Duplicating all your Daz to another Mac
Eamon
Posts: 160
Does anybody know if you can migrate your entire Daz Studio app and library to another computer and it be exactly the same?
I essentially want to work with Daz studio on the move and and duplicate from my iMac to my MacBook Pro.
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Yes, you want to duplicate your runtime which should be in Users/Shared (and possible other places)
I would do a clean install of the application itself, and start that in an account with administrative rights.
scripts and such can likely be pulled over.
How are you connecting the two machines and what are the model numbers/types of both?
Thanks for the reply. I can always rely on folks here to help me out. :)
Well I do not have Daz at all on the MacBook Pro,2 Intel core i5. Everything is on my iMac9,1Intel Core 2 Duo.
When you have a moment can you go through the steps I need to do.
I will firstly download Daz from the this site.
Do I then install Daz to Macbook....?
PS. Dig Skyrim kitty. I am not a gamer but I do fancy that Skyrim.
Copy your Runtime folder(s) and Install Daz...
If you have plugins you may have to download and install those again.
I have no plugins that I am aware of just a lot of files and such from poser 4 to this latest Daz.
When I intall Daz will I be prompted to locate the runtime folder or do I just make sure that Daz is installed in the same way as it is on iMac?
it would be wise to use the Same Drive Locations, but I still think you would have to specifiy the Runtimes in Daz
I've had Studio on the last 4 mac OS's and it's been in the Macintosh HD:Users:Shared:My DAZ 3D Library folder for all those builds (10.6-10.9)
I would keep them there when you copy over, and try to keep your runtime on an internal disk if possible for speed unless you have a thunderbolt or USB 3.0 drive handy on the new system.
Once they are copied you probably want to run a rights verification on the newer computer
Macintosh HD:Applications:Utilities:Disk Utility:
Select the drive with the data and click Repair Permissions
How are you copying from Machine A to Machine B?
Greetings,
I use Dropbox; my runtime is located in /Users/{username}/Dropbox/My Library and shared among three computers (two Macs and a Windows box).
I can save a scene to Dropbox, go to any other computer and load it up again as if it had been created there.
Before their recent TB upgrade, I didn't have my 'rosity stuff in the same Runtime to keep under the 200GB content limit, so that was a little complex, but otherwise...it worked fine. There were a few problems with 'Smart Content' on the machines I didn't install from, and uninstalling can be a bit of a pain, but otherwise it works wonderfully. Now, with nearly 2TB available to me, I can keep all my Runtimes on Dropbox, and all my machines see all the content the same.
Plugins and anything which requires installing in the system/application folders obviously needs to be handled differently, because it won't install on the other computers automatically.
-- Morgan
When I moved mine, I used DIM since I had originally installed everything with that. I had not deleted all the zips, but had them on an external HD, so after I installed Studio and DIM on the new computer, I copied all the zips to the DIM download folder which made them available to DIM and just installed everything from there.
Thanks lads. Got a bit held up hence the late reply to this.
I have been dropped a tonne of work so I will come back to this when I actually get to do the transfer over.
I do like the idea of using the DIM to do this Cris though. That seems to be the cleanest.
Thanks again lads. :)
Cypherfox, your ideas sounds great but I worry about speed and stability with that Dropbox method.
Also, I have a few runtime folders due to the jump from Poser to Daz.
Greetings,
Yeah; Dropbox eats a bit of my network pretty consistently, although it's very nicely tunable (in terms of how much bandwidth it uses). It also has a LAN Sync which allows a machine on the local network to send directly to another machine (also on the local network) at full speeds instead of having to go up to Dropbox, then back down.Stability is only an issue in that only one machine gets the Smart Content setup correctly; the other you have to go occasionally do a 'import metadata' on. (Also uninstalls need to be done from the install machine, because it logs that path in the metadata files.)
I also have multiple Runtimes, but I'm coalescing all of them into two, one for DIM, one for non-DIM installed stuff (typically 'rosity), and both are on Dropbox now that I have 2TB of storage there. O_o!
