Switching from PC to Mac: How To, Safely?
stlegends
Posts: 18
Greetings all;
I'm finally decommissioning my 10-year old Dell running 32-Bit Vista on 4GB RAM, and moving to a much more powerful 64Bit iMac (mainly because my employer now insists that I do all my work on a Mac.)
I have about 18GB of files for my project (Star Trek Legends). What is the process of installing Daz3D onto a Mac? I see on my PC where there are like 3 different RunTime folders, one in Public/Public Documents, the other two in My Documents/Daz 3D.
Anyhow, my questions are
(1) How do I round up all those files and put them onto my iMac so that I can resume work in DS?
(2) What are the corresponding directories for the RunTime folders to be installed in? I'd hate to have to rebuild all of them, which is why I'm keeping the old Dell on stand-by until the transfer is complete.
(3) What about 32Bit -vs- 64Bit issues?
(4) Should I just bite the bullet and get Windows 7 on the Mac through Parallels? That's something I'd be more than willing to do, especially if it makes the Daz3D content migration a lot easier.
My apologies if these questions have already been answered, and/or if the questions are rambling/incoherent, but I greatly appreciate any and all help. :)
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Comments
(1) How do I round up all those files and put them onto my iMac so that I can resume work in DS?
Believe it or not, you could just copy them to a directory on your computer and add the directory to DS's Content list. The files are platform independent. If you don't want to have a separate content folder to have to manage, get a copy of RSRConv. It can handle the merging and can even convert old image issues from old Poser runtimes to PNG files for the Mac.
http://braintrigger.com/software/RSRConv/
(2) What are the corresponding directories for the RunTime folders to be installed in? I’d hate to have to rebuild all of them, which is why I’m keeping the old Dell on stand-by until the transfer is complete.
Not required.
(3) What about 32Bit -vs- 64Bit issues?
No issues. I use both. 32bit still has a working Mimic and allows more control over Dynamic Clothing if you have the plugin. Not everything has been converted to 64bit, but those are the only two I've run into.
(4) Should I just bite the bullet and get Windows 7 on the Mac through Parallels? That’s something I’d be more than willing to do, especially if it makes the Daz3D content migration a lot easier.
No. It's slower than molasses and you'll hate it. Parallels is great for HAVING to do something on the PC, but not for regular use. I have it and I mostly use it to test site designs on other browsers, but there are a few niche apps I also use, but rarely.
I though Macs could simply dual boot with Windows?
I'm not sure what the reply to 2) means - the Mac version of DS does have equivalent default locations, though (as with Windows) they aren't compulsory (for DS, a couple of plug-ins do insist on placing files in the \DAZ 3D\Studio folder in the user's Documents folder). The mac equivalent of the Public Documents folder is the Shared documents folder and will be used by default by the DAZ Install Manager.
It's not a dual boot. You can create a 'bootcamp' partition and install Windows. You can then install some Apple software that will give you complete access to every component on the computer. However, you can only boot into one or the other, not both.
You can use Parallels to access Bootcamp without having to boot into it while in the Mac OS, but it's not faster. That's how I currently have it setup. I've been using BootCamp and Parallels for years and while it's a nice thing to have, it's far from a perfect solution. I try to work as much in the Mac environment as possible and only load Parallels when necessary. When I need to use a PC app for any extended amount of time, I shut down the Mac and boot up into Bootcamp, get what I need done, then reboot into the Mac again.
As for DS installs, if you use DIM, it's really straightforward. Any individual installers will put everything where it needs to be. You shouldn't need to move stuff over like plugins and the like.
