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Controlling File Sizes of Skins

1 Aug 2016, 13:49 PM
#1
avatar of Cyanara

Posts: 769 | Subs: 1

Hey,

I'm just curious as to whether anyone has any tips regarding keeping custom skin file sizes low.

I have two ready to use skins (winter and summer) that add up to 200MB collectively.

However, I made a curated version that combines the same files of those two and it's coming out at nearly 400MB. Is there something about setting a curated version that does this, or am I maybe missing something else?

Edit: Found this in the wiki:

"NOTE: If you are submitting to the curated pathway then your mod will be big as it will include your source files. This may cause you to hit the upload file size limit of 300MB. If this is the case try splitting your mod into summer and winter packs and upload each separately."
4 Aug 2016, 22:37 PM
#2
avatar of Starbuck

Posts: 42

Hey,

I'm just curious as to whether anyone has any tips regarding keeping custom skin file sizes low.

I have two ready to use skins (winter and summer) that add up to 200MB collectively.

However, I made a curated version that combines the same files of those two and it's coming out at nearly 400MB. Is there something about setting a curated version that does this, or am I maybe missing something else?

Edit: Found this in the wiki:

"NOTE: If you are submitting to the curated pathway then your mod will be big as it will include your source files. This may cause you to hit the upload file size limit of 300MB. If this is the case try splitting your mod into summer and winter packs and upload each separately."


Oh wow. 100mb each is very high for a non-curated, ready-to-use skinpack. How many files are you exporting with each vehicle? Are you including, dif, nrm, spc, and gls?

Curated skin packs are a much larger export, so that is normal. It is usually necessary to release a summer and winter separately for the 300mb single file limit. If you look on the workshop you'll see that many follow this practice.

Also keep in mind that steam workshop has a 1gb cap on uploaded workshop files per account. I've had to create 3 separate accounts to be able to post curated stuff in addition to the ready-to-use stuff.




5 Aug 2016, 02:21 AM
#3
avatar of Cyanara

Posts: 769 | Subs: 1


Oh wow. 100mb each is very high for a non-curated, ready-to-use skinpack. How many files are you exporting with each vehicle? Are you including, dif, nrm, spc, and gls?


I have to for the Sdkfz 250 halftrack. The default spc file is broken, so it comes out looking stupidly light coloured. And then the only way the nrm, spc, and gls files don't completely screw up the lighting with crazy shadows is if I disable compression on the nrm burn settings. Annoying, but literally the only thing I've found that works.

You can get an overview of the issue in this thread with F.X. and myself: https://www.coh2.org/topic/37265/skin-mod-gloss-question/page/1#post_id556092

I was also a bit dubious about the lighting on the Panther and Panzer IV as well, so I had the extra files for them as well, but I've been scaling that back due to the rapidly increasing file sizes.

6 Aug 2016, 00:38 AM
#4
avatar of Cyanara

Posts: 769 | Subs: 1


Oh wow. 100mb each is very high for a non-curated, ready-to-use skinpack.


You know, I was just looking at the German 1944 - Macular skin and wondering how he got 2 armies in only 47MB.

Then I realised: I used a lot of wear and tear layers on my skin packs, which would have shot the compression ratios to hell. What was only two colours suddenly becomes a huge variety of shades that are nowhere near as easy to compress, so the smallest I could get was 70MB for one army.
6 Aug 2016, 03:08 AM
#5
avatar of Starbuck

Posts: 42



You know, I was just looking at the German 1944 - Macular skin and wondering how he got 2 armies in only 47MB.

Then I realised: I used a lot of wear and tear layers on my skin packs, which would have shot the compression ratios to hell. What was only two colours suddenly becomes a huge variety of shades that are nowhere near as easy to compress, so the smallest I could get was 70MB for one army.


My German skin packs contain both armies as well and the highest one is, I believe, around 55 mb. That also includes some vehicles from US, British, and Russian Beutepanzers for some mods that use them. They are summer only or winter only skins.
As far as multiple layers, most of mine have numerous additional layers bloating the psd files to well above 600mb. I'm curious as to your psd file size.

However, for exporting, I only include the _dif and sometimes an _alp file(to make parts of the vehicle disappear like side skirts, etc) for each vehicle. Including a _nrm and _gls, etc, will definitely increase the overall file size.

If you didn't export with any other files other than the _dif, you'd probably be around the 50mb mark for a German skin pack that includes vehicles from both armies.
6 Aug 2016, 08:42 AM
#6
avatar of Cyanara

Posts: 769 | Subs: 1


If you didn't export with any other files other than the _dif, you'd probably be around the 50mb mark for a German skin pack that includes vehicles from both armies.


Just ran a test with dif files only, and it was about 24MB. I added in the nrm related files for the Sdkfz 250 specular fix and that took it to 45MB, which is a sizeable jump, but definitely acceptable.

The smallest I'd ever seen before was about 70MB. My tests with trying to fix lighting on vehicles must have blown things out with more files being used than I realised. I'll just make sure I'm happy with the default Panther and Panzer IV specular appearance and reissue the skin at that 45MB size.

I would love to know if there is a way to include the nrm, spc, gls files without disabling compression on them though.

As a side note, Steam Workshop limits me to 200MB, not 300MB. I think the Wiki was wrong on that point.
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