New User, Getting stuck at Splash Screen

[mrpiano]

Hello everybody! I just got Pro Tools yesterday, and getting past the splash screen has already been a nightmare.

I have the UAD Spark plugin subscription, and I get "native" use of a number of UAD plugins without the need for their hardware. When I first opened Pro Tools and it tried to load plugins for the first time, it was getting hung up on the splash screen and I could see it was getting jammed up when it was trying to load my UAD Spark plugins. It seems the Pro Tools does some type of initial "conversion" of my plugins to the AAX format? Not sure, since I never used Pro Tools and always rely on the VST/VST3 format. Anyway, I had to delete a bunch of UAD plugins out of the Avid plugins folder because it couldn't get past the splash screen. Now the application will start, but I'm missing some of my most-used plugins. How do I get these plugins usable in Pro Tools? Thank you! I'm on a very new-ish Mac (Intel) and am able to use these plugins in the VST format in all my other DAWs.