GUI Licenses and rendering

[Joelaff]

We just recently added an additional 5 render licenses, but we are getting some licensing issues now that we have all the machines added to the farm. Should a GUI license be able to be used as a render license? I thought it could? Is there a way to force one machine (the workstation) to always get the GUI license? I see that machines is sometimes taking a render license.

We are rendering with ButterflyNetRender, which uses 3dsmaxcmd.exe

AFAIK this worked fine with our old setup using five fewer render nodes and five fewer licenses. The only difference is the the dongle and license server were (and still are) on the old workstation (which is now a render node). Does the dongle have to be on the workstation for that machine to always get the GUI license?

Did anything change licensing-wise with 3.1.x ?

Please advise. Our renders are erroring out because we seem to have one too few licenses somehow.

Thanks.

[Jason Stewart]

The Workstation license (I think this is what you are calling a GUI license) can not render this computer will also need a render license in order to render. So if your farm has 10 nodes plus 2 workstations you will need 12 render licenses if you want the workstations to help render.

[CRYSTAL GRAPHICS]

We just recently added an additional 5 render licenses, but we are getting some licensing issues now that we have all the machines added to the farm. Should a GUI license be able to be used as a render license? I thought it could? Is there a way to force one machine (the workstation) to always get the GUI license? I see that machines is sometimes taking a render license.

We are rendering with ButterflyNetRender, which uses 3dsmaxcmd.exe

AFAIK this worked fine with our old setup using five fewer render nodes and five fewer licenses. The only difference is the the dongle and license server were (and still are) on the old workstation (which is now a render node). Does the dongle have to be on the workstation for that machine to always get the GUI license?

Did anything change licensing-wise with 3.1.x ?

Please advise. Our renders are erroring out because we seem to have one too few licenses somehow.

Thanks.

It is confusing at first, but Jason explained it well.

[Joelaff]

I figured it out. Another guy had added in his old workstation to the farm. This was eating up the extra license. After disabling that (and adding shiny new render nodes) all is well.

Though I sure thought sales told me that the GUI license could act as a render node, but only for Max. The regular render nodes work for maya as well. In the license server the interactive license shows a gui and a render column.

This is not the case, then?

Thanks.

[Jason Stewart]

Not that I have seen. A workstation license comes with a GUI and a Render license I guess so technically it can but it is still a separate license.

[Joelaff]

Yeah, I see the GUI and the render license in the license server status, but the render license never seems to be used. Would be cool if we could use that

[Svetlozar Draganov]

Yeah, I see the GUI and the render license in the license server status, but the render license never seems to be used. Would be cool if we could use that

Render License under V-Ray for 3ds Max category could be only used in version 1.x and 2.x but not in 3.x

Version 3.x uses Render License under V-Ray Render Node 3.0 category.