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Transferring Content and Saved Presets to a New Computer

amysparklesamysparkles Posts: 99
edited November 2021 in Daz Studio Discussion

So, my new custom built computer should arrive sometime next week and at the moment I am trying to figure out all the steps involved in transferring my content. I thought it would be a simple matter of copying all the directories from my current computer to my new computer after installing Daz Studio. But after a little research that does not seem to be the case. There appears to be several other steps involved which seem a little convoluted to me.

 

From what I understand so far, to transfer all my content to the new computer, I can copy everything over (I was going to do this by copying everything to an external SSD, and then plugging that into the new computer and transferring everything over, keeping the same directories and relative paths intact.), But once I have copied it all over, I then have to load DIM, select 'work offline', then uninstall and reinstall all my content.

 

The balagan for me is I have quite a lot of content now, so uninstalling everything and then reinstalling it is going to take some time. Especially if various items have to be installed in a particular order? Or, does the order not matter and I can just 'install all' and leave it running?

 

My other concerns involve all my saved shapes, material presets, shader presets, scene presets, etc, that I have stored in the default 'saved files'. Will they all transfer over and be visible in Smart Content too? I created quite a lot of characters using the morph sliders and I would hate to lose them!

I also have various other hairstyles that have been converted between Genesis 8 and Genesis 3 using the Hair Converter. Same with my G3-G8 pose converter, scene optimizer, brow remover and wow brow, and various other scripts.

 

My final worry is what about my custom theme? Where are the saved theme files... well, saved? I set up Daz Studio to how I like it, and it's going to be difficult setting everything up again.

 

For now, I plan to keep the directories in their same relative locations to avoid added frustration. I was just going to copy 'My Documents' and 'My Public Documents' from the old computer to the new computer. Is there anywhere else Daz saves settings and files that I should copy over? I noticed there's a Daz folder in  AppData/Roaming too. So I assume I should transfer that to the new computer too?

 

Hopefully if I can get all the steps correct in my head, then when my new computer arrives I can just get it done as painlessly as possible.

 

Post edited by amysparkles on

Comments

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 100,842

    amysparkles said:

    So, I my new custom built computer should arrive sometime next week and at the moment I am trying to figure out all the steps involved in transferring my content. I thought it would be a simple matter of copying all the directories from my current computer to my new computer after installing Daz Studio. But after a little research that does not seem to be the case. There appears to be several other steps involved which seem a little convoluted to me.

     

    From what I understand so far, to transfer all my content to the new computer, I can copy everything over (I was going to do this by copying everything to an external SSD, and then plugging that into the new computer and transferring everything over, keeping the same directories and relative paths intact.), But once I have copied it all over, I then have to load DIM, select 'work offline', then uninstall and reinstall all my content.

     

    The balagan for me is I have quite a lot of content now, so uninstalling everything and then reinstalling it is going to take some time. Especially if various items have to be installed in a particular order? Or, does the order not matter and I can just 'install all' and leave it running?

    If you still have the zips, once you have told DIM which locations to use you just need to select everything in the Installed tab, right-click, and use the option to reinstall all seelcted using current paths. This is purely for Install Manager, though, it isn't actually needed for Daz Studio

    My other concerns involve all my saved shapes, material presets, shader presets, scene presets, etc, that I have stored in the default 'saved files'. Will they all transfer over and be visible in Smart Content too? I created quite a lot of characters using the morph sliders and I would hate to lose them!

    One the old machine open the Content Library pane option menu (the lined/hamburger button in the top corner, or right-click the tab)?Content DB Maintenance, then check Export User Data. That gets writeen you the first Daz Studio content directory, which you are going to move to the new machine. Once on the new machine and with the paths set up go to the Content DB Maintenance dialogue and this time choose the Reimport Metadata option - you will then be able to select the user data (all your settings) and any vendor data you want (this is one way to repopulate Smart Content and so on if you choose not to reinstall through DIM).

    I also have various other hairstyles that have been converted between Genesis 8 and Genesis 3 using the Hair Converter. Same with my G3-G8 pose converter, scene optimizer, brow remover and wow brow, and various other scripts.

    All of these should, as far as I know, work as long as you have copied the files across and set the directory lists up correctly

    My final worry is what about my custom theme? Where are the saved theme files... well, saved? I set up Daz Studio to how I like it, and it's going to be difficult setting everything up again.

    Layout files live in, assuming this is a Windows system,

    %AppData%/DAZ 3D/Studio4/user layouts/

    (or the Studio 4 Public Build folder for the beta), and it should be OK to copy them across to the matching location on the new system.

