I finally found time to install my upgrades of CC4 and IC8.  I'm facing an issue that i assumed would be all over the forum, but I checked every message and nobody has mentioned it.  Over time I've purchased tens of Gigabytes of props, clothes, etc from the Content Store and Marketplace, yet CC4 and IC8 want me to download them all again!  That would take me days, not to mention using a huge amount of disk space duplicating items already downloaded for CC3 and IC7, which I am temporarily keeping in case of compatibility issues.  Am I missing something here?  Thank you!

Can you not just copy the contents of your folders over to the new one? I know Custom folders are supposed to work like that. You just target the Gallery to the new folders.

I don't know where to copy to, nor do I know if the subfolder structure is the same.

Besides, it seems crazy to need to have TWO identical copies of everything!  Surely there must be a way to make IC8 reference the same files as those already existing for IC7.  I just checked, and I have 134 GB in the Template folder!

Well, I don't have 8/4 yet, as I'm waiting to see if all the plugins I bought for 7 will migrate to 8. If I have to pay to upgrade those, as well, it's not worth the purchase. However, the default directories should still be same, except they merged the CC and IC folders to the same directories, instead of having two. They should still be found in:

C:\Users\Public\Documents\Reallusion

If you changed your documents folder to another drive, like I did, you'll just have to point it to that directory, instead.



You should be able to point the Smart Gallery at specific directories and yes, this was a complaint of mine with 7/3. It's a waste of space, but I believe it was done, due to some people only buying IC or only buying CC.

I have always kept content installations separate, as a newer version may alter existing content to make it compatible. At least, we now share between IC8 and CC4, but that has required a restructuring of Template and Custom folders.

There is now a Reallusion Template and a Reallusion Custom without designation of a version, which to me indicates that there will be content sharing going forward.

The underlying folder structure hasn't changed much, so you could try to copy a few things from iClone 7 to iClone 8 and then do a select "Sync installed contents" (I think that that's what it is called) and see if it gets picked up. The content placeholders should already be there.

Wholesale copying/moving will not work because a lot of legacy content is just placed directly under the Reallusion Template folder. So it's hard to know where things go. 

I've just reinstalled, but I have a fast internet connection, so it wasn't too bad. And once you've done iClone 8, all shared content with CC4 will update quickly within CC.

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Animagic - Are you keeping IC7 at least for a while like I am?  If so, you are keeping TWO copies of everything, right?  One in the IC7 IC or CC template folder, and one in the new merged folder.  I can do that as a last resort, but what I'm really searching for is a way to avoid duplicates of 134 GB of items!  And what about Smart Gallery organization?  Because SmartGallery no longer exists, just copying/moving will likely fail, because the correct file index structures will not be present.

I sure wish Reallusion would have published a guide to solving this problem.  So far it looks like I'm going to be a double loser: I'll have to re-download everything, which will take many days due to my slow internet, and I'll end up with 134 GB of duplicated data, which makes disk backup to thumb drives a lot harder.  There has to be a better way.  I sure hope so.

Yes, I keep separate copies.

One reason is that if you load some older content you get the following message:



So, like I assumed, iClone 8 will convert the file and it would no longer be useable in iClone 7. Which may be OK, but sometimes you may want to go back, especially in the beginning.

In the past, some form transition strategy for content was provided, but that is now indeed missing.

Now what you could try, as has been suggested, is adding the path to the template folder of iClone 7.

In Content Manager, select settings from the drop-down:



The Settings dialog will open:



Click the + sign next to the template folder path. A warning will be displayed, click OK to close it.

A file browser will open. Select the "Template\iClone 7 Template" folder. It will be added as one of the Template folders.



What I don't know if Content Manager will actually pick-up content from that new path. There is a topic in the manual that explains about content in multiple locations:

https://manual.reallusion.com/content-manager/2.0/05-storing-contents/storing-template-contents-in-multiple-drives.htm.

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Thank you for that detailed answer!  I'll wait a little while to see if anyone else chimes in, then get to work on arranging things.

Well, I tried adding the old IC7 template path to the IC8 list of paths, and that didn't solve anything.  Oh well.

I wish there were some "download every #$%^ item" command.  Then I could fire it up when I go to bed and see how far it got in the morning.  But I think that I'm going to have to individually click every single CC and IC pack, one at a time, and wait for each to download before I can click the next.  Some of these packs take 15 minutes to download.  I live way out in the mountains of Pennsylvania, where internet packets are still carried by squirrels.

Can't you just copy and paste the IC7 custom prop folder to the IC8 custom prop folder. And other IC7 custom folders to IC8 custom folders.  I don't have IC8. I copied and pasted some CC3 characters and IC7 motions to the CC4 custom folders with the same name. IC7 custom motions I copied and pasted to the CC4 custom animation folder. Everything worked fine for me.