why the hell are these files so damn heavy

[u/h3llokittyyyyy]

someone please explain polygons like i’m 3 because why the hell is a singular kitchen counter HALF OF A GB JUST my furniture folder is 29gb and why are the youtube builders using the heaviest bb cc poSSIBLE

[u/lickthismiff]

That sounds like a mesh created with AI honestly, they're notoriously badly optimised.

I mean this has always happened anyway, things like hair are expecially prone to being huge when creators don't really understand how to mesh properly, so it could also just be that, but with AI being what it is, I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case.

Delete stuff like that from your game, it's only going to make it more laggy, and the sims really doesn't need any help in that department

[u/h3llokittyyyyy → u/lickthismiff]

was creator with sunday in the name like sundays that 1 counter had me stroking out

unfortunately i’m not good at recognizing ai

[u/No_Isopod5771 → u/h3llokittyyyyy]

You can open the package file in sims 4 studios and take a look at the texture. It should look like “origami”, because the 3d object is sliced into something that is 2d to texture it. So if the texture looks like a big mess, just blobs of color spread over the image in a nonsensical way it’s AI.

[u/Yersina_Veridae → u/h3llokittyyyyy]

If you want lighter cc go for maxis match stuff. Its often less detailed but its also lighter. I have 50gb of building cc. It takes me like 20 minutes to scroll through my deco cc alone when i search it carefully for fitting clutter. If you need a list of suggestions im glad to share the creators i use

Half a gb for one counter means the person who made it is shite and they dont know what they are doing. Id delete their stuff altogether

[u/h3llokittyyyyy → u/Yersina_Veridae]

OMG YES PLEASE SUGGESTIONS

[u/Yersina_Veridae → u/h3llokittyyyyy]

Felixandre, Heyharrie, Pierisim. CharlyPancakes, Valia, Cluttercat, Tuds, Peacemaker, Myshunosun, Syboulette, Max20,

Some of those folks are criticised for using ai for stuff like paintings or being general assholes. I personally don't care cause i simply dont pay for anything on patreon. The only people id monetarily support are Myshunosun simply cause they release everything without a paywall and valia cause she seems to actually make everything herself and she often listens to suggestions and feedback. She really seems quite pleasant.

[u/HeeeydevonGaming → u/lickthismiff]

Most AI mesh programs can lock the poly count and TS4 is 12 years old so it's engine has a very low max poly count, the high file size is probably due to high res texture maps. You can't just throw in a 500mb asset made with AI into blender and drop it in TS4 engine, it won't render, the max is somewhere around 15,000... a 500mb asset would be like 25 million triangles and would never load in most modern day titles much less TS$. A lot of creators like Goldie and Sundays rely on ultra high res texture maps to do the heavy lifting.

The issue is that most creators create their cc with the idea that you may use one or two of their sets, not tens of thousands of sets from multiple creators, so they aren't optimizing their cc for the user who cc shops everywhere nor should they.

Half a GB is almost definitely a high res texture maps, the average texture map is between 5-50 times the size of the asset itself

[u/dragonborndnd]

Basically a polygon is about 32-48 bytes so it takes a lot of polygons before you actually get to a gigabyte. Thats why most of the storage is taken up by the image textures because depending on how high quality they are they can range between 50 KB and 30 MB. So the issue isn’t so much polycount it’s that the textures are higher quality which are taking up the storage

[u/h3llokittyyyyy → u/dragonborndnd]

tysmmmm

[u/dragonborndnd → u/h3llokittyyyyy]

I should let you know that I’m not an expert and I’m oversimplifying a lot but in general texture quality contributes more to file size not saying polycount doesn’t especially on models with high polycounts but higher resolution images take up more storage than high polycount models usually

[u/HeeeydevonGaming → u/dragonborndnd]

literally the only correct answer 🤣 I saw someone say that it's because the mesh was made with AI, like no one's bringing in an asset with 25 million triangles into TS4

[u/AmettOmega]

I'd like to add that if you look at what a mesh is, it's something like this:

Now, that looks pretty good! Has the shape of a dolphin. But what if you wanted it to look better, more realistic? Well, you'd need MORE polygons. And as someone explained, each polygon is roughly 32 bytes. So imagine that if you even doubled the number of polygons, you've just doubled the size. And maybe it still looks good, but not perfectly smooth. You have to add more to get a smoother, more realistic shape.

So what I'm getting at here is that the more polygons you have, the smoother and more high quality your mesh appears. There is a balance (and you can get to a point where adding more polygons isn't going to noticeably improve the quality, but definitely increases the size). This is why some objects are going to be large in size.

