Convert all Surfaces to Voxel

If there is any color information on any of your voxel objects you will have to delte that voxel object. But before you delete it, clone it first, that way you will be able to keep a copy of the object without color info. Save file and it will shrink down

to normal size

[digman]

Does the fix remove the problem of incremental saving in a new scene? I am running Linux but am curious as I will be repairing my windows computer today...