Help needed - Daz Studio scenes not loading properly on new computer, cannot connect to CMS

Aethyr

Hi there,

I recently got a new computer, and I thought things would be fine as my content was on an external drive and I still had access to the old Windows drive (Win7 versus Win10 now). The old system drive is in the new machine (I'd hoped I'd be able to reuse it) so I don't have the old system actually up and running, it's possible that I could remove the drive and put it back in the old machine but that's something I'd rather not have to do.

In any case scenes will not load correctly, with lots of missing textures (it asks on load to locate textures, even though the paths are the same as before) and the characters appearing white and blocky, kinda like an untextured Minecraft character -- I'm sure I've had this last problem before but I can't remember how I fixed it before. It's worth noting that all the scenes are in the modern .duf format, I gave up on trying to load really old scenes since DS4.5 or so.

What I've tried so far:

• Copy data from the old Windows drive for DIM and Daz Studio (from /users/[name]/appdata/roaming, the DIM data was in 'public')
• Reinstall Genesis [whatever] Starter Essentials and morphs
• Copy data from /Program Files/DAZ 3D/ on the old drive to the Win10 install

This doesn't seem to have fixed it. The content is on the same drive, same letter, same path and everything, but scenes are not loading right. I'm sure I'm overlooking something or have made a mistake somewhere but I can't figure out what's wrong.

Also, a problem which I was experiencing on the old system has reoccured. Upon launching either the release version or beta of Daz Studio, it says it can't connect to the CMS. On the old setup this was a long standing problem with the release version but for whatever reason it worked fine with the beta.

I'm at my wit's end trying to get this working, I specifically built this new PC so it would blast through Iray renders and now I can't seem to access any of my scenes that I've spent hours working on. I would rather not have to reinstall all my content as I have literally thousands of items on my account and it would take a very long time to redownload it all.

I would be incredibly grateful for anyone who can help me get Daz Studio up and running again and let me access my old scenes. I feel like I've been completely inept and probably messed something up somewhere, but I'm pulling my hair out trying to work out what's the matter. I just want to get back to art!

--A

Aethyr

Hi there,

I recently got a new computer set up and had to do a clean install of Windows. All my Daz Studio content was on an external drive, installed with DIM, and I'm wondering if there's some way I can transfer the database from the old system (I still have access to the drive) to save having to redownload gigs and gigs of content. I imagine I'll have to redownload the programs and plugins but that's not too bad compared to having to grab thousands of content items! I'd also ideally like to be able to transfer my user settings for DS, such as my customised layout and so on, but I'm not sure where these are stored.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Apologies if this is posted somewhere else already, but what I found on a search wasn't 100% clear.

--A

Edit: I managed to find out a way to transfer the Install Manager data so I only had to redownload programs and plugins (fingers crossed), but I can't find any info on how to copy my custom layout and everything. I didn't have any fancy categories set up so the database export thing is unnecessary in this case.

NorthOf45

Customization should be in C:\Users\"your username"\AppData\Roaming\DAZ 3D\Studio4.

To restore the database in Studio, open Content Database Maintenance and select Re-Import Metadata. You should be good to go.

poorman_65

You probably will need to transfer your database as well, especially if you have defined your own Catogories for Smart Content. I haven't done this yet but I have used the Database Export & Import (not sure what it is called exactly) when I needed to kill my database due to it getting corrupted.

I work mostly on my laptop and then go to my Desktop with a GeForce 1070 Ti for rendering. Install Manager will get all your Daz purchased content updated.

You will need to manually copy or re-install any 3rd party stuff you have such as purchases from Renderosity. I had actually separated the 3rd party stuff into its own library so this is easy for me. If your 3rd party stuff is mixed into your "My Daz 3D Libary", you may need to copy that whole library or re-install all of the 3rd party stuff.

You will also have your "My Library" if you have added stuff to that. I actually share that one between my two systems since it is updated the most.

Hope this helps.

