Transfer all Daz Studio content from Mac to PC?
bevdog896_d08d9c913a
Posts: 119
Hey all! So I’ve been using daz for a few years now, and I’ve always used it on Mac. In fact I haven’t used a PC in general for about 10 years (yes I’m a bit of an Apple fan boy)! As you can imagine I’ve got a lot of content from stuff I’ve created to assets bought from the daz store and other 3rd party sellers.
I recently (within the last week) bought a gaming PC and it’s a bit of a monster. Nvidia gtx 1080ti, 32 gb ram etc. I thought to myself, because this thing is crazy powerful and actually uses Nvidia (mac’s do not ????) it’s abviously going to be waaaay more efficient when it comes to rendering scenes and such. This will obviously save me a lot of time as my Mac takes a really long time to render, especially when the scene is complex with full 3d backgrounds etc.
So basically does anyone know how on Earth I’d go about transferring all my daz content from Mac to Pc safely. I literally wouldn’t know where to start. Not helped by the fact that I’ve been using Apple for so long that windows 10 feels very alien to me.
Apologies if I’ve gone on a bit. Any help would be much appreciated :)
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Comments
Content, shaders, and scripts are not platform specific. You would, however, need to reinstall plug-ins and some items (mainly scripts and shaders) that put files in the application folder. However, I know someone did have some trouble tasnferring the database over; you can get around that by exporting user-data on the Mac - go to the the Content Library, open the option menu by clicking the lined button in the top corner, Content DB Maintenance, Export userdata - then copying you content across to the PC, and again going to Content Library option menu>Content DB Maintenance>Reimport Metadata.
I know this is an old post but it's the right topic I've been looking for. I'm setting up a NAS to use between my Mac and PC. I have all my content on the NAS and am trying to use local CMS files.
Things are working very well as far as the content being accessible on both platforms.
I exported data from my mac as Richard said above and saved the 2 .dsx files to my pc. In DS on the pc, I go to Content Library option menu>Content DB Maintenance>Reimport Metadata. And it loads.
My problem is only half my catagories show up. And the Reimport Metadata doesn't ask for a file (the file that I exported) so how would DS know that I even bothered to export the data? It looks like the data is coming from the daz store or something but it doesn't seem to be coming from my .dsx file. Is there something I'm missing here? Shouldn't DS ask for a dsx file?
When you export the metadata from your first machine it will save all your manual changes to a "LOCAL USER" dsx file in the Runtime/Support folder of your primary content library (the first configured one in the list). Therefore, when you want to import this into your second machine make sure that you have added the same set of Content Libraries to that machine and then run the Reimport Metadata. This process should show a list of products to be imported, all pre-checked, before it starts and the LOCAL USER one should be at the top.
The only wrinkle I can see is if you had accidentally created multiple "LOCAL USER" dsx files somehow, not sure how Daz would handle that.
I did get DS to import all installed content. I missed a couple of content directories which is why it missed them on the first go. I did put duplicate dsx files in 3 user locations, DS must have picked whichever one it saw first. Good to know about the first in DIM list as the one DS looks to. The only content not showing up is the daz connect content and some real old poser stuff. Not a surprise on that even though I copied it all to the new drive. I need to work through the connect files one by one and get them installed with DIM. Thanks.
I don't use Daz Connect but that would store it's metadata separately - I think it was json files somewhere in the Daz Connect folder. If the Content DB Maintenance does not re-read it then I don't know how to trigger that. Or even if it's possible. Hopefully you can find a way.
For the Poser stuff, make sure you also added libraries that contain Poser products under "Poser Formats" in the Content Directory Manager. You add them even if they also exist under "Daz Studio Formats" since the products are accessed/handled differently.
It isn't possible to reimport metadata for products installed with Connect - if they are lost then the only fix is to reinstall them (which should then find the files if they are still in the Daz Connect data Directory).
That is one of the reasons I abandoned Daz Connect. If a user doesn't want all of their owned products installed, the user has to go through and select each product to reinstall. It is also necessary to remember exactly what was installed and what requires what other product, etc. It was onerous. I learned this the hard way after Daz support told me to reset the database one time. Now, after all these years, Daz still hasn't made a way to read the Daz Connect metadata files and reimport them. That omission just amazes me.
I've been going through one by one replacing connect cloud files with the DIM installed versions. Takes time, but I am surprised and impressed that my catagories that I setup are auto populated even though the source has changed from the cloud folder to my pefered daz content folder. Also, somehow I had multiple copies of some Genesis figures in different content folders and again the catagories will update automatically to the one figure I kept in the content folder I chose. Very nice. If you use catagories and set them up the way you like, you can put all the items required by a product in one catagory and it's really the only way I find to be able to find everything with speed and consistancy. If you've never setup catagories here's some excellent training. https://www.daz3d.com/daz-studio-content-library