[SOLVED] Why is this file so big and slow?

http://www.mediafire.com/file/hk4da15ekevcihw/forhelp1.blend contains a .blend containing, as far as I can tell, a rig, data for a handful of bone shapes, and absolutely nothing else. It is >200MB. It was built on Blender 2.79, with default add-ons + loop tools + material util specials.

(Edit: no longer 200MB, but still having issues r/t lag.)

Why is it so big? How do I fix it?

It is also extremely slow. If you try to pose a bone, it lags. If your computer is too super-duper to notice, try posing a bone and then undoing it, then you’re guaranteed to see it.

If I use ctrl-c ctrl-v to copy the rig into a new file, the lag goes away. For a while. Eventually it comes back. The file size remains 200MB.

The same thing happens if I use append. Not sure if that’s any different than ctrl-c ctrl-v.

The fact that the lag goes away on appending to a new file indicates to me that it’s not my machine and not the constraints. The fact that it persists through closing and reopening Blender indicates to me that it’s not due to some overloading of the undo buffer or things of that nature.

Apologies for not hosting the file here. I tried, maybe I didn’t do it right, the forum took a long time and then failed to show the blend. Not sure if it matters where I host.

The rig has 93233 drivers so it’s a tad slow.

The file is big because you didn’t enable compress in file -> save as dialog, which puts it from 210MB to 15MB with the drivers, and from 12.8MB to 1MB without.

I haven’t learned drivers yet. By drivers, are you talking about constraints? If not, how can I see and destroy these drivers? Why is it that they aren’t immediately slow on appending to a new file, but only become slow during editing? I’m sure that I haven’t made 92k constraints. More than most people, but not 92k :slight_smile:

The file is big because you didn’t enable compress in file -> save as dialog, which puts it from 210MB to 15MB with the drivers, and from 12.8MB to 1MB without.

Thanks, I’ll do that in the future, and will replace the current file.

Edit: Believe I was able to delete drivers by “clear drivers” on right click on rig/animation in outliner, at least it’s eliminated the lag. I’m still curious about other tools for them, how I managed to create them without knowing about them, or how they can be creating additive slowdown from editing without any animation.

And thank you. Getting rid of the lag is one of those things that’s like Christmas for grown-ups.

Hi.
You can choose to always compress files from User Preferences, Files, Save & Load, Compress File.
But you must do what JA12 has told you for .blend files that have already been saved uncompressed.

Thanks Yafu, I’ll do that.

It’s interesting, it keeps making more drivers, just as I edit and test the rig. Not sure why. Now that I know, I’ll periodically clear them, but more information would be useful.

In Blender, a driver is a function that maps some input value to some output value, so that what the driver is “listening to” controls or affects whatever the driver is “driving.” It is most commonly expressed as a curve but it can also be Python voodoo. This is, if you will, “procedural animation” where the driver’s output is a computed function of its inputs.

It’s nonsensical, I think, for any file to contain “tens of thousands of drivers,” so I wonder if the file itself is corrupt somehow. Maybe you could import the geometry into a brand new file and start over. Figure out what’s the “right” way to rig it, and do it from a fresh start.

Thanks sundial, that’s what I thought, just didn’t understand how I’d created them without trying. How can I see a list of drivers?

In hindsight, I used Rigify to generate some portions of this skeleton, but was unhappy with the rigify rig and have done a lot of editing since (the script is long since gone.) Sometimes I extrude new bones, sometimes I duplicate bones, perhaps I was creating a bunch of drivers that I wasn’t aware of.


I deleted the drivers from the graph editor, in driver viewmode, by selecting all (A) and deleting (X). Wanted to know how many there are so checked that in data blocks view in the outliner.

No idea where those come from

Thanks, JA12. Things look good, maybe I was smoking crack when I thought it was making new ones.

Dunno what it was doing or how they were breeding, but the drivers were referencing long deleted bones.

Now all I have to do is fix these unruly clothes…