 

 

Richard Haseltine

poorman_65 said:

You probably will need to transfer your database as well, especially if you have defined your own Catogories for Smart Content. I haven't done this yet but I have used the Database Export & Import (not sure what it is called exactly)

Content Library option menu (the lined button in the top corner, or right-click the tab)>Content DB Maintenance. On the odl machine check Export Userdata, this will place a file UserData_#.dsx in /Runtime/Support, which you can copy acrtoss to the new machine. Then on the nw machine, in the same dialgure, check Reimport Metadata and in the enxt dialogue check User data.

Aethyr

Thanks people, once I find the customisation stuff I should be good to go. I had "My Library" on an external drive so copying a couple of files across let Install Manager know what was there -- I had to delete and reinstall applications and plugins, but that's way easier than having to reinstall god knows how many gig of content!

All being well I should be rendering a lot faster now with a fairly powerful Ryzen processor (for stuff that relies on CPU like Bryce) and a GeForce GTX 1060 for Iray. I'm just having that teething trouble that's often the case with new computers where it takes seemingly a hundred years to get all your stuff reinstalled and set up as you like :P

Aethyr

Richard, I don't have access to the old machine anymore, just the system drive from it. I don't know if I can run DS from there and export but I'll try. I haven't done anything with Smart Content though so it might be fine.

Richard Haseltine

Well, if you have the same content isntalled the database should be in .\Users\YOU\AppData\Roaming\Daz 3D\cms\ContentCluster on the old drive.

What might work is to use Edit>Prefrences>CMS Settings to point the ContentCluster directory to a copy of the old database, export its user data, go back to the real ContentCluster directory on your new machine, and reimport metadata. But I'd make sure there were back-ups of both old and new databases (made with DS, DIM, and Carrara closed) first.

Aethyr

Hm. I think I'll have to try the database thing. DS starts up fine but trying to load a scene complains about loads of things being missing, even though they're in the mapped content directory same as before. I guess it's a more complicated setup than I thought, but hopefully I can get it going.

xyer0

I have a similar question: I have filled up an external drive on which I store my content. I would like to copy the content to a larger drive without having to set up the directory manager again with different locations (I have lots of third party content thoroughly organised by folder). Can I name the new drive the same name as the old drive without causing myself a problem?

NorthOf45

Try it, you are not losing anything if you copy it all and keep the old drive for a while. Copy everything to the new drive, and remove the old one. Now make sure the new one gets the same letter assignment (right-click "This PC" -> Manage > Storage -> Disk Management -> Right-Click on the appropriate volume -> Change Drive Letter and Paths). You might need to restart the PC.

Changing the library paths in Studio is not really that difficult, unless you have a LOT of different libraries. You only need the top level folder of each one. You can even set up different sets of libraries so that you can switch between them on the fly.

Richard Haseltine

Merged threads so people can see what went before.

Do you have the new locations correctly set as content directories in DS - a screenshot of the Content Directory Manager showing the paths may help (Edit>Preferences>Content tab, click Content Directory Manager and expand to show the current paths).

Not being able to talk to the CMS would certainly cause issues, what security software are you running?

Aethyr

Thanks Richard, didn't intend to cause confusion. Whatever I've done seems to have got it working now -- it's still not connecting to the CMS properly, but that only ever seemed to cause problems with Daz Connect, which is only a few items anyway.

I have no idea what I did but apparently it works now, and jeez Iray is lightning fast on a GTX 1060 compared to running on my old CPU.

I know for gaming purposes there's software like 3DMark, but I was wondering if there's any kind of scene I can set up that would enable me to benchmark my new PC's performance for Iray? It's not vitally important but I imagine it would be useful for plenty of people :)

Richard Haseltine

There's https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/53771/iray-starter-scene-post-your-benchmarks/p1

vengence_is_myne_a6fc242c44

ok so how do you do this for 3.1 version of daz studio? because much like Aethyr i am having the same issue loading, with it asking for textures. I recently got a new computer, and I thought things would be fine as my content was on an external drive (But i also got a new external hard drive and moved everything over and renamed the drive and paths). i have done this before and everything worked fine but not this time.

i was using windows 7 and update to windows 10. i moved all the files from one computer to next and even reinstalled daz Studio as like before. But when loading a scene its asking to locate the texture files, and they are excatly where they were before so now i have to hunt done all the textures. if i hit skip it brings in a white character and clothing. please help me. i truely dont want to update to 4. because i love 3.1