ZBrushCentral

ZBrush 4R2b Mac activation issue

I’ll post a support ticket, but thought I might get a quicker response here…

I’ve completed the installer as per the instructions, I click Web Activation and follow the usual process of entering my specifics and I copy the activation key. I go back to ZBrush and paste in the activation key. ZBrush says – License was successfully activated! Launching ZBrush… Then I get the Welcome to ZBrush activation screen appear again, so I’m locked in a cycle of not being able to activate.

Maybe this is a folder privileges issue, but I can’t see anything wrong with my folder access privileges in the Finder. Does anyone have any ideas…?

Thanks

Well, I’ve spent half an hour messing around with the folder privileges to no avail. I noticed in my support tickets that I had a similar issue last time round so I took that advice into consideration with no luck. For the time being I’ve just removed it and gone back to 4R2…

This is typically a problem with permissions.

Use the Finder to browse to Applications. Select the ZBrush folder (not something inside the folder). Press Cmd+I to get info on the folder.

At the bottom right corner of the Info window there’s a padlock icon. (If your permissions section is collapsed, you’ll need to expand it to see the padlock.) Click that and enter your admin login info.

Now select Everyone from the users list and change that permission to “Read & Write”.

Next, click the gear beneath the list and choose “Apply to enclosed items”.

Once done, lock permissions again and close the window.

If it already says Read & Write for Everyone, change it so something else, apply to enclosed items, change it back to Read & Write, then apply to enclosed items again.

When you start ZBrush again you will most likely need to use Web Activation again. After filling out the form you’ll get a message that “ZBrush has already been activated for this machine”. Click the button to request a copy of the activation key, which will generate a new activation code without deducting another activation from your serial number.

Hopefully that will resolve the issue. If it doesn’t you’re going to need to submit a Support ticket. Be sure to include your serial number and mention that you followed the steps in this thread.

Thanks Aurick but it didn’t work. I had that problem with the last upgrade so I already had the information you gave in a previous support ticket. I submitted a ticket earlier and I’m waiting for a response… For now I’ve just deleted the upgrade and put back my backup 4R2…

The odd thing is that the activation process for the upgrade keeps telling me that ZBrush is already activated for my computer…, but when I put back my ZBrush 4R2 and re-activated it, it worked fine… It knew that the previous version had been de-activated asked me if I wanted to re-activate it… but if I de-activate again and go through the upgrade, it still tells me that ZBrush is already activated for this machine…

I’ve managed to shed a bit more light on this after speaking to the support… For me, the problem seems to be with my custom UI config (CustomUserInterface4R2.cfg).

To get the 4R2b activation to work, I had to re-install a clean 4R2, then run the update, and then the activation worked fine. But I probably didn’t need to do that at all. I probably just needed to delete my CustomUserInterface4R2.cfg.

After I got the 4R2b working, I copied over my scripts, hotkeys, custom materials etc… but it was the CustomUserInterface4R2.cfg that broke it. Even if I try to load my 4R2 UI through the Preferences–>Config palette and save config, when I restart I get the activation screen again.

Everything’s working though, I just need to re-create my custom UI and palettes. Groan.

Thanks for the info. I have let a couple other users know about this and we’ll see what they say. If it resolves the problem for them as well I will add it to the FAQ.

Thanks!