Moving to the next version

PeterK

I use 3ds max, so any information specific to that would be great.

I see a lot of great workflow improvements for all of these various apps, uv scripts, interface adjustments, so on so forth. But the biggest reason that I am hesitant to implement all of these is that moving them from version 20xx to 20xx is a pain the butt.

How do you guys carry over everything you've spent a millennium installing or implementing in one version, to the next. What are your methods? what do you copy over?

I really want to start implementing a lot of these workflow enhancements, but moving a trillion files around every year or less is a major hassle. So, what's the good word my friends?

DrunkShaman

External Harddrive to save your trillion files and updating apps.

Mark Dygert

Ever since SyncViews and Renderhjs pushed me to look into .mzp files (max zip files for delivering scripts plug-ins ect...), I've been using them all over the place. They can pretty much move whatever files you need to the right spots. Its not easy to understand or set up at first but once you get it up and working everything is pretty easy to maintain and expand on.

It's been super helpful for me. First my work machine was updated and I had to migrate files UI's bla bla bla then I upgraded my home PC, same story, then we hired some contractors who needed to be set up.

You might also want to look into some simple installers. With most apps if you copy key files to the right places you can carry over the UI without much fuss.

Heres some info on mzp files and custom installers.
https://polycount.com/discussion/63675/mzp-rucksack/p1

mLichy

Yeah, I just reversed engineered Renders stuff myself, and once u know how it works, it's not hard to modify or anything really. Pretty awesome stuff

renderhjs

Part of that problem got me into scripting and textools inherits that particular issue in mind. Even though the *.max files change all the time the maxscript syntax have been impressively backwards compatible since Max R2.5 or so.
It means as a developer maxscript is pretty reliable if you migrate to a new max version.

I my uni days i worked sometimes on 6 different computers during a week all with max installations. But how do you transfer tools, shortcuts and alike over - that was kind of my problem back then.
So i started scripting which can be evaluated during runtime, so you don't need admin rights or a restart of max. Ever since that time most of the tools and scripts I did for max tried to use exactly that advantage so that I don't need to worry about not having the tools and scripts on a new or different compute / installation.

What others mentioned here is MZP (maxscript zip script) in which you can store scripts and configurations with a mzp.run script file that instructs max where to copy which files to. Its a way of wrapping up you configuration and tools once and be able to carry it with you further on.

pior

I simply:

- save my UI presets (colors, tabs, keyboard shortcuts);
- keep track of all the MCRs I install(ed) manually and keep a copy of them near my backup of the UI presets (that way I just have to drop them in UI>Macroscripts in the newer Max). A handy trick : the filenames of MCRs dont matter. So, you can rename them with a prefix so that you can easily wich one needs to be moved over!
- as for full installers and MZPs, I only use a handful of them hence its quite fast to reinstall.

With these 3 things safely stored somewhere, getting a newer version of max up to speed takes roughly 5 minutes. (I also disable all of the fancy new project folder stuff - its great in Maya but not so great in Max. So, I put all the folder settings back to absolute, in side the 3DSMax folder. I dont like the ENU stuff, and I like to find my autobaks easily, instead of running all around the MyDocuments folder)

Good luck!