[r3dcube]

Hi,

Is there a way to determine what license's are currently being used? I'm trying to figure out if my network licenses are being used as full licenses or -node licenses while I'm running a network render. The reason for this is that I'm rendering in the background and working in Maya testing renders but Maxwell will sometimes come up and say that there are not enough licenses available, please close another instance.

Cheers,
Bryan

[JamesColeman]

Open Maxwell (not Studio) and goto Help>License Info.

[brodie_geers]

James' advice will show you how many licenses you have but I'm not sure that's what your asking exactly. However, it might be a good idea to do that on your machines to make sure they're all recognizing the full amount of licenses you have (perhaps one machine has an old license file with fewer licenses that's messing things up?).

I've had similar issues. Can you describe a bit more about your setup. How many licenses do you have, what sorts of machines are they on (pc's, servers, etc.), and what renders your currently running?

-Brodie

[r3dcube]

Thanks brodie_geers for the advice, there were a few license mistakes on two machines but it wasn't that in the end. What we're doing is setting up a 3rd party renderer to run through the maya cmd. The problem was that we used the -node flag and should have used the cmd "-node" in our script. Instead of using our node licenses it used up all the full licenses. Problem averted, but it would still be nice to have a utility that allowed you to view licenses...

\\192.168.1.1 = node license
\\192.168.1.2 = full license

cheers,
Bryan

[kami]

I also sometimes get the message that I do not have enough licenses, when rendering on all machines, even though this cannot be possible. We got 4 machines and 4 full licenses, so there can't be any problems! (I checked on all machines if the correct license file is installed)
Please fix that as soon as possible, since this is very annoying and sometimes critical to our work when you start a rendering in the evening and see that it didn't run through due to a false licensing error.

[dmeyer]

I also sometimes get the message that I do not have enough licenses, when rendering on all machines, even though this cannot be possible. We got 4 machines and 4 full licenses, so there can't be any problems! (I checked on all machines if the correct license file is installed)
Please fix that as soon as possible, since this is very annoying and sometimes critical to our work when you start a rendering in the evening and see that it didn't run through due to a false licensing error.

Do you have multiple instances running on one of the machines?

[brodie_geers]

Are any of the machines servers?

-Brodie

[kami]

I often got multiple instances running. but this shouldn't be a problem? weird is though, that some renderings run through, while the next one on the same machine isn't working any more.

what do you mean with servers?
one machine is serving us as server and is running the network manager as well

[brodie_geers]

There's a current issue with Maxwell's licensing system which affects servers. Here's a bit of an email response from Maxwell I received while dealing with this issue...

" About the computers stopping when they are working together: Check if your computer have more than one network card (i.e. a regular NIC card plus a wireless card) together.

A computer with a double connection (NIC card plus the wireless card), internally has two different IP.

So, the license system recognizes two different IPs for your computer, interpreting it as two different computers.

So the license system thinks that Maxwell is being used on more than 3 computers, and is displays the "maximum number of licenses reached" message.

To avoid any kind of problems related to this, each computer must be connected just by one way (NIC or wireless) to avoid assigning several IPs to the same computer. "

I don't understand the technical side of this but the jist seems to be that servers have multiple IPs which fools the licensing system into thinking that there's a Maxwell license being run on multiple PC's (even if a server is running a single rendering, Maxwell might think it's using 2 or maybe 4 licenses...or perhaps even more).

If you think this is the issue you're having I'd recommend contacting Maxwell's technical support.

-Brodie

edit: btw, I believe they said they'd be trying to fix this in an upcoming release. Whether that's the 2.6 release we've been expecting for awhile now though, I have no idea.

[zdeno]

To avoid any kind of problems related to this.....

license should allow to use as many rendernodes as One have.
It shouldn't be that users are punished because maxwell light solution is rather slow.

right now Next Limit have no interest to make maxwell super mega fast.
It have to be balanced. one one machine You can get fast preview in small resolution to have any comfort in setting scenes, but to not wait all night for final render at proper resolution You have to buy additional node licenses. funny.

I bought a carriage, but this day I can use only one of my horses today. Carriage is very fancy but very heavy, but to have any comfort and speed I have to pay carriage seller to permission to use another 5 horses I have. it is lame. even more -carriage seller said I CAN'T sell this Carriage when I realized it never be fast and flexible. funny as hell.(btw EU says I can sell)

as I said earlier when v2 arrived. it is shot in own foot with this rendernode policy.

to be clear - I still love maxwell and have plenty of fun working with it, but it hurts watching some regulations.

[dmeyer]

To avoid any kind of problems related to this.....

license should allow to use as many rendernodes as One have.
It shouldn't be that users are punished because maxwell light solution is rather slow.

right now Next Limit have no interest to make maxwell super mega fast.
It have to be balanced. one one machine You can get fast preview in small resolution to have any comfort in setting scenes, but to not wait all night for final render at proper resolution You have to buy additional node licenses. funny.

I bought a carriage, but this day I can use only one of my horses today. Carriage is very fancy but very heavy, but to have any comfort and speed I have to pay carriage seller to permission to use another 5 horses I have. it is lame. even more -carriage seller said I CAN'T sell this Carriage when I realized it never be fast and flexible. funny as hell.(btw EU says I can sell)

as I said earlier when v2 arrived. it is shot in own foot with this rendernode policy.

to be clear - I still love maxwell and have plenty of fun working with it, but it hurts watching some regulations.

Could be worse. Our Renderman licenses are $2000 per node.

[zdeno]

Could be worse. Our Renderman licenses are $2000 per node.

thx God not per core

[brodie_geers]

yeah, I'd like some number of free nodes as well but I see some give and take when it comes to things such as free plugins.

Just to be clear, the intent IS that each computer/server should only eat up 1 license so if this server issue is your problem contacting NL should help. I believe they've developed a temporary solution until they can sort out the licensing issues involved with multiple IPs.

-Brodie

[dmeyer]

Could be worse. Our Renderman licenses are $2000 per node.

thx God not per core

Up until i think the previous version it was $2k for 4 cores.

[zdeno]

sorry ... big hugs