Question Cleanup VaM and keep only the appearances?

[nooooch]

Hi there!
I have to reduce the size of my installation folder drastically, I am ready to delete all my scenes and download again only the ones I use, but I absolutely want to keep my appearances.
So what would happen if I do a fresh install with an empty "AddonPackages" folder and copy only the appearances into the new Custom Atom Person Appearances folder?
Will it automatically download only the clothes and morphs used in those appearances?

Or another solution would be only to delete the scenes in the AddonPackages folder. Is it a way to delete only the .var files that are scenes? Maybe if we sort them by size?
Thanks a lot!

 

[LubaFoto]

Custom Atom Person Appearances, is for for your personnel save appearances, it may call for morph file found inside a .var. A clean install is not easy task, these no rule how to save appearance as var,(there no naming convention) some scenes, cloth and sometime worst, you could delete an asset that contain one of your fav appearance.
If someone have made a software that can read and no this, I am not aware of that.

In my opinion you should star here
https://hub.virtamate.com/resources/var-manager.16971/ and if you like the result you start a fresh install.

 

[atani]

Presets are just text files and do not make use of the feature that VARs do to list and download dependencies. For the record, that features comes from a text file inside the VAR - meta.json - and then VaM reads it to see the list of what are the VAR's dependencies. If you were to delete all your VARs, then anything in your appearances that called for contents from a VAR, for example a texture, would spit out errors saying it can't find it.

So you want to go forward with a clean VaM and keep your presets. That can be done, but as LubaFoto said, it's not without work on your part, but hey, you'll learn a lot about VaM and VAR management, well worth it.
First off, backup your entire VaM, and then later make backups of your new VaM. Storage is cheap, your time is not and there's things you can never ger back, do backups.

I made a python script that reads presets and creates a list for VARs that are referenced but not found in your AddonPackages folder:

Preset VAR checker - Plugins + Scripts -

This resource is a python 3 script that reads the VAR references in your preset files, compares them with your VARs, and creates a list with the differences. Latest version features: Appearance presets Clothing presets Hair presets UI for...

hub.virtamate.com

It's basic but simple, quite useful after you are on your clean VaM, move over your presets, and run the script. Then what's missing you can get from your backup.
Alternatively, you could create a VAR with all your presets and that would create that meta.json I mentioned above. Anything on the Hub would be easy to download from the built-in browser, but I guess you also have non-hub stuff too from Patreon for example. Here, go back to your backup and copy it over. See? A backup is useful, make one regardless of what you do. If you do this, make sure to set "latest" to package versions.

Would also suggest you read this guide:

anatomy of a VAR - Guides -

This guide means to show what makes a VAR a VAR A VAR is the prefered way to share content between VaM users, with the Hub hosting thousands of them as I write this guide. Yet, this file only exists from VaM version 1.20, if not mistaken, and...

hub.virtamate.com

 

[nooooch]

Thanks guys you were very helpful!

 

[nooooch]

And if I do a fresh reinstall and only move the Appearances into the new Atom/Person/Appearance folder, what will happen?
Will the new VAM ask me to download only the clothes and morphs needed for these appearances? That's what I would like.
Thanks!

 

[atani]

I responded to your question already, please read it again.

 

[nooooch]

Sorry about that!

 

[LubaFoto]

Drive:\virt-a-mate\Custom\Atom\Person\Appearance; is your personnal save preset, it also may may need .var files that have custom morph files.
Drive:\virt-a-mate\AddonPackages; containe download appearance preset and other stuff.

 

[atani]

Sorry about that!
I installed a new Vam but what do you call "presets"? Are they the actual appearances in Custom Atom Person Appearances? I don't find any Preset folder to move over in my old Vam installation?
Thank you

A preset is a .vap text file with values, paths and other text information. Lubafoto shows the path for appearance presets, there's no folder Presets, and besides Appearance there's other preset folders for other types.

Wiki Article - 08. File Types

VaM File Types .json The basic scene file for VaM is the .json file. Also used for Subscenes \Saves\scene \Custom\SubScene .vac Legacy compiled scene files. These are not commonly used anymore. Originally the scene file when packaged into a "vac" for sharing would compress the assets into...

hub.virtamate.com

As mentioned, the presets are only text information, anything not of text form, for example textures, comes from a VAR and you need to have those to have a fully working preset. The script I made lists VARs referenced in presets that are not found in AddonPackages.