Question Best way to transfer customized looks and scenes to clean install?

[unknownguy14]

Hello, my installation of VAM is out of hand. There is way too much stuff, the extreme majority of which I don't use. I am going to start a clean install, but what is the best way to transfer my favorite appearance presets and scenes to the new install?

 

[TToby]

A very simple and absolutely legal question. Unfortunately it has no simple answer. This is one of the biggest oddities for many VaM users.

This is how I would do it: copy your complete VaM installation folder to a external/spare drive for safety reasons. Now install VaM and copy/move everything you want to keep to the appropriate folders.
Your own presets, looks and scenes are saved locally. The best way to find them is to look at the file browser menu for the correct local path. Some are in VaM/saves/ other are in VaM/custom/atom/person/ folders and so on (I am at work and can't have a look).
So far so good... The big problem is, those scenes and looks all have dependencies to other stuff and plugins and nowerdays most of them are downloaded ".Var" files hiding in the big mess of the addonPackages folder. You almost can't delete stuff without breaking your own custom creations.
Unfortunately there is currently AFAIK no tool to help you with this!
This is a true pain in the ass and a lot of work for people with lots of custom stuff. I pray to the plugin coder gods to give us an (un)install manager.
If you have your own looks, presets or scenes, you have to copy them over, try every single of them and take a look at the error messages. For downloaded stuff I literally would abadon everything and download your favorites again with all the displayed dependencies.

My personal methode is the quick and dirty way and not very effective. I look through my install folder and delete only the biggest bummers. I am very curious about other users answer on this question.


Edit: Never have done this myself... In theory you have the option to create your own .Var files for your own custom stuff with the package creator. This will automatically add local dependencies and put out a list of all used .Var files. Though, this is quite cumbersome and if you have tons of older local stuff (not in .Var files) like clothes or morphs, this will multiply the needed disk space.

Edit2: For your own custom looks there is a plugin called MorphMerger to bake all used morphs together to only a single one. The downside of this is, you can't edit those looks by changing the used morph values anymore.

 

[ZRSX]

I'd go this way: create your clean install and hand-pick the best VAR and your favorite presets (can't remember where they are located by memory, but they should in a folder called "Presets", search for that). Your own scenes are under Saves/scene.

Then run your clean VAM and scan for missing dependencies.
Restart and look at the error logs, to see if your custom stuff needs something missing. Add, rescan, etc.

Main thing is: have you started to use VAM before VAR were introduced or not?
You may have some issue if it's the later and your favorites presets depend on pre-var content and you'll have to dig a bit. Easy fix: dump them

 

[TToby]

The custom Presets are at vamfolder/Custom/Atom/Person/...
Appearance = Appearance Presets
Clothes = Clothes Presets
General = General Presets
Skin = Skin Presets
and so on...

Your custom Scenes are at vamfolder/Saves/Scene
Looks saved not as a preset are in vamfolder/Person/Appearance/

Easy fix: dump them

Hahaha, you made my day
I don't know how it is for the OP, and OK, many of this is dusty old stuff: In my almost 4 years with VaM I have created more than 800+ looks and 600 (small) scenes with more than 5000 morphs from DAZ and custom ones, 3000+ custom textures (mainly hand edited FaceGen), 30GB of imported DAZ clothes, 500+ CUAs and so on... not to speak from all the downloaded scenes... and to say the truth, I like them as they are and not hidden in hundreds of VAR files together with a lot of stuff I don't want.
Sorry, for users with lots of custom stuff, this is unfortunately no option (previous text was a little bit too much).
But you are absolutely right... if someone never has downloaded something else than VAR files, than it is a bit easier.

 

[unknownguy14]

Thanks for the input, guys. I figured it might be something like moving the person and scene saves over and then finding out which dependencies also need to be copied, but I was just wondering if there was a good way to repackage things like single looks into a var to contain all dependencies.

By far my biggest "want" for VAM is better file organization.

 

[ZRSX]

Sorry, for users with lots of custom stuff, this is unfortunately no option (previous text was a little bit too much).

I'm like you (in a lesser extent, in quantity and variety ), and I like having the "full power" of VAM... which is its community content.
You can always keep an old install for enjoying it all, and a cleaned up one when you want a faster and neater VAM.

but I was just wondering if there was a good way to repackage things like single looks into a var to contain all dependencies.

Well, you can always package all your self-made stuff into VAR. Creating a VAR doesn't mean you have to share it. It could be a good way to have a list of dependencies, and missing ones could be scanned and easily downloaded in clean install if hub-hosted.

I suggest not to put too much into one, otherwise you'll probably overwhelmed by dependencies, as you very likely haven't cared for it when creating your personal content.
Any missing content will generate errors, so it might not be the best idea, depending on your content.

 

[One-Headlight]

I'm a a little late in the comments but after getting the models I want and transferring to a new copy. I decided to make another copy of VAM to test all the new stuff I downloaded. That way if there is ones you like you can transfer them to the clean copy.