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I need this Blender plugin for C4D [2023] - if still an issue.


Magic Holo
Go to solution Solved by Mash,

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problem: [R21] slow saving of .c4d file to network share (LAN) - Same issue in Blender has potentially been solved via plugin!

 

It has been very well explained by a blender user and is exactly 100 percent true cinema4d [R21].

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/149926/saving-blend-files-straight-to-server-nets-0-5-speed-of-a-windows-file-copy-ho

 

As soon as any of the .c4d files are prepared for rendering on the farm by using the internal mograph cache, file sizes explode from 50mb to 50gb. As such, saving those files to the network share for each small change, can take up to 30 minutes. At the same time saving the file locally and copy via explorer takes seconds.

 

The related GitHub code for the blender plugin is available here:

https://github.com/woutervddn/blender_addon_save_by_proxy

 

I'm looking for a permanent and fundamental solution, not a workaround.

- copying the files locally by hand, saving the changes and copy those files back is not an option, because it could lead to many human mistakes when many people are involved

- using a version control system like Perforce/Helix core for check outs/check ins is not an option, because it adds an additional prog to the pipeline

- modifying the way cinema saves files, is not an option

 

So, how do you usually handle those issues?

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While the idea looks simple enough (for Blender), and you could write a plugin that just does the same (save locally, copy to server), there are quite some difficulties:

- C4D uses a whole directory structure (not just .c4d, but also textures and most likely caches), where Blender stores a .blend file with everything in it, so just doing the same for C4D means you would just get the .c4d on the server

- It would still change the way C4D saves data, as it is a wrapper around the normal save on GUI level. So, you would need to trigger the plugin when you want to save. This would not affect the "save incremental" and "save as" etc. methods, which would need a wrapper each. Also, any plugin that writes the data directly would not use this wrapper.

- What about the Asset Browser and other scene/object managers which may want to write data somewhere?

- You need to keep a local proxy directory all the time, and take care that files of the same name are not saved at the same time, overwriting each other

 

It may be useful to have, but it's not quite the same usecase... you'd need to think exactly about the repercussions.

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  • Solution

"problem: [R21] slow saving of .c4d file to network share"

 

This was improved in R26, network saving can be >10x faster due to the new file handling code. Users report that on for example a 10gb network, saving speeds are around 500 mbyte/sec 

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On 11/4/2022 at 3:23 PM, imashination said:

This was improved in R26, network saving can be >10x faster

Thanks for pointing that out. That would be the most comprehensive solution. I will test this and come back here to confirm.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Okay, I've tested saving the same .c4d scene file (7.88 GB) in R21 and in R27 to the shared network folder.

 

When loading the scene file in R21 it took around 11 minutes to load.

Saving this scene in R21.207 also took around 11 minutes (7.88 GB).

 

I then opened the scene file in 2023.1.0. (R27).

Saving the file was instant (less than 1 second!), but the file size ended up just being 12.6 MB.

 

So, I opened this scene file saved created by R27, in R21 and everything seemed to be present, but when saving again, the file size ended up being 12.7 MB.

 

Now, I tried the old trick, to copy all objects into a new scene in R21. I did that with the 7.88 GB file and saved. Now, I get 12.3 MB.

 

Well, I can't draw a conclusion from my findings.

 

 

 

 

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If an 8gb scene file goes down to 12mb then not to put too fine a point on it, your projects a bit fecked. If I had an 8gb c4d file, I would expect it to have 100's of millions of polys. If it saves down to 12mb, then it cant have more than 100,000 polys or so. Given you have the project, which of these is most reasonable?

 

My first guess would be that you have a plugin which has generated a ton of junk data. Or, that maybe you have some particle plugin like xparticles which had an internal cache, but the 2023 version of c4d you used didnt have the plugin, so that particle cache data is now gone.

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  • 2 months later...

You mentioned " internal mograph cache" in your original Post. I guess, that's what's lost in your tests. 

Try to save the mograph cache externally. I guess the file size of the external cache will be exactly the size-difference in your test. 

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  • 1 month later...

I can confirm, this is not an issue anymore in 2023. Finally being able to work in our studio environment, using a network storage for sharing the projects, and being able to save continuously the files (in 1 second instead of 15 minutes) is such a relief of pain! Thank you Maxon for this version! R17-R21 was driving us nuts for years.

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