Supposedly you can 'share' libraries, but things like CMS would probably need to have separate installs. I haven't tried this though, so you may need to do some googling/reading...
Thanks, I looked, it confirms my observations,
IF DAZ has not changed the way the application is installed with 4.24 - in the past I already backed up daz simply by brutally copying the folder with the program and putting it back when things were screwed up by the upgrade.
About the CMS, the CMS DB is actually PostgreSQL, a very solid open source database, you can have n client applications connecting to the same database without a sweat, so there is no need to have a separate installation.
That would further complicate a bit, you can have n installations of postgreSQL, I have a second postgresql, different version, that I do not use for DAZ, but then you would need to also make sure to indicate for each a different port number, and make sure that each DAZ installation is configured with the correct DB port number for its postgresql installation.
The worry is more about the installation recreating (overwriting) the existing DB or changing the DB schema in a way that cannot be read from the previous version, if I tell it to install in parallel instead of doing an upgrade in place - though in theory till when the version of the postgresql is the same, I can always back it up and put it back.
It is just that if I have to do all that, and then eventually rollback, it risks to be quite some time lost, and one wrong step, can be enough to mess things (also because to be sure, need to backup also the DIM config and directory, DAZ profile, etc.).
You can also start up two Daz instances, but again this gets a bit complicateed. You need separate shortcuts, and there's a 'trick'. Not sure if 4.23 changes this possibility, again google for info.
Oh, I have already done it, thanks.
To be honest, I used the small script that can be downloaded around, but I have noticed in reality that script simply uses an option (badly documented, though can be found with a search) you can give on the command line.
The advantage of the script compared with modifying the shortcut is that in theory you could use the script to launch n copies, while to do the same with shortcuts you would need to create a shortcut for each copy, though in practice I only tried with two instance anyway, because that was all I needed.
In all fairness, the script also has other options, it is more complete, you can chose a different configuration path etc. but also those, I think are are all command line options, it is just that they seem not to be documented - I suspect the script was something they used internally for testing, although I know it was then released in a forum on the DAZ web site.
Also, iray is solid enough to have more than one program trying to use the graphic cards at the same time, in the end GPUs are about parallelisation, but I would not try to render from to instances of Daz at the same time, I think DAZ itself would crash then.
But to do e.g. dForce simulation with one card in one instance, while in another instance I load another scene/character and/or do a render, it worked fine (though I carefully told the second instance not to use for Iray the card that was being used for dForce by the first instance).
I am sure 4.23 did not take that away, is the version I am using. It is also probable with 4.24 will still work, having the same codebase.
A different matter is 2025, there it seems they changed libraries and good part of the code base, so I would not be surprised if that breaks down (and not only that :-().
Edit: One other note. If you aren't aware, F95Zone maintains a repository of sorts of previous versions of Daz Studio, here:
https://f95zone.to/threads/daz-studio-repository.215178/
This allows you to avoid having to submit a ticket to the Daz3D.com customer service team to get a previous version of Daz Studio. This is useful mainly for older products that don't play well with current versions of Daz, but the downside is that some things introduced more recently may not work properly. As an example, I'm currently using 4.16, and a number of more recent hair products often don't work/show correctly.
Thanks, I had found that once, but unfortunately they did not have the version that I was looking for (because at the time I did not want to go two versions back and risk having to reinstall everything).
But I saw that now they also have 4.21, and I tried to "smarten up" a bit after seeing some upgrade screw-up, and try to keep a couple of versions back on a disk - though I think 4.21 was the last one for which one can get a DIM package, after, is exe, and for 4.23, I have only 4.23.0.1, the updates after were done online by the software.
is that should be still supported by new versions of CUDA and Iray for the next 4 years (or maybe more).
