[Rod Duarte] “. Here’s a couple scenarios for ya:”
[Rod Duarte] “- This machine is a gaming machine. It doesn’t have the proper guts for AE. So I’m at the point where I have to render overnight, just to see it’s not what I wanted the next day and I have to re-do it and re-export. Not fun. Meaning I’ll have to get a dedicated workstation machine soon, meaning that’s another full plugin install, and again for every subsequent ones I get. Just not professional.”
Either clone the system drive to the new machine or install the plugins. Because you’re lazy doesn’t make it unprofessional. In addition to that some plugins might have hardware ID’s attached to them on install so when you change your hardware you’d still need to reinstall/reactivate them.
[Rod Duarte] “- I collab with someone and they don’t have the same plugins. Nightmare.”
[Rod Duarte] “- Render farms. If a new machine still doesn’t render fast enough by itself I’ll have to move up to render farming. This means for each render machine it’s a whole new installation of every plugin. Just no.”
These scenarios would require you (or the other dude) to buy the correct amount of plugins. Some plugins might come with two activations some could be node locked per machine. Some might even come with free render only plugins for render farms. If you’re not ready to deal with that it’s not an After Effects problem or a plugin developer problem. Circumventing that is kinda sorta illegal and all that.