Local DB Image Texture Paths issue Tweet

[laszlosomogyi]

Hi,

I'm having a bit of difficulty with the localDB and I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around its functionality, would like to ask for your assistance please.

I'll try to explain it best I can, hope it will make sense, I'm no technological wizard by any means. Our company has not been using localDB for too long, however recently we purchased several packs that I would like to build inside the localDB for quick access, but find myself in a dilemma, whether I should do it or would I be better off creating textures from the ground up to preserve space better?

Basically the issue is that after I created a material with several image texture nodes, then save it to localDB and then proceed to re download it in another scene will make the texture loose the file path that was correct before I dragged it into the DB. However it does work by creating these images under the local project directory under tex/assets, so somehow the original file or at least it's location is still accessed/referenced during this process.

So far an example let's take a texture from AxisFX Landscape Essential pack. Each texture comes with 3 maps: Diffuse (348 MB), Normal (348 MB) and Height (128 MB), that added up is 896 MB on my HDD. With these landscapes in particular all I want to have is these 3 maps linked to the material and a transform node added that removes the displacement border.

This was the file path, when I connected the ImageTexture nodes to my material:

Z:\Library\_Resources\_Assets\3D\Textures\Landscape Essentials\4. Winter\Winter_01\Winter_01_Texture.tif
Z:\Library\_Resources\_Assets\3D\Textures\Landscape Essentials\4. Winter\Winter_01\Winter_01_Normal.tif
Z:\Library\_Resources\_Assets\3D\Textures\Landscape Essentials\4. Winter\Winter_01\Winter_01_Height.tif

This is what it becomes after having been added to the localDB and re downloaded in another scene and then it proceeds to make local copies into tex/asset directory:

assets\Winter_01_Texture.tif
assets\Winter_01_Normal.tif
assets\Winter_01_Height.tif

So in this process on top of having 896 MB in my central asset location, the .ORBX file that the localDB creates is for some magical reason also 896 MB (I thought it was a compressed file format) and then, when I end up using it in a new project that's another 896 MB lost, because of the extra copies made. You can clearly see why I'm having a massive problem with this, it's extremely sub-optimal. I'm assuming the way the .ORBX works is that it takes whatever files that was used in a texture and "compresses" them together into a new file format and when that information is needed it "extracts" itself onto the project directory?

I see why something like this would be needed for LiveDB materials, where it's more than likely that you dont have the actual texture map present on your computer, so it would have to be downloaded. When I'm building a local database, this approach looks incredibly destructive to my HDDs and leaves me thinking if I'm just better off building these textures from the ground up every time (Which I'd prefer not to). But I would loooove to have quick access to it. One workaround I guess would be to have some dummy files, where these textures are built and I can just go in copy it out. While I'd may be able to pull this off with something like this landscape essentials, that has textures in a two digits and doesn't take too long to build the base at least. However categorizing Poliigon materials in this manner would be extremely tedious (I do know they have a plugin, that does this mindless robot work of linking in the pictures) and much rather have them in LocalDB.

Couple of extra notes:

1. I have tried setting up texture paths in the C4D preferences tab, however the only thing that it does that it makes the pop-up to copy file into local project directory message inconsistent. I'd be asked whether I want to create a copy in one instance and for another file that is on the same hierarchy level it wouldn't ask at all as it seems to be reading the Texture Path info from the settings. (And this doesn't solve my main problem either, so not like it matters, but I found it odd)
2. Dragging materials into the LiveDB surface sometimes, becomes completely unresponsive and C4D would have to be rebooted in order to get it work again.
3. I've noticed that the Content Browser itself seems to be doing something similar with HDRI's. I have built a .lib4d file out of my HDRI and even those create a local copy, when I drag them into the appropriate slot in the HDRI Octane tag. But it leaves me wondering if it has do with Octane.

Thanks for the help, let me know if you'd need any extra info.

[RizonParein]

Dealing with the same problem, did you find any solutions?

[aoktar]

There is not an option to don't include texture files to database. It's how it has been designed. As said also content browser is same.
For nr.2 please give an opportunity to reproduce it here.