Autodesk device limit reached

[dean_dmoo]

Hi,

We've recently run into an issue that 3DS MAX (2023) / Autodesk will give a "device limit reached" pop-up message when opening Max on a second device. It's started a couple of weeks ago for us. It's a pretty annoying limit introduced as when working from home we'll log in to the office desktop and open Max in advance to save time. Depending on the amount of xref's in the file it can save 15min. The same when turning on renders through backburner. I'll switch between the pc at the office and at home to continue working instead of sitting there until Max has finally sorted itself out.

Has anyone else run into this? At least Adobe allows 2 devices at the same time so you can just work from home or the office without having to deal with license pop-ups. And until recently it was the same with Autodesk. Or are they just using this as a way to force people onto extra licenses?

And if so, is there a workaround? Pissing me off tbh, we already pay a huge amount in subscription costs and now they are further limiting our productivity!

[oglu]

It was always like this. Only one device at a time. But they might check it now more rigorous.

[Pixelcon]

Hi,

We've recently run into an issue that 3DS MAX (2023) / Autodesk will give a "device limit reached" pop-up message when opening Max on a second device. It's started a couple of weeks ago for us. It's a pretty annoying limit introduced as when working from home we'll log in to the office desktop and open Max in advance to save time. Depending on the amount of xref's in the file it can save 15min. The same when turning on renders through backburner. I'll switch between the pc at the office and at home to continue working instead of sitting there until Max has finally sorted itself out.

Has anyone else run into this? At least Adobe allows 2 devices at the same time so you can just work from home or the office without having to deal with license pop-ups. And until recently it was the same with Autodesk. Or are they just using this as a way to force people onto extra licenses?

And if so, is there a workaround? Pissing me off tbh, we already pay a huge amount in subscription costs and now they are further limiting our productivity!

I have a feeling they are doing this to avoid legal action.
Recently they have been agressively forcing people to pay for using 'extra licenses'. Essentially they have allowed customers to use additional seats (ie. work from home) while still logged in at their work machine, then forcing to users to pay for two licenses instead of just one.
Absolutely the worst type of behavior imaginable, but it is real and it is happening.

So for me this is actually a good thing that we're getting warnings via a pop-up rather than a letter from Autodesk's attack-dogs.

My suggested workaround; proudly pirate the software.

[dean_dmoo]

I have a feeling they are doing this to avoid legal action.
Recently they have been agressively forcing people to pay for using 'extra licenses'. Essentially they have allowed customers to use additional seats (ie. work from home) while still logged in at their work machine, then forcing to users to pay for two licenses instead of just one.
Absolutely the worst type of behavior imaginable, but it is real and it is happening.

So for me this is actually a good thing that we're getting warnings via a pop-up rather than a letter from Autodesk's attack-dogs.

My suggested workaround; proudly pirate the software.

Yeah classic Autodesk....

I can understand if two people are using the software with one account, but this seems ridiculously prohibitive to production in this (edge) case. Luckily I don't work from home that much that it's something I will run into regularly but it is just another instance of 3DS max being a limiting factor in using your time effectively. It's not like I can actually work on two pc's at the same time, it's just saving me startup/loading times.

Sometimes feels like more time is spent dealing with software and issues than the work.

[Vizioen]

The biggest problem is for example: I used to use Pulze Scene Manager to render out a whole bunch of renders or animation from my office workstation, while working at home. But this doesn't work anymore, because when one render or frame is done, it doesn't want to save the render and go on to the next, if you have another Max open on another workstation (so even if you are NOT using the UI directly).

Sure I can use backburner, deadline, etc or in my case Pulze Render Manager (if it would be stable, which it's not). But that doesn't allow me the flexibility of checking in on the rendering, stopping, tweaking or changing something (without having to close and open 3ds max all the f-ing time). Simulations in tyflow while working or something else, forget it.

They could have coded this entirely differently (check for viewport interaction longer than a few consecutive seconds), but they chose the most lazy and annoying way.

If they think they can squeeze extra money out of me they are dead wrong. I'm looking at Blender but man it's lack of certain features which are very important to me are not appealing atm, hopefully Blender gets better in some areas as for now I'm still stuck with Autodesk.

They are not doing this to avoid legal action, they are doing this because they want to annoy the fuck out of you so you would pay for an extra license.

Can't wait for the day to tell them to shove it, because really, worst software developer ever.

[oglu]

What about rendering with Vray Standalone?

[Vizioen]

What about rendering with Vray Standalone?

There are lots of ways to at least render, like I said, deadline, backburner, Render Manager, LPM, RPM, renderstacks,... but there's no flexibility in that and completely breaks my workflow: I set up around 20 - 30 viewpoints with different light setups, quite fast when using Scene manager. I don't even bother saving them out, just use the frame buffer to check them. While working on something else on my other workstation. Once in a while I check in, tweak some things and render again untill I'm satisfied. Now this is not possible anymore. You can only have one indie license per studio (correct me if I'm wrong). So I would have to purchase a full blown license just to be able to use that kind of workflow. I'm not even sure if you can own 1 indie license and 1 normal license in the same company, but what's the point of having indie licenses then?

Want to simulate something with tyflow, phoenix, or the likes, while continue working on another computer? Nope.

So yeah, I'll have to find another way to be just as efficient without filling their pockets for a software that gets almost no love and evolves super slow.