Anyway, I'm a super-crazy-nutso-tech-head, so I have all kinds of special stuff (soft links, bandwidth controls, a NAS *and* Dropbox) set up, to be able to manage the complexity.
Whatever your choice, I wish you the best of luck getting it all set up!
-- Morgan
So I installed Daz Studio 4.6 and already this seems to be more organised than what I have on the iMac. It seemed to just find an already existing Runtime folder so I see quite a few of my figures. Genesis, Mech etc.
However, while I see things like Genesis etc, when loaded it's missing all .dsf files and the loads in as grey blocks.
I go to load the elphant and that comes up but when I choose a new texture it cannot find the texture .jpg.
Any idea whats happening there as if it's grabbing a Runtime folder to load from, why would dsf and jpg files be missing?
Anybody?
Have you tried the Migration Assistant utility to copy over the files? It should be under Applications/Utilities, and is used to copy over stuff from an older Mac to a new one.
Are you using Smart Content? That isn't a view of your content files, it's a filtered and sorted view of a database of links to your content files. If the folder path isn't identical between the two computers, the database links will still show, but the links are to the wrong (probably nonexistent) folders so the actual content files will not be found.
Double-check the folder paths in Content Directory Manager (for both D|S formats and Poser formats, these settings should be the same) and confirm that D|S is looking at the folder your content is actually in. It's distressingly easy when you're moving your content to have a folder path mismatch and not notice.
If you get missing .dsf files, you most probably have your "My Library" not pointing to the one you moved but to something installed later (by DIM. I have done this move several times (I have my runtime stuff on a separate volume or on a part of a volume, so I just copy that over either by mounting the disk over the network or my booting the source machine up in target mode (Hiold down T while booting and it will look just one big diskdrive) then copy the files over. I also copied over DIMs logfiles for what it had installed.
Then I install DIM, telling dim where the libraries are, and DS through dim.
Man, Daz is really frustrating with how it manages files.
I decided to delete everything Poser ans Daz from my machine (Mac Book). I searched and deleted every Runtime folder I could find.
So I did a basic reinstalled of Daz (though now Daz 4.7) along with all the usual starter essentials.
They are saying installed on the Download manager yet when I launch Daz and I still get flippen gray boxes for the figures when I load of a genesis. Their pictures show up in the Smart content but it says the .dsf files are missing.
Also, all my other figures like freak are listed but with no images and I didn't intall.
What the hell is going on? This is very frustrating.
Smart Content isn't a view of your content files. It's a sorted and filtered view of a database of links pointing to your content files. This database is not stored in your normal content folder location — when you reinstalled and wiped all your old content, the database was untouched and popped back up when you reinstalled.
If you haven't done any custom categories, the easiest thing is to reset the database and reimport all the data that came with your content. Go to the Content Library tab (you can not do this in the Smart Content tab), click on the Options button (top right corner of the tab, looks like a stack of four little lines) and select "Content DB Maintenance". Tick the "Reset Database" option, Accept, then go back into the dialog and tick "Re-import Metadata" and Accept. This last step might take a little while if you have a lot of content, as the database has to be rebuilt.
Note that the content database also drives the Products and Categories views in the Content Library tab; if you have problems with Smart Content, those views might not work properly either.
Thanks for the reply this much appreciated. I really need to get to grips with how this programs handles files.
Ok I have donethe Reset Database and then did Reimport Meta data. I now appear to have nothing at all. But that's at least some way to getting it sorted right?
That's odd, that should have worked. Is there a Mac expert in the house (or at least reading this thread), just in case there's a small but vital difference between Win and Mac D|S database procedures?
The root problem is probably that DIM's default install directory is not the same as Studio's default content directory, so Studio is looking in the wrong place. (This, in case you were wondering, is a classic example of Bad Program Design.)
In DIM, click the gear in the upper right corner, and go to the Installation tab. Take a look at the Path shown about halfway down the window - that's where everything is installed.
