parse json file cost too much time

chenglianglong

hi:
I have a trouble ,my json file is too large(about 4.4M, 130000 lines),because my animation is complicate。
When I load and parse the json file on ipad2, it cost me almost 2 seconds,it is so terrible。
I do not want to change the animation, so what else I can do to reduce the time??
give me some suggestions. thank you!!

Cuellarjmcg

You can use the binary format, but dunno if it's supported after the FFD and Skinning changes. Also, what runtime are you using?

Søren

Wow you must really have a lot of animation in there. Would it be manageable if the json could be split up into multiple files? That's not currently possible AFAIK, but maybe it is something we will have to look into in case Binary will not do the job. Also like Cuellarjmcg asked, which runtime are you using ?

chenglianglong

thank you for your reply,
I am using cocos2dx(v2.1.3),can it support binary format?

Nate

Only spine-libgdx supports the binary format. This is because any changes to the format requires changes to the binary loading code, so I don't want to invest time into implementing binary for all the runtimes until its expected that the format won't change. This should happen after IK pinning. Until then you could implement a binary loader by using spine-libgdx as a reference. The binary format supports all features the JSON format supports.

Youdagames

We actually have the same problem.
We have one skeleton/file with 200 animations in it, 51 slots, 15 skins and 20 bones.
The json is around 4.2 MB, and 3,8 when it's not human readable.
When we export it to "minimised" it's 1.9, but we don't have an AS3 Json parser that can handle it.

The main problem is that all nodes are named in every animation, even if it's not used.
So there is alot of overhead data and alot of work to redo all the animations.
Also some of the variable names are pretty long, when they get keeping reusing, for example "rotation", instead of "r" or "rot".
Loading and paring the json as is is taking several seconds, and we have to load about 3 of these files.

Is there any "quick" solution known for these kind of situations and/or does anyone know a good as3 "minimal' json parser?

Nate

Youdagames ha scritto
The main problem is that all nodes are named in every animation, even if it's not used.

What do you mean? "nodes" isn't Spine terminology.

Also some of the variable names are pretty long, when they get keeping reusing, for example "rotation", instead of "r" or "rot".

This would be the wrong optimization to apply to JSON. JSON isn't not a high performance format, no matter what attribute names are used. Binary is the real answer.

I invented the "minimal" format because I hated looking at all the quotes. I don't know of a parser that can handle it other that the one in libgdx, sorry! You could probably port that parser though. It is written in Ragel, so the core of the parser can be compiled to AS3 using Ragel... oops, nevermind, I see Ragel doesn't support AS3. 🙁

Youdagames

Thanks for the quick reply Nate.

Sorry with "node" i meant "slots".
So for example a slot for eyebrows, head, upper arm, etc.
So each layer is named in the json for every animation, while ideally it would only have information for the alterations/changes compared to a base pose.
This would save alot of information in filesize but especially in processing the json.

Indeed the as3 part is handy, but we still have some projects using it.
So it seems the minimise isn't going to be an option.
But'this would only improve the loading part, the processing would still be as long.

One solution for us is to remove any unneacesary keyframes, but with 6 spine files with each those 200 animations, that's alot of work; And the result is limited.

Do you see any other solution and/or is the solution about optimising the output for each Slot an option?

With kind regards,

Dennis Korf
Youdagames

Nate

What is the unnecessary slot data that is output? Animations should only contain data that is keyed.

The best answer is still binary. 🙂 Eg, in JSON to reference a slot you need the slot name, some quotes and some curly braces. In binary, to reference a slot you need a varint, which is encoded as 1 byte if you have < 128 slots.

Youdagames

Hey Nate,

Thanks again for your reply.

The main problem is that all layers in all animations are keyframed at the first frame and the last frame.
This was done to be sure that every element was reset, before starting the next animation (from the base position/pose).
It turns out there is a function that resets a character to it's base pose, but now all animations are already made.

Is there a function to auto-remove all keyframes that aren't followed by an animation?

We'll check if we can process the curren binary lib to AS3.

Nate

Keying bones at animation start is ok, it's required for crossfading. If you don't care about crossfading you can use setBonesToSetupPose and you don't need to key all bones at each animation start. You don't need to key all slots though, you can use setSlotsToSetupPose as you probably already found.

You could export to JSON, manipulate the JSON data, and import back into Spine.