Content can be copied. No conversions are necessary.
the vast majority of your Studio and Poser content will run fine from the PC when you migrate it over to the Mac but a clean install of any program you run outside your runtime (plugins) will be necessary.
if you virtualize a windows session in Parallels, VMWare fusion or Virtual Box you can pretty much run anything windows but it's going to share resources and slow down your MacOS and Windows sessions the more power something needs so if your running heavy graphics l(games, graphics or design) it's going to be dog slow and you may run into issues with video refresh and video functionality.
another possibility is Wine which will run some PC apps inside mac.
http://winebottler.kronenberg.org/
Parallels and VMWare are about $50-$80 depending on promotions and Virtual Box and Wine are free
If you run BootCamp on a mac that came with anything past OS 10.6 installed the BootCamp software will not allow you to install any version of Windows XP. If you installed XP (SP3) when you had OS 10.5 it will boot and run it but it has to be grandfathered with the pervious Mac OS X. The newer iMacs will allow you to install Windows 7 or Windows 8. You need a licensed copy of 7 or 8 and a license number that not being used anywhere else. (e.g. You can't install it on your PC then try to use that serial on the Mac boot, it will call back to MS and see the serial is in use and de-license it.)
For more on boot camp:
http://www.apple.com/support/bootcamp/
Keep in mind you can NOT downgrade a mac to any Mac OS lower than what it shipped to you with without resorting to hacking (and voiding your warranty) and my experience with os 10.9.5 so far has not made me feel all warm and toasty inside, but I have OS 10.9.4 on 4 iMacs right now and they are hammered all day with Adobe CS5.5 and so-far-so-good from the users in front of them I support.
Many thanks to all, this is all very helpful.
I managed to get most of my DS content installed fine on the new iMac without a problem,thanks to the great advice in this thread. My Carrara crashes non-stop, however, on some files, such as when I change camera-views. I get the dreaded:
error. Plus because evidently I'm an idiot, most of my earliest works in Carrara (about 7-9 years ago, about 6GB worth) uses BMP files for textures - which Carrara on a Mac doesn't read. I may end up having to use Parallels after all, instead of re-saving 6GB of BMP files as JPG's. This iMac has 32GB RAM and 4GB Video Ram, so I'm hoping that will help with the speed if I have to use Carrara through Parallels/Win7.
Again, many many thanks. :)
You should be able to do batch conversions if you have Photoshop. You can use JPGs or PNGs on the Mac. BMPs are Windows only, where as JPGs and PNGs are platform independent.
I have Carrara and I've never run into that error.
You might want to run a Permissions check on your Mac. In the Utilities folder (inside the Applications folder), there's a utility called Disk Utility. Open it up, select your Macintosh HD, then click the button 'Repair Permissions'. That might fix your exception error.
Thank you a thousand times! At the risk of jinxing myself, that seemed to have done it. I'm still processing gigabytes of BMP files (some by batch, others manually since my texture-filing system was rather haphazard) but so far all my files that kept crashing Carrara are working now. Repairing the permissions seemed to do the trick - it ran for about ten minutes and found a TON of errors that it fixed. Again, MANY thanks! :)
I'd recommend running that about once a month. If you have a UPS with voltage regulation, then you won't need to do that, but the Mac OS is constantly tweaking permissions and the like and if you have brownouts, which most people don't really notice, it can corrupt them. Fortunately, permissions are non-volatile in that they can be completely removed and the application or item that needs it will just make a new default set.
If you have ever seen a light in a room dim a bit and then get bright again, that's a direct result of a brownout. While not a problem for most electronics, that's not the issue for data driven items like computers. Laptops have some protection, but desktops do not. If you get a UPS with voltage regulation, you will eliminate these potential issues. In addition, if your equipment were to ever be damaged due to the UPS not protecting it, they usually have like $40,000 in insurance to cover the costs of any damage.
That's very good to know, thanks for the great advice. This computer is only two days old, but we do have brownouts here quite a bit in this neighborhood for some reason. I'll make getting a UPS a priority - as much as the iMac itself cost, dropping $100 for a UPS is a wise investment. Also, I just finished re-texturing the refit Enterprise 1701-A, and she's a beaut. She renders at top quality in HD with maximum-quality lighting in less than ten seconds - what used to take about three minutes on my old rig. Looks like "Star Trek: Legends" may even launch on time (knock on wood...) and with higher-quality renders now, thanks to the great help in this thread.