How many 3DS Max licences do I need for distributed rendering?

[Vrayman1980]

Hi. I've gone through the Vray distributed rendering installation guide here:
http://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/V...uted+Rendering

, but I seem to be missing something. I don't know if it's considered too obvious to be mentioned. Let's say I want to distribute my rendering process to 2 separate PCs. Do I need 2 distinct 3DS Max licenses for the software to be installed on both machines? Cause this would increase the total cost very much. Or do I need a single 3DS Max installation and as many render node Vray licenses as the additional machines I want to add to my mini render farm?

Also, side question, just to make sure. If I need to distribute my renderings to EXACTLY TWO machines, do I need to purchase an additional Universal Render Node license? Or does the single Vray 3.0 for 3DS Max with the included
"1 Universal Render Node floating license" suffice?

To be honest the "floating" word gets me a bit confused

Thank you in advance

[Chaos Sales Team]

One V-Ray 3.0 Workstation license for 3ds Max consist of 1 Interface(GUI) license and 1 Render Node 3.0 license.

The interface license allows you to use V-Ray menus in 3ds Max GUI. You will be able to use V-Ray plugin in 3ds Max's interface, navigate V-Ray Render Setup menus, use materials , etc. This license is not used for rendering.

The Render Node 3.0 license is used only for rendering. When you start a render job with one machine it always takes one Render Node 3.0 license, regardless it is on your workstation or on render slave machine.

For example if you use V-Ray on your local machine only, set up a scene in 3ds Max with V-Ray and start render job, it should take one Interface license and one Render node license.
You need Render Node 3.0 license for each machine that is used for rendering. In case have a single Workstation license and you need to distribute the render job in two machines, than you have to purchase additional Universal V-Ray 3.0 Render Node license.

All Chaos Group Products use floating license. Floating licensing allows multiple users to share the use ofan application from different computers (for comparison, a node-locked license is locked down to a computer). One floating license is needed for each concurrent user. For example, with one floating license, any number of users can have the software installed, but only one can use it at a time.

[Vrayman1980]

Thank you, you've made it absolutely clear for the Vray part.

Just a final clarification for the 3DS Max part. I've been informed by other users that I can use a non-activated copy of 3DS Max on my secondary machine to use as an additional render node. Is that true? Or do I need to purchase a second 3DS Max license doubling the cost?

[Raven]

Correct, you do not need to buy additional max licenses.

[Vrayman1980]

ok, thanks