[m_barbeau]

Hello,

I've had the same problem since the beginning of August 2024...
However, we have 2 licenses for 2 computers...
I don't even understand how to solve this!
Autodesk, tiresome...... :-/

[glorybound]

It is obvious that they are hurting, and I don't think many feel sorry for them. They started subscription software; they are to blame!

[suzanne_doherty]

With Max, you're paying for 1 user, not 1 installation. So that's why they've always allowed you to install on multiple machines. They could have locked the software to a node, but chose not too. Tyflow is node locked, and you can't run vray on 2 machines either.

Everyone bashing Autodesk over this is wrong in my opinion. 10 years ago I bought my first license for around £5000, but now an indie license costs £220. I think they're trying to stop multiple users using 1 account, which is fair. Perhaps as others have said, they could monitor this differently with checking for interaction with the software.

[glorybound]

Companies like Autodesk don't do things to benefit their users; they are bleeding and hanging on by a thread. Years of subscriptions without little to no development aren't in the best interest of their users. They allowed cracked software to flood the internet so people would self-learn, and companies would buy the software because incoming people knew the software because of it. Now, they are trying to reel that back in to make money somewhere. Sorry, this is just my opinion.

[dean_dmoo]

With Max, you're paying for 1 user, not 1 installation. So that's why they've always allowed you to install on multiple machines. They could have locked the software to a node, but chose not too. Tyflow is node locked, and you can't run vray on 2 machines either.

Everyone bashing Autodesk over this is wrong in my opinion. 10 years ago I bought my first license for around £5000, but now an indie license costs £220. I think they're trying to stop multiple users using 1 account, which is fair. Perhaps as others have said, they could monitor this differently with checking for interaction with the software.

In my individual case I see it as just having 2 instances of Max open, it just happens to be on 2 pc's. I'm not actively working with it, just opening files and sending them to backburner. I understand de need to stop firms/people using the license twice and abusing the system, but this current implementation is also actively hindering the people who are using it correctly (imo) and just trying to be slightly more efficient with files. Just allowing an hour overlap would solve it in my case, but at the same time I don't think we should have to pay for 2 licenses for this workflow. They've made them per user so if a user has more hardware (home / office pc) I don't agree with blocking that usage. Adobe doesn't, Autodesk until very recently didn't in my case.

[Morbid Angel]

I just recently experienced this first hand. It was the absolute worse experience I had. We had two maya seats I use one, and I had one for a maya freelancer to come in and do the work. Everything is done on our local network via remote session. Over a period of two years I had perhaps 5 different artists use the second license on a short basis, a few weeks here a few weeks there. But those licenses were all under one autodesk user account. I got slapped with a huge $25,000 USD fine for exceeding my license limit, since in their eyes, 5 users used the 2 licenses over that time. I tried to explain to them that it was not all at one time since we use login licenses and that their system would prevent us from using more at any one time but it is against their user agreement which they themselves modify as they see fit without telling you. I am not spending countless hours reading their user agreement every single maya installation update.
This is exactly what I brought up with them when I fought back. I spoke to the autodesk security compliance manager and he agreed that while this was unfair they could only reduce the penalty but not wave it entirely. I did mention that a device limit would be a viable solution since it would prevent users from exceeding the seats in any way. By the way, they didn't have a problem with us using the two licenses, is that the problem was that I have to now create an autodesk account for each new artist, assign a seat to them during the time when he is using maya, then assisng it when he is done and someone else wants to use it. They removed floating licenses and made this a total nightmare, this is only done so that you just buy more licenses so you don't have to assign/un-assign them all day long.

After this I said enough is enough and I can proudly say we have successfully switched over to houdini and vray for houdini is amazing. It is using a standalone version but it works very well. We are still going to rely on maya, but they lost a loyal customer and I will pull all my renewals and say goodbye to my beloved maya once they expire and only buy month to month on a need to have basis from now on. So they lost at least this small customer for ever. It probably happens on a much larger scale we just don't hear about it.

[Morbid Angel]

Hi,

We've recently run into an issue that 3DS MAX (2023) / Autodesk will give a "device limit reached" pop-up message when opening Max on a second device. It's started a couple of weeks ago for us. It's a pretty annoying limit introduced as when working from home we'll log in to the office desktop and open Max in advance to save time. Depending on the amount of xref's in the file it can save 15min. The same when turning on renders through backburner. I'll switch between the pc at the office and at home to continue working instead of sitting there until Max has finally sorted itself out.

Has anyone else run into this? At least Adobe allows 2 devices at the same time so you can just work from home or the office without having to deal with license pop-ups. And until recently it was the same with Autodesk. Or are they just using this as a way to force people onto extra licenses?

And if so, is there a workaround? Pissing me off tbh, we already pay a huge amount in subscription costs and now they are further limiting our productivity!

Autodesk is no Adobe. Adobe chargers for their photoshop like $15/month and photoshop is their flagship software its like autodcad. Autodesk chargers like $200/month for 3ds max which to them is not their flagship software at all. They do this because they have total monopoly.

Unfortunately for you, there is no way to solve this other then rent another license or not work from your home machine and instead remote login into your work machine from home. It sucks but this is what they made our life now.

[dean_dmoo]

Ouch, that's horrible!

I guess the continued wait for us to move to another software package gets shorter and shorter...