In Studio, select Preferences from the DAZStudio menu, and go to the Content Library tab. Click Content Directory Manager at the bottom.
Select Daz Studio Formats, click the Add… button on the left, and enter the path you saw in the DIM preferences. Select Poser Formats, and repeat.
Oh yes, that's something else. D|S and DIM do not talk to each other — the old default location was OK for D|S on its own, but when DIM came along the default was changed to fit in with accepted normal practice for other programs running on systems that might have more than one account installed. There was a major problem when DIM was released where people would update and suddenly "all my content got deleted!!!". It wasn't deleted, of course, it's just that DIM was installing to the new location but D|S was looking in the old location.
I'm here, lol.
There are so many questions that needs to be answered to really figure out what is going on.
- (1) What are the DAZ Studio configured content paths
- (2) What is the DIM configured install path
- (3) Which CMS database is running, postgres or Valentina?
Then we might solve this.
oh I think that's done it dude thank you!!
With those directions I now have a better understanding of how things work and I can now copy over all my Poser stuff too and use those.
The idea here was to be able to render on one computer while working on the other.
Thanks to everybody else too. I would be screwed without you guys. :)
A bit late to the party, but maybe there are scraps to be had...
Please check my math. I had a heck of a time trying to share between my mac and windows boxes, so here is what I've done. I noticed mac can't find files due to case problems, and products often refer to a.obj when the file name is a.OBJ. Mac pukes. So I setup all my content directories on the windows machine and shared them over the network. Then I made sure the content directories within each machine's daze program look identical. This seems to be working, but might not be optimum on the mac since it has to go over the wire to find content.
This solution especially helped with /data/auto_adapted directories not being found, and even seemed to help when loading some shoes. Sometimes they would not be on the person but just sitting next to them, and no amount of refitting seemed to work other than deleting and reloading the shoes.
Feel free to ignore this post and allow it to die a horribly lonely death if this all checks out and there is no better way for me to get organized.
thanks,
Paul
The reason for the case problem is that the disk on where you stored you content on the Mac was formated with a case sensitive filesystem, which is known to break a lot of things but required for running som unixprograms that rely on the capability,
Windows do not have a case sensitive filesystem (for the most part).
What do I mean with a case sensitive filesystem?
Normally, with a case insensitive filesystem, a.obj and A.Obj is the same file, if you have a.OBJ, and tries to save A.ObJ you will get a "file already exist error".
On a case sensitive filesystem, a.OBJ and A.OBj and A.obJ can all co exists as they are treated as different filenames.
Do you use Time Machine? If so, you've already got a backup of you whole internal hard drive on a remote volume. You can "restore from backup" onto more than one computer. Anything that needs a serial number to run will have to be fed the serial number. But it will duplicate the backup onto a different computer.
For myself, I install all my content libraries on an external disk and just switch it from one computer to the other. Plugins still need to be duplicated on the internals though, and I need to watch for things that require support files in the user's accounts.
Ok, I'm up for the BIG adventure. Just got my grubby little hands on the latest iMac Pro and want to migrate DAZ Studio plus reams of content over to it. If anyone can guide me through the least painful way of accomplishing this I may save the last remnants of my sanity.
Current setup: DAZ installed on my iMac (old) with entire content library (huge).
Planned setup: DAZ on iMac Pro with content library on external SSD.
I do not need access from my old machine; all matters DS will be conducted on the new.
Concerns: My content is very highly organized and customized. Will a simple copy of the library affect this?
You will need to tell Studio where the new content libraries are, and probably will need to feed the content manager the paths. But that should only need to be done once. Well once for Studio content and once for Poser content, if you sort both into the same library.
Do let us know how it goes. I'm running a circa late 2013 iMac and even though it was top of the line when I bought it, it's been a slug from the day I first got it, and no one can figure out why.
My Libraiaries are all over the place and probably duplicated so I badly need to clean it up. I'll be keeping an on how you get on.
Is there a way to in Daz to show you where an exact thing on your library is? like an alt click or something?