Somewhere a while back somebody mentioned that Carrara will not load a file bigger than 2GB. Is that true? I'm working on a scene that is approaching that limit, and I did get an error when loading, although I doubt it was the 2GB limit (it was maybe 10% +/- under that). Some discussion here: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/61207/what-do-you-want-carrara-to-be/p2

I think this is valid for the 32 bit version. I have some files larger than 2 GB and no problems with C8.5-64

OK, thanks, I'm also running C8.5-64 bit. Is there some limit on file size for it? I'm guessing that if there is, its a lot more than 2GB.

Also depends on the RAM you have in your PC

16GB RAM, Core i7 @ 3.5 GhZ, Win7 64bit. Is it possible to estimate the max Carrara file size? Thanks.

I have similar specs as you Steve K and I lost a complete scene I was doing that was around 4.5gig in size.. There was no warning it just wouldn't load up one day after doing some work on it for the Carrara Challenge over on Daz..

Still have no idea why the file corrupted..

Using Carrara 8.5 Pro

Wonga -

Ouch! I've had the same experience, and have adopted a policy of saving one (or two) earlier versions of each *.CAR file. Nothing gets deleted until the next file loads successfully. Its a version of the wingwalkers motto, "Never let go of anything until you've got hold of something else." Of course, I still get carried away and do WAY too many modifications to a file before I save it ... and then of course it won't load. I think my most recent failure to load was a particular Poser format object that I loaded, then modified the textures heavily, but I'm not sure.

Also depends on the partition type of the file system ... Fat32. Is a problem. Stay with NTFS

I'm not too familiar with Windows tech stuff, but I am saving my working Carrara projects on Drive C:, the base drive. And yes, backed up with Casper software to another internal hard drive E:. And everything eventually backed up to external USB drives and DVD's. And sometimes Post-It notes.

Thanks for the tip.

I forgot to mention, Drive C: is NTFS, as is Drive E:

The scene size for Carrara 8 or 8.5 64 bits is limited by the available RAM. I have loaded 10Gb+ scenes on a 24GB PC without a problem. Carrara actually handles large scenes very well.

You can monitor Carrara's memory usage by looking at the Performance screen in the Task Manager. Look at how much memory is taken-up when the OS is freshly loaded, then start Carrara and your scene(s) and see how much memory they take.

When you save a large scene (like 10 GB+) it is better to uncheck the compress option. The uncompressed scene will take-up a lot more disk space but, oddly enough, it will save/load a lot faster. I guess it takes a lot longer for Carrara to compress/uncompress a large scene than just saving/loading the uncompressed scene

HTH.

dr_bernie - That's all good news, thanks.