VAR files, Appearance Presets and Clothing Presets

[jsin44]

Hello. Due to loading times getting so long I am reinstalling VAM as I am a little more familiar with the file structure and hope to manage it better this time. and so I have a question about which VAR files need to be kept.

If load a VAR file with a Look in it and then save that look as an appearance preset, do I still have to keep the VAR our file in my add-on packages or can I delete it?

Also, if I save the clothes on that look as a clothing preset, do I again have to keep that VAR file in my add-on packages in order for those clothing presets to work?

Thanks,

 

[atani]

A preset is text information only. A VAR with a look usually has non-text files, texture images for example, and those you'll still need. What the preset does is store in itself whatever is text based, like the values of morphs, hairs, etc, and for non text information it will store the paths to load them, like VAR:/Custom/Atom/Person/Texture/thistexture.png.

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

 

[jsin44]

A preset is text information only. A VAR with a look usually has non-text files, texture images for example, and those you'll still need. What the preset does is store in itself whatever is text based, like the values of morphs, hairs, etc, and for non text information it will store the paths to load them, like VAR:/Custom/Atom/Person/Texture/thistexture.png.

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

Okay, thanks. That is great information.
Is there another way of saving non-text information out of my add-on packages folder? Or is the system designed so that all the content remains in that folder inside of VAR files and the stuff that you saved essentially references it?
I'm essentially wondering if there's any way to harvest a VAR file so that I don't have to keep it in add-on packages.
Thanks for the resource.

 

[atani]

If you read the guides you shoulld see a VAR is a zip file and like all you can extract its files.
Extracting the files of a VAR to VaM does create several problems, you should be aware of that.

 

[jsin44]

If you read the guides you shoulld see a VAR is a zip file and like all you can extract its files.
Extracting the files of a VAR to VaM does create several problems, you should be aware of that.

Right, I read that but it didn't click that I could use that for my harvesting strategy.
So you would say for general performance it's best to keep the VAR files for the content in the add-on packages folder and just try to control how many files you add?

 

[atani]

What to do you want to accomplish?

 

[SlimerJSpud]

Right, I read that but it didn't click that I could use that for my harvesting strategy.
So you would say for general performance it's best to keep the VAR files for the content in the add-on packages folder and just try to control how many files you add?

I would say the last sentence is correct.

 

[jsin44]

What to do you want to accomplish?

Essentially I just want to keep my startup time closer to where it was when I first installed VAM. I went crazy adding stuff when I first got into it and so it took almost 4 minutes to boot up by the end.
My usage involves having a wide variety of looks and finding new scenes on occasion to add them to. I was thinking about using subfolders inside the add-on packages folder so I can add and remove things in a little more organized way. I'm pretty sure I read that doing so won't affect loading times or function of the program at all.

 

[atani]

I use folders inside AddonPackages so that I can keep it more organised and remove stuff I don't want to keep. It won't affect anything inside VaM, but you need to keep an eye to not have duplicates.
Essentially it's like this, the less you have the closer it will be to the performance of a clean VaM.
Then you can also optimise what you have in appearance presets. Hair and clothing can come from the creators with insane Sim cycles, especially hair. I usually tone them down to 20, it's a good balance between looking good and performance.

I don't have experience with the tools to manage VARs that you can find around here, I went fully manual work a long time ago.

 

[SlimerJSpud]

For addon packages I'm not using anymore, but I might want to come back to someday, I have a top-level folder in Vam called 000Holding. I just drag the package and maybe its dependencies into there where Vam can't see it. For stuff I try and really don't like, there's always Shift-Delete. You can do the same with local saves of scenes you mod, and appearance presets.