I find myself running out of space on my computer. Even though i do have a lot of space. i make use of disk drives as well. I just find being a 3d artist is intensive on the amount of space used on the computer. My SO thinks maybe I am just not using it right. Wonder what others thoughts are on the issue. Anyone else have this problem at all?
So today when I was attempting to update Unreal they said i didn’t have the space. I did get rid of a ton of space cause i saw I had older versions of Unreal and i deleted them, which was hopefully correct. And that helped a little, but only pushed the problem back for another day. And could not find enough big things that I could get rid of to truly fix this.
But in general I noticed, something like the program Unreal, I have several files that people made something cool in Unreal, and they take what seems like Ungodly amounts of space. So i think some programs are much heavier then others. Anyways, would love to hear others thoughts on this. Do you struggle with it, not an issue at all? Thanks.
It will help to know which OS you’re using, the size of your system partition or drive in gigabytes, and how many other drives you have installed and their sizes.
ok i do try to go back after finished with a project and delete files, cause I save sometimes blendfile 1, 2, ect. I did not really know blender saved files too, i guess they do obviously since when there is a crash there is an autosave file. So I should locate that and clean up there?
Yeah, they are created in the same directory as the one you saved your regular blend file in, they don’t show up when you click ‘open’ inside blender as their file extension is not .blend
BUt if you go to a file explorer and look inside (unless you disabled it) you’ll see a .blend1 and .blend2 for every single blend you ever made, which can become big.
eh well ok, i am using windows 10, I have 2 main drives, and one of them is a storage drive, and yes i do have a fairly large drive. it has 930 gb. i have used about 700gb of that and have 200 left right now. my main drive 700 gb but i try to not use that one and stick to the storage one. though I am working to clean up more still. I have a third drive which i believe is used for some computer functions. so, i feel i have a lot of space, a lot more then some. I guess I was mainly curious if others find that being a 3d artist, not just the blender files, but then i have zbrush, maya, sd, sp, and then all the files from professional artists that I have to sort of learn from, and then texture files, my art references, and then models and packs for things like kitbashing. and a couple files from tutorials i have bought from time to time as well. And then some games as well. I went and tried uninstalling not as used games. Oh and Ue4 things, which I am still learning Ue4 but it seems like everything involved in that is a big program…
Now I also was working on an animation project a couple years ago in a group, and was the main modeler, and still have the entire 3d scene of that project on my computer as well.
Ok all that said, my thing is that i just wonder if other artists have this struggle too. I guess I do need to clean things out, getting more space is not really feasible right now anyways. I know i have a lot more then some, but as I say i think being a 3d artist can just be (it seems to me), potentially heavy on the storage of a computer.
ook yes I have noticed that, I have deleted some of those, but have a lot more to do in that regard, just deleted those when I was deleting other files at the same time, as I save iteratively every so often, so when i finish a project go back delete over versions and then get those blend 1 versions then.
So sounds like a good thing for me to look at and get rid of, thanks.
i’m afraid 1tb of space isn’t a lot by todays standard… i have a few shots (with not more than 100 frames) which need more than that just for geo and sim caches (houdini though).
The kinds of things that cause huge storage sizes are not always the .blend files themselves. What I find that does take up a lot of space is stored physics simulations - baked smoke and fluids are the main ones that take up a lot of space. If you have old bakes that you no longer need, consider deleting them (this would only mean you have to re-simulate if you wanted to use a certain scene again).
I would suggest going through your files and folders and figuring out what is causing such storage requirements. Maybe you have a bunch of backups or redundant data you no longer need. I say this is a good opportunity to do a deep clean of your computer.
Now as for my experience, I do see myself trying to limit how much space my files take up. I don’t really do that much with physics so in my case, I don’t use that much. If I were to make a wild guess, I would say I have everything stored within in less than 100GB
There is one more approach that is definitely “burn the ships.” Find yourself a nice linux distro and install it over the Windows. Building a small fire, and singing songs during installation is totally optional. Empty your glass entirely and work on new projects with a huge amount of new space.
Sometimes software can go into a loop and write accidental long cache files, for example.
You analyze disk usage with some disk space graphic monitor, for example:
*Scanner http://www.steffengerlach.de/freeware/
*HDGraph
*Filelight (Linux)
Edit:
Also watch and avoid creation of hiberfil.sys if you are not going to use hibernation on disk:
Also, Windows 10 sometimes fills up the windows/temp map with junk, this can take up hundreds of gigabytes! Just delete those files if that’s the case. Buggy AppStore software is the culprit.
Turning off ‘AppX Deployment Service’ in the task manager/services helps but not 100%, check it a few times a week, and empty the windows/temp map regularly!