Making a DAZ Studio Backup

ebergerly

For a while I've been trying to mirror my DAZ Studio setup/configuration/content on a backup computer. And I'm pretty close to giving up. Am I missing something, and it's actually easy? No matter what I do, I keep getting " A valid PostgreSQL CMS connection could not be established" on the backup computer (and yes, I've tried all the fixes, and it goes away for a while then re-appears), and scenes that can't find content. 

From what I've figured so far, you need to do at least the following to duplicate your setup on a second machine:

1. Make sure you regularly run CMS on both PC's when you buy new content, and it has installed the same content on both PC's, and in the appropriate directories
2. Make sure you've manually installed any other non-DAZ content on both PC's, and in the appropriate directories.
3. Make sure the Content Management directories you've specified are correct for each computer; keep in mind there can be many different directories which may hold your content
4. Make sure you are regularly copying all your new "personal" files (scenes, images, textures, presets) to the appropriate directories in the backup PC. Keep in mind what's on the D: drive on one PC might be on the C: drive on the other
5. Figure out how to mirror the UI preferences...
6. Some other stuff I'm obviously forgetting since it's not all working....​

​Does anyone know what else I'm missing? Or should I just give up and hope my main PC drive doesn't die?

jestmart

For #5... C:\Users\[User Name]\AppData\Roaming\DAZ 3D\Studio4\user layouts ... copy folder to other computer.

Scene files should contain relative addresses to content and textures if they where in a properly mapped library when the scene was saved.

ebergerly

jestmart said:

For #5... C:\Users\[User Name]\AppData\Roaming\DAZ 3D\Studio4\user layouts ... copy folder to other computer.

EXCELLENT!! Thanks much. That do'ed it. 

 

ebergerly

Hey, I'm wondering if the PostgreSQL CMS error is because maybe my daily synchronizing is copying the CMS folder from the main to backup computer and that's causing a problem? Which means I'd need to exclude that folder when I synchronize?  

• C:\Users\ username \AppData\Roaming\DAZ 3D/CMS 

ebergerly

Okay, that may be one of the culprits. I deleted the CMS folder, uninstalled and re-installed PostgreSQL via DIM, rebooted the machine and re-started D|S, and the error goes away. But there was no Smart Content listed, so I re-imported metadata and it appeared. 

So I guess the lesson learned is not to just copy the C:\users\username\AppData\Roaming folder, but make sure you go down another 2 levels to the DAZ3D\Studio4 directory and copy that so you don't overwrite the CMS folder. 

Now I just need to find out if any other apps need me to copy any of their entries in AppData/Roaming...geesh...this is gonna be a pain cuz I have a whole boatload of directories under Roaming where many apps have their configs. So I'll have to figure how to selectively copy those folders

 

ebergerly

I love SyncFolders....you can selectively exclude whatever folders you want from the process. So now I have two rules set up...one to copy over all AppData folders, but excluding the DAZ3D folder, and a second to only copy over the DAZ3D/Studio4 directory, and ignoring the CMS folder.

We'll see if that does the trick....

jestmart

Sorry should have been clearer, only copy the "user layouts" folder.

ebergerly

jestmart said:

Sorry should have been clearer, only copy the "user layouts" folder.

I didn't see a folder, just a couple of files named "layout" under \Studio4. So I copied those and it worked fine. 

ebergerly

Interesting.....

I have a bunch of textures I've made, and I've placed them in a folder in C:\Runtime\Textures\My Texture JPEGS. So in order to insure that every DAZ scene can grab them, I've placed a reference in Content Management to C:\Runtime, assuming it would also check the sub-folders. 

So I open the scene and it can't find those textures. So I change the CMS reference to C:\Runtime\Textures\My Texture JPEGS, and it works.

I guess you can't assume a CMS reference checks sub directories? 

 

Richard Haseltine

The CMS will store the relative path of items in a content directory, and then when loading will try adding each content diectory path to that until it finds a match or runs out of diectories. If those were textuers from products then selecting the Runtiem would be wrong - it would end up looking for C:\Runtime\Runtime\Textures\My Texture JPGs which of course doesn't exist. However, if you applied the maps from that location after adding the folder as a content directory they should work for you, but wouldn't work for other users if you packaged them with the Runtime folder.

ebergerly

Thanks Richard. Though I'm still trying to process what you're saying...

If I add a directory to the Content Directory Manager, when a scene is opened Studio will go to the CDM list, starting at the top, and seach each directory listed correct? From what I saw when editing a scene .duf file, there really aren't any directory references, except maybe as you say some relative ones? 

So when you work on a scene, add say a texture image to an object by browsing to it, Studio will take the relative path that you browsed to, put that in the scene file, and next time you open it it will assume the relative path still applies? 

So if I add a texture image with the path c:\runtime\textures\my texture jpegs, save the scene file, it will put a reference as "\textures\my texture jpegs", assuming there's a base path in the CMS directories of c:\runtime? 

I guess I'm not clear on how it extracts the relative path. Kinda confusing...

 

Richard Haseltine

If the texture is C:\My Content\Runtime\Textures\My Textures\Project A\First text.jpg and C:\My Content\ is a content directory then the scene file will have \Runtime\Textures\My Textures\Project A\First text.jpg (or rather /Runtime/Textures/My%20Textures/Project%20A/First%20text.jpg). You should not be selecting the Runtime folder, that is usually a fist level folder in the content directory.

When you load the file DS will try each content diectory in turn:

..\Documents\Daz 3D\Studio\My Library\Runtime\Textures\My Textures\Project A\First text.jpg

..\Public Documents\My Daz 3D Library\Runtime\Textures\My Textures\Project A\First text.jpg

C:\My Content\Runtime\Textures\My Textures\Project A\First text.jpg

until it finds the file and stops.

jestmart

Sorry again, I assumed you had created a custom Studio layout which would have then created the "user layouts" folder.