Moving all my work

Spur

Well the day has finally come that I have dreaded for a long time. My faithful work station of six years is finally on its last leg and within the next day or two a new work station will be taking its place. Unfortunately that means I have to transfer and re-install a ton of stuff. Working files will be easy and my first priority but I am really dreading releasing and reactivating all these keys which include the following:

Maya 2010
Photoshop CS3 (if I remember this is good for two computers simultaneously)
3ds Max 2016
Zbrush 4R7
After Effects 7


I contract to a small developer and my work station has been my life for the past several years, so I'm terrified that this process is going to be a pain and require extended downtime. My game plan is to get the new system set up. Everything transferred and installed, then take a day to transfer required keys. Do any of you have any tips, suggestions, prior experiences on dealing with something like this?

AtticusMars

IIRC ZBrush has a 2 device limit also, I've had to deactivate it and reactivate it a heap of times for upgrades (have you not been upgrading?) and I've had no problems so far.

In my experience, the biggest issue with migrating is having to reinstall addons/configure my UI and hunt down shit I forgot about. Not so much dealing with keys.

Spur

AtticusMars said:

IIRC ZBrush has a 2 device limit also, I've had to deactivate it and reactivate it a heap of times for upgrades (have you not been upgrading?) and I've had no problems so far.

In my experience, the biggest issue with migrating is having to reinstall addons/configure my UI and hunt down shit I forgot about. Not so much dealing with keys.

Thanks for the reply. Yeah I'm running Zbrush 4R7 right now but reading a thread on Zbrush central one of the mods stated "You can transfer ZBrush to another computer at any time, should you need to do so. You will simply need to send in for a new permanent serial number once ZBrush is installed in the new location. We will be happy to help you at that time." So that had me a little confused. Zbrush I dont really use a whole lot right now. Maybe once in a blue moon as work just really doesn't call for it.

The main ones I am really concerned about transferring is Maya 2010 (my main worry and most important), Photoshop (shouldn't be a big deal), and 3ds Max. Zbrush I definitely want to migrate but its not as pressing, same with After Effects.

You're right about migrating add ons, etc. The main one of those I really, really need to find and re-install for Maya is CVXporter since I have to send everything out of Maya as .x files. I've had it for a good while and remember absolutely nothing about it.

Bek

Yeah installing the OS + your programs should only take a few hours, the real timesink will be re-doing all that custom stuff you've tweaked over the years. If you can, export configs from your programs to be restored later. Also remember to backup things like custom photoshop brushes/patterns, fonts or whatever else might be important.

thomasp

if you are not upgrading to new versions of your 3d software but rather just transferring straight over then it should be simple:
- after installing max and maya on the new system, copy the respective user pref folders over from your old machine, overwriting what the installation procedure has created.
- also copy over the entire old installation folders for these programs and put them somewhere temporary to compare to the fresh installations folder by folder for missing plugins and your favourite old 3dsmax.ini, etc. some 3rd party scripts also leave odd folders and ini's here and there in the installation directories. stdplugs, scripts and everything under macroscripts are the usual suspects.

then they should start up looking mostly familiar again. in maya's case worth heading to the plugin manager right away and see if it loads what you need.

- for zbrush copy over the ZStartup folder tree and overwrite the one in the fresh installation. if you use a custom startup script, you might have to run it's plaintext-script file once from the zscript palette to register it.

- for photoshop at the very least you'll have to export your custom actions to a file and reimport in the new installation. you might be able to do the same for any shortcuts you've created. i don't think copying over entire pref folders works here though. never customized it enough to investigate much.

that should do the trick. and don't dismantle your old machine right away. keep it around for a bit while working with the new one. there's always stuff you forgot to move over. i tend to give the computers away after a bit but hold on to all the hard drives.

kanga

Yeah I hear ya. I have all my work files on external drives and have had a disk crash or two, but due to there being only the system and applications on the HDs I was up and running on a new system and internal drives (this time an SSD) in about 2 hours and it was business as usual. Just make sure you have access to all your installers for your working software and you should have no problems.

Kwramm

Autodesk products usually have a "License Transfer Utility" which lets you export and deactivate a license in a safe way. It's the recommended way to move licenses.
Folders containing presets for Maya and Max just need to be copied over to the new installation.

GhostDetector

Can't you just install your old hard drive into your new build?

Spur

Thanks guys. Some good stuff here and a few things I haven't thought about.

 

@BEK--Thanks, I didn't even think about Fonts which I have a ton of.

@ThOMASP--I'm not too terribly customized on anything. Actually very little so that shouldn't be a huge issue. It may be different once I get up and running and see I'm missing some things (its been a long time). My main concern was getting CVXPorter up and running which is vital.

I never thought about copying over the old installations for comparison. That's a good idea. I plan on keeping the old system up and running for a while even though it seems like it's running on a wing and a prayer. I think later I may recondition it, throw a few hard drives in it and use it for backup storage.

@KANGA--Two hours doesn't sound bad at all. I'm not that optimistic as I've been sweating this for a while. But its a learning experience. Once I get this monkey off my back any future change overs should be a breeze.

@KWRAMM--I thought I would fire up the LTU for Maya 2010 just for $htz and giggles and it did nothing.  So now that is my biggest sticking point, what to do without the LTU working. Looking at the Autodesk community an LTU failure seems really common but there are a lot of different answers on what exactly to do, so idk.

Spur

So going back through some of my information, my Maya license is Standalone, usage type Commercial. So that means I should be able to just install it on the new system without bothering with the LTU at all since its non-concurrent usage.

"A stand-alone license supports one or more Autodesk products for an individual user and computer.  For most Autodesk products, a copy can be installed on a second computer for “non-concurrent usage”, meaning the two copies cannot run at the same time. This allows for use of your Autodesk product on your work computer as well as your personal computer at home for example."