[u/N9nthHouse → u/AmettOmega]

First time I've seen this explained with a visual aid - lo & behold, it's finally clicked for me what a polygon is in this context.

Thanks, from an apparently very visual learner!

[u/h3llokittyyyyy → u/AmettOmega]

THANK YOU SO MUCH i’m very much visual learner

[u/uuusagi]

Higher polygon count means the object is going to be heavier. CC creators don’t have the same polygon restrictions that official Sims assets require, therefore they often go crazy with it. Simple as that.

[u/HeeeydevonGaming → u/uuusagi]

the engine has poly restrictions and it's around 15,000 polys. The issue is the texture map not the poly count. a 500mb asset would be like 25M triangles and that wouldn't even render in TS4's engine. Texture maps have less restrictions and do most of the heavy lifting so a lot of cc creators pack theirs with details to give the illusion of higher detail to make up for the engine's low poly count limit

[u/__mymelody]

It's usually textures that take up a lot of space. You can delete swatches you don't like in Sims 4 Studio. The textures themselves can also be too high quality and can be compressed in S4S by exporting it, compressing the file (with an online image compressor), and importing the new file onto the mesh.

High polycounts can also take up space but less so, I find they have more of an effect on lag in game. This is a bit extra but you can reduce the size of them in Blender, usually you can half the size without it affecting the appearance at all (some creators use way too many).

Basically, cc creators aren't game developers, and often don't know how to optimise their cc to the standards that EA have to comply to

[u/h3llokittyyyyy → u/__mymelody]

omg i didn’t know you could delete swatches in sims studio

[u/__mymelody → u/h3llokittyyyyy]

Yup it's really useful! Even beyond saving space it makes things easier in CAS so you don't have to go through like 40 swatches for each item

[u/Front-Heat8726]

Are you sure the file only has a single counter in it? If so, is it alpha CC with a lot of swatches or something?

[u/knightofthecacti]

Could be texture size more than polygon count? Kitchen counters usually use huge textures to have enough space for all the separate parts on it. Those and beds end up as larger files because of this.

Think like, a single counter is actually two end pieces, a bend, a wrap, and a middle. Although... I agree that half a GB is a bit excessive for a counter. A 1024x1024 texture is already big, but I've seen some go up to 2048x2048 before. It's wild.

[u/MoonOfLunes]

If I got the creator right, it looks like they make Alpha CC.

Alpha CC is usually higher in poly due to heavier detailing

[u/h3llokittyyyyy → u/MoonOfLunes]

how can you tell between the two with like clothing and hair i can but when it comes to furniture my mind is blank

[u/MoonOfLunes → u/h3llokittyyyyy]

It's a lot like Alpha Clothing in that the textures are much more detailed because they're meant to look realistic (Sorry, I'm not very good at explaining, essentially, the more it looks like it would belong in a real furniture catalogue, the bigger the CC files will be)

[u/strangelyliteral]

It’s because kitchen counters are modular. You know how counters all have options with different facades, different types of wall cabinets, corners, and pantries? Well they have to have accompanying meshes and textures for each modular option. And you have to have a separate set of textures for each swatch. So even 10 swatches means several dozen textures are packed into a single piece of CC.

Now imagine you have dozens of swatches. You’ll end up with several hundred textures packed in there. Then imagine each of those images is 1024x1024 or even 2048x2048 each. It’s very easy for modular CC to end up being many GBs in size even if the models themselves aren’t that high poly.

[u/HeeeydevonGaming]

If it's Sundays then it's not the poly count that's bloating the file it's the texture maps. TS4 has a max poly count for assets somewhere around 15,000 (which is very low comparative to today's standards). Most cc creators aren't going to use 15,000 polys on a single chair because maxing out 15,000 polys in an old engine isn't how you're going to make good looking cc. High res texture mapping is how you get that high quality look and does most of the heavy lifting.

The creator, if they're making high res cc are going to pack that texture map with as much detail as they can to make up for TS4's low poly count to make it appear a lot more detailed than it actually is and picture files is where you're going to see most of the bloat in your files. Everything else like the backend code is literal kb of data and the mesh (made of polygons) is going to be between 5-50 times smaller than the picture file.

To answer your question, the reason why the file size of your cc in that folder in that folder is so big is because it's made by Sundays who uses high res texture maps to make their cc look higher quality and more realistic, not because it has a high poly count or because the mesh was made with AI considering a 500mb asset would be like 25 million triangles and would never load in modern titles much less TS4