I am using SU Pro 2025 and I am impressed by the new PBR materials. But, I am wondering how does the use of many (50+) PBR materials affect the model file size when compared to the old materials?
PBR materials use more than one raster image file per material so they take more disk space to store them. As to performance, if you have a reasonably modern graphics card, the impact is not very big.
It will increase the file size if the materials have the additional maps. Do a test to see for yourself. Create a SketchUp file with some PBR materials and save it. Then edit those materials to remove the maps and the metalness and roughness. Then save that with a different name. Compare the file size. I just did that with two PBR metal materials I got from the Warehouse and no geometry. With the maps the file saved as 4.85 Mb and with the maps removed, 2.51 Mb. Then normal maps are 1024 px square.
rule of thumb, consider each map as the same weight.
albedo only, then itās single weight.
add a roughness and a normal map, triple weight. itās not 100% truc, black and white pictures weigh less, but still.
combine it with the area rule, image is twice the size then itās 4 times the area. so a full map material with albedo, rough, metal, normal and ao could do up to x5 to the materialās weight. use 2000px instead of 1000px and itās 10 times the weight.
plus the environment size to take into consideration, even the default ones from SU.
(by the way, off topic but Iām thinking of it, @TIG your purge all plugin doesnāt purge environments. off course. I had a duh moment about it recently, facing an empty + purged 200mb file.)
Thanks guys. I was worrying about uploading this model as I thought that the maximum Warehouse file size was still 50MB, but it looks to be 100MB now?
There is a known glitch with v2025/6 and some PCs, I stopped adding Environments to Purge-All because it causes a crash - you can even get the crash by choosing to Purge [or delete] an Environment in its dialog [or even changing an Environment. Itās been reported but no response so farā¦
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I havenāt really used environments besides in training, but I can definitively see some bloated models posted here having a couple extra ones