Installation¶

Octo Transform Sync is three tools under one licence — a Harmony window, a Blender add-on, and a Maya shelf tool. Install only the applications you actually work in; OTS never requires all three.

Requirements¶

	Version	Notes
Toon Boom Harmony	21 Premium or later	Needs Python 3.9 installed on the system and on `PATH`. Essentials and Advanced have no Python scripting
Blender	4.2 or later	Uses Blender's own bundled Python
Autodesk Maya	2022 or later	Uses Maya's own bundled Python

Qt/PySide ships with every host, and the OTS engine imports nothing outside the Python standard library — there are no packages to install. Windows and macOS are supported.

The Octo Tools Installer¶

There is one installer for the whole Octo Tools suite. You download it once, tick the products you bought — here, Octo Transform Sync — tick the applications to deploy into, and press Install.

Platform	What you run
Windows	`Octo-Tools-Installer.exe`
macOS	`Install Octo Tools.command`

macOS ships as a script, not a signed app

Install Octo Tools.command is a plain shell script that runs the same Python code as the Windows build — there is no .app, no code signing and no notarization. Double-click it to run. If macOS refuses, make it executable once:

chmod +x "Install Octo Tools.command"

The window has three parts:

Detected hosts — the Harmony, Blender and Maya install paths found on this machine.
Products — one row per product, one checkbox per application. Nothing is ticked by default; tick Octo Transform Sync under the hosts you use. A checkbox is disabled when that application was not detected.
Licence key (optional) — one field per product row. You can leave it empty and activate later inside the app.

Each ticked target is deployed to its native location, and the installer records exactly what it wrote in an uninstall manifest.

That's the whole install. The sections below describe what the installer does for each host — follow them only if you'd rather deploy by hand, or you're on a locked-down machine where running an installer isn't an option.

One activation covers every host — for that product

Licences are per product. Activating Octo Transform Sync once covers Harmony, Blender and Maya on that machine — you don't activate three times. Other Octo Tools products have their own licences and their own keys; one key never unlocks the suite.

Administrator¶

Octo Transform Sync installs entirely per user and needs no elevation. The installer only asks for administrator rights when Octo Skip Nodes is also ticked, because that product registers keyboard shortcuts inside Harmony's own install folder.

Uninstalling¶

Tick the Octo Transform Sync row and press Uninstall. Removal is per product and precise: the installer removes only the paths it recorded for Octo Transform Sync — files inside shared folders such as Harmony's script-icons are recorded individually — so the other Octo tools on the machine are untouched.

What lands where¶

Target	Shape	Location
Harmony	`OctoTransformSync.js` loose in the scripts root, plus the `octoTransformSync/` bundle beside it and the shared `script-icons/` folder	Windows `%APPDATA%\Toon Boom Animation\<product>\<version>-scripts\` · macOS `~/Library/Preferences/Toon Boom Animation/<product>/<version>-scripts/`
Blender	the `octo_transform_sync/` add-on folder	Windows `%APPDATA%\Blender Foundation\Blender\<version>\extensions\user_default\` · macOS `~/Library/Application Support/Blender/<version>/extensions/user_default/` (4.2+; older Blender uses `scripts/addons/`)
Maya	`octo_transform_sync/` plus an `octo_transform_sync.mod` module file	Windows `~/Documents/maya/modules/` · macOS `~/Library/Preferences/Autodesk/maya/modules/` (version-agnostic)

Manual — Harmony¶

Harmony only registers .js files found in the scripts root, never in a subfolder, and the .js resolves its Python from a sibling folder named exactly octoTransformSync. So the layout is:

Platform	Location
Windows	`%APPDATA%\Toon Boom Animation\Toon Boom Harmony Premium\<version>-scripts\`
macOS	`~/Library/Preferences/Toon Boom Animation/Toon Boom Harmony Premium/<version>-scripts/`

In that folder, place OctoTransformSync.js loose, the rest of the harmony/ contents plus ots_core/ and ots_ui/ inside an octoTransformSync/ folder, and merge harmony/script-icons/ into the existing script-icons/ folder (never replace it — it belongs to every Toon Boom script, not just ours).

Restart Harmony, then run the OctoTransformSync script from the Scripts toolbar. The window opens on top of Harmony and stays there; launching it again while it's open just raises it.

Harmony needs Python 3.9 specifically

Harmony launches user scripts through a system Python 3.9 on PATH. A 3.10 or newer interpreter is silently ignored — the script simply won't run, with no error. Install the 64-bit Python 3.9 and tick Add Python to PATH. This applies to every Octo Tools product, not just OTS.

Manual — Blender¶

Zip the blender/ folder and install it as an add-on:

Edit → Preferences → Add-ons → Install from Disk
Pick the zip, then enable Octo Transform Sync in the list.
Open the 3D-view sidebar with N and select the OTS tab.

Everything happens in that sidebar panel — there is no separate window.

Manual — Maya¶

Easiest — drag and drop. Drag maya/install_maya.py from the OTS folder into the Maya viewport (the 3D area, not the Script Editor). The installer:

Adds OTS to Maya's Python path, and makes it permanent by appending a guarded block to your userSetup.py (re-running it won't duplicate the block).
Adds an OTS button to your current shelf.
Saves the shelf and opens the window straight away.

Click the shelf button any time afterwards.

Script Editor — manual. In a Python tab:

import sys; sys.path.insert(0, r"C:\path\to\octo_transform_sync\maya")
import launch_transform_sync_maya as ots
ots.install_shelf()        # one-time: adds the "OTS" shelf button
ots.main()                 # opens the window

install_shelf() is idempotent — if an OTS button already exists on any shelf, it is updated in place rather than duplicated.

The trial and your licence¶

On first launch OTS starts a 30-day trial with every feature unlocked. A banner at the bottom of the window counts the days down, and turns red in the final three.

The licence is stored in a shared, application-neutral folder, so activating in one host unlocks the others on that machine — you don't activate three times. It unlocks Octo Transform Sync only; the other Octo Tools products are licensed separately.

See Licensing & Activation.

Next¶

Go to Quick Start for a first transfer end to end, or Interface Overview for a tour of the window.