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Installation

Octo Vector Bridge is three tools in one licence — a Harmony import window, a Blender add-on, and a Maya module. Install only the ones you use.

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 Vector Bridge — 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:

  1. Detected hosts — the Harmony, Blender and Maya install paths found on this machine.
  2. Products — one row per product, one checkbox per application. Nothing is ticked by default; tick Octo Vector Bridge under Harmony, Blender and/or Maya. A checkbox is disabled when that application was not detected.
  3. 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.

One activation covers every DCC — for that product

Licences are per product. Activating Octo Vector Bridge 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 Vector Bridge 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 row of the product you want gone and press Uninstall. Removal is per product and precise: the installer removes only the paths it recorded for that product, so the other Octo tools on the machine are untouched.

What lands where

Target Shape Location
Harmony OctoVectorBridge.js and OVB_DiagnosticTest.js loose in the scripts root, plus the octoVectorBridge/ bundle beside them Windows %APPDATA%\Toon Boom Animation\<product>\<version>-scripts\ · macOS ~/Library/Preferences/Toon Boom Animation/<product>/<version>-scripts/
Blender the octo_vector_bridge/ 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_vector_bridge/ plus an octo_vector_bridge.mod module file Windows ~/Documents/maya/modules/ · macOS ~/Library/Preferences/Autodesk/maya/modules/ (version-agnostic)

Harmony only registers scripts found in the scripts root

The two .js files must sit loose in <version>-scripts/, never inside a subfolder, and the Python package must be in a folder named exactly octoVectorBridge — that is the name the .js resolves. The installer gets this right; if you deploy by hand, match it exactly.

Harmony needs a system Python 3.9

Harmony launches user scripts through a system Python 3.9 on PATH — that requirement applies to every Octo Tools product, not just this one. Versions 3.10 and newer are silently ignored: the script simply doesn't run, with no error.

Octo Vector Bridge needs that external Python 3.9 for a second reason as well: its variable-thickness pass runs through OMC, driven from a separate 3.9 interpreter. The installer detects Python 3.9 and warns if it's missing — it never blocks; you can install Python afterwards.

Why an external Python?

Harmony ships its own embedded Python, but the OMC thickness API is driven from a separate 3.9 interpreter. A mismatched interpreter is worse than a documented one — so OVB asks you to install a standard Python 3.9 and points to it.

Potrace is bundled

The Potrace tracing engine ships inside the Harmony package (bin/potrace), so bitmap → vector works out of the box — nothing extra to install. Potrace is GPL and travels by mere aggregation; OVB itself stays proprietary.

Manual install

On a locked-down machine where you can't run an installer, deploy by hand — the layout above is the whole contract.

  • Harmony — copy OctoVectorBridge.js and OVB_DiagnosticTest.js into <version>-scripts/, and the Python package into <version>-scripts/octoVectorBridge/. Restart Harmony.
  • Blender — Edit → Preferences → Add-ons → Install from Disk, pick the octo_vector_bridge zip, then enable Octo Vector Bridge in the list.
  • Maya — copy octo_vector_bridge/ and octo_vector_bridge.mod into your Maya modules/ folder and restart Maya.

Opening the tools

  • Harmony — run the Octo Vector Bridge script from the Scripts menu (or its toolbar button).
  • Blender — enable the add-on, then open the Octo VB tab in the 3D-view sidebar (N).
  • Maya — the module adds a shelf button, or run import maya_bridge.launch as ovb; ovb.show().

The first launch starts a 30-day trial. See Licensing & Activation.