Huge C4D file, I can’t even save a project

[Paschal Rutagwerela]

Steve Bentley, I looked into PolyTrans, it looks like a very useful program but iClone is not one of the supported source applications.

You mentioned earlier about animation on each vertex, I think that might be where the problem is. I tried the FBX converter to convert the file from IC to an earlier FBX version (FBX 2013). It reduced the size from 126 MB to 83 MB but interestingly, the C4D file remain the same size if I use either version. Is this issue of animation on each vertex something I can check and possibly change within C4D?

I noticed that if I select all the character objects, the poly count comes to what I mentioned before, about 30,000 for one character. But when I add a Null object and then put all the character objects under it, when I MMB click the Null object to select it and all the children, the poly count shoot to 1,022,000. What could this mean?

I believe moving an animated character from IC to another 3D program should be fairly simple and straight forward.

Still crying for help!

[Paschal Rutagwerela]

I tried that method of bringing in the mesh and animation separately into C4D very early when this problem first occurred but it did not affect the C4D file size.

[Steve Bentley]

Ok. Thats a shame about polytrans – it covers so many formats I thought Iclone might be one (but its pretty new).

When you bake an animation in C4D, I’m pretty sure that the vertexes are each given their own animation paths. But I’ve never seen a cached file reach the mega giga proportions you are talking about.
Now to be fair we’ve never stripped out a c4d cache file to see whats in it (we will be now though just to see), so I can’t say for sure that’s whats going on, but given that you can scrub forwards and backwards on mesh hierarchies, deformers and dynamics, particles and cloners I figured that’s what they would have to be doing.

You could bring the mesh and the animated skeleton into C4d separately and then link them together but then you will have to redo all your weight painting and that really depends on the model of how laborious that would be. (unless there is a tool, built in or aftermarket, that lets you export the weights from IC.

Have you talked to iClone support?

We don’t use iClone – can you render out of iClone? could you get a third party render engine that would get you there without having to transfer the assets?
If you can’t render out of iClone what is the pipeline they expect you to use?

If you bring your model into C4d and do a quick rig and then save it, what’s the MB level then?

[Steve Bentley]

Are you using 3D exchange to do the transfer? or the built in exporter?
I’m kinda shocked that there is not direct file format converter for C4D. All the other big boys are there (and quite a few small ones as well)

What about trying to do a file format conversion to something like 3DsMax. You could download a trial version to see how big that file is. From Max you might be able to save the file back as a 3Ds format (What Max used to be called) and then you can import that into C4D.

[Steve Bentley]

There’s a version of Unity that is free (and there may be one for Unreal as well) that you could do a file format coversion for and then render from there.
What’s the final usage?

[Steve Bentley]

How long is the timeline in iClone? Might you exporting animation data from frame zero to frame 6 million? That might account for the size of the file.
I see in another part of the Docs you can export from Iclone direct to c4dR18, is that what you are attempting?

[Paschal Rutagwerela]

Thanks a lot Steve Bentley, you have been extremely helpful on this. Sometimes I don’t mind struggling like this because it helps me uncover new things but sometimes it can be frustrating.

I could render out in iClone in image sequence with alpha and then compose the character with the 2D footage or CG environment but I will be stuck with the original iClone camera angle(s) and also any camera movement in iClone will be impossible to track later.

The workflow that I am seeking is to animate a character in iClone (the model created within iClone CC or imported from ZBrush, DAZ or C4D) and then export the model with the animation to C4D. Then add other 3D elements to the scene then finally render everything together within C4D.

I am also interested in integrating a CG character to a live shot, in this case after importing an animated character, C4D will enable me to do motion tracking of the live shot, add any other 3D elements and work on IBL before doing compositing work. iClone gives you the ability to do IBL but it doesn’t have motion tracking feature, that’s why I NEED to be able to export just an animated model and do the rest of the work elsewhere.

[Paschal Rutagwerela]

As far as exporting just a mesh then rig within C4D, it gives me about 36 MB for a 4 minute animation. Also iClone only records at 60 fps. So for a 4 minute animation, it comes to about 16,000 frames. When I import to C4D on a project that uses 24 fps, it comes to about 6336 frames.

I can export from within iClone or by using 3DXchange but I still get the same results. I also tried your suggestion by using 3Ds Max but 3Ds format does not seem to be able to carry animation data unless I am missing something (my guess is, it is similar to something like OBJ file, it only carry mesh and texture information?).

[Steve Bentley]

Will Iclone allow you to import a camera or the camera data from a 3rd party tracker like PFtrack our Boujou? (or even cinema for that matter)

You can usually copy and paste object animation data from one package to another. Sometimes you have to do it channel by channel but for the camera that would only be about 6 or 7 copy and pastes (x,y,z,zoom or lens length, xrot,yrot,zrot). and often you can grab all the keyframes and paste it into something like XL or Word to massage the data – usually its just a formatting issue – too many spaces between values or tabs instead of commas. You can clean that all up easily with search and replace in Word. Sometimes you have to reorient the Y or Z but you can do that in XL just by swapping columns or inverting the order.

The pipeline you suggest should work. I’m not sure where there log jam is. Did iClone support have any insight?

[Paschal Rutagwerela]

Thanks Steve,

It looks like iClone can import cameras so I am going to try that route. How do you access the animation data from the FBX file to copy from? In the beginning I assumed the problem was somewhere within C4D that’s why I ran here first for help but I am going to contact iClone support to see what they suggest. The more I dig this problem, the more I start thinking it could be a bug within iClone because even the FBX files they generate are bigger than usual or maybe I am overlooking one simple thing somewhere.