Reply To: Save file size got huge, is this normal?

No worries! Sometimes that is the best strategy, come back to it with a fresh mind. 🙂 Which version of Blender are you using, by the way?

Hm, ok. So that isn’t a ton of topology, I don’t think you will have to worry about trying to drop your poly count, necessarily.

What I am stumped on is exactly ‘why’ your file size shoots from 100mb to 1.8gb. To me, this sounds like there may be a moment where a modifier or something else that you may have active in your scene is actually subdividing your mesh exponentially behind-the-scenes, without your knowledge, which may be causing your PC to stutter and freeze up on you. Especially if it is consistent. 

You mention that you select all the verts on your scarf to receive those statistics, so would I be correct to assume that you were selecting everything in “Edit” mode? With your Multi-Res modifier on at the level you normally have it at before it crashes, would you be able to tell me how many verts/faces/tris you have for it in “Object” mode? You may need to isolate it first (with the scarf selected, hit Shift + H), the statistics will be in the same place (bottom right hand corner, and then you can unhide everything again (Alt + H).

I’m wondering if you might need to remove the modifier entirely and bring the scarf back down to its default topology (the amount of polygons that you had from using the Curve object, after you made it a mesh but before adding a modifier), re-apply either a Subdivision Surface modifier or Multi-Res modifier and actually “apply” it, so that when you are sculpting Blender is aware it is using “real” topology.