    For now, I plan to keep the directories in their same relative locations to avoid added frustration. I was just going to copy 'My Documents' and 'My Public Documents' from the old computer to the new computer. Is there anywhere else Daz saves settings and files that I should copy over? I noticed there's a Daz folder in  AppData/Roaming too. So I assume I should transfer that to the new computer too?

     

    Hopefully if I can get all the steps correct in my head, then when my new computer arrives I can just get it done as painlessly as possible.

     

  • amysparklesamysparkles Posts: 99
    edited November 2021

    Richard Haseltine said:

     

    If you still have the zips, once you have told DIM which locations to use you just need to select everything in the Installed tab, right-click, and use the option to reinstall all seelcted using current paths. This is purely for Install Manager, though, it isn't actually needed for Daz Studio

     

    One the old machine open the Content Library pane option menu (the lined/hamburger button in the top corner, or right-click the tab)?Content DB Maintenance, then check Export User Data. That gets writeen you the first Daz Studio content directory, which you are going to move to the new machine. Once on the new machine and with the paths set up go to the Content DB Maintenance dialogue and this time choose the Reimport Metadata option - you will then be able to select the user data (all your settings) and any vendor data you want (this is one way to repopulate Smart Content and so on if you choose not to reinstall through DIM).

     

    All of these should, as far as I know, work as long as you have copied the files across and set the directory lists up correctly

     

    Layout files live in, assuming this is a Windows system,

    %AppData%/DAZ 3D/Studio4/user layouts/

    (or the Studio 4 Public Build folder for the beta), and it should be OK to copy them across to the matching location on the new system.

     

    Thank you for replying. I received a notification today telling me my new rendering computer has been dispatched and should be with me tomorrow.

     

    By what I understand from your reply, I do not actually need to uninstall and reinstall everything via DIM? If I just install Daz Studio and then copy over all my content directories from the old computer to the new, all I have to do is Reimport Metadata. I assume this creates a file somewhere that I can transfer over for the new Daz installation to read? Then everything will function correctly.

    Or should I still uninstall and reinstall everything via DIM? Daz Install Manager is my preferred method for downloading and installing new content. I do not use Connect or Daz Central. I keep Daz Studio 'offline'. Actually, my new rendering computer will not always be connected to the internet anyway. I purchased it solely for Daz Studio and Blender.

     

    That being said, my steps will be:

    Install DIM on my new computer.

    Either install Daz Studio using the executable I can download from my account - products, or open DIM and install Studio from there.

    Copy all of the following from my old computer to my new:

    •  Everything in 'My Documents.'
    •  Everything in 'My Public Documents'
    • Any Poser content dirctories I may have (which are mostly in My Documents anyway)
    • Any other content directories (for instance, content on secondary drives) In this situation, I will ensure the drive names match. So if my second drive is 'E' then I will make sure the second drive on the new computer is also named 'E'.
    • Everything in Users/*My User Name*/AppData/Roaming/Daz3D/

     

    Once I have done all that, I open Daz Studio and right click on the Smart Content Pane and select, Content DB Maintenance -> Reimport Metadata.

    Then everything will be as it was on the old computer.

    After that, I can then open DIM and download and install all the content I purchased in recent sales. smiley

    *Thinking about it, should I also install 'PostgreSQL' immediately after installing Daz Studio and before transferring my content? 

     

     

     

    Post edited by amysparkles on
  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 100,842

    Drive and folder names don't matter for DS anmd the Content management System, they do of course matter for install manager.

    If you copy across the database, which you would if it is in the default location, then you shouldn't even need to reimport the metadata - your content should be there when you start DS and add any additional content directories via Content Directory Manager.

  • amysparklesamysparkles Posts: 99
    edited November 2021

    Okay, I had to manually install Daz Studio because I keep getting Download failed on my new rendering computer with DIM.

     

    Everything seems to have copied over fine. I just loaded up a base figure and it displays all the morphs, etc. Although it has not read the poser content directories I added (freebies from various sites), but I can readd those manually.

     

    The balagan now is the layout is displaying tabs on top of each workspace pane instead of vertically down the side. How can I set Daz Studio to display tabs vertically down the side of the pane instead of horizonatally across the top? The preview of the saved layout I copied over displays correctly, but when I select it, the tabs remain stubbornly across the top of each pane. For the life of me, I cannot remember how I did this when I first set up Daz Studio to how I wanted it to look before.

     

     

    Post edited by amysparkles on
  • amysparklesamysparkles Posts: 99

    Okays, I think I sorted it out now.

    I forgot to re-import the meta data in Daz Studio. once I did that, DIM is working perfectly fine.

     

    I figured out the tabss problem too. I knew it was a simple thing, but I was just looking in the wrong place. It's Window -> Workspace - 'Uncheck Orient Tabs Along Top'

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