Render Farm License Question

[ChippedTooth]

Quick question regarding render farm set ups. We recently set up a render farm at my company. We have several 3ds Max users in house. The way we have it set up is that each user has his own workstation. Then we have a station with the master render farm computer which is of course hooked up to all of the slaves (which are housed in a different room). There is nothing on these computers but 3ds Max and the Backburner programs.

 

Everything works and renders fine. However, every time we fire up 3ds Max on the Master Station we receive the Max Trial splash where it says we have x amount of days to register the product.

 

The Master Station and subsequent slave computers had Max and Backburner installed from my original 3ds Max 2012 product discs (which is licensed and used on my main workstation).

 

So, the question is this: Does the render farm need it's own license to work correctly?

 

I was under the impression that the render farm could be set up with existing software and no additional licenses were needed. Our engineer thinks we need a license of Max for each one of the computers involved with the render farm. I am fairly certain this is wrong. But, I am wondering if I need to buy a separate license for the Master Station computer.

 

I tried researching Autodesk and the Area - but frankly I can't find the answer that I am looking for because it is all forum driven (I miss human based customer service).

 

So, I thought I would see if anyone out here has run into the same issue and had an answer.

 

Thanks,

 

Andrew

[Devin Johnston]

You can install Max on as many machines as you like for network rendering without a license, these unlicensed copies can only be used by the farm to render. The only difference between one of these render nodes and a workstation you'd do work on is the workstation has a licensed copy of max. It sounds like your Master Station was set up as a node and never had the license installed, just go through the setup process on the master station to license it and you'll be able to work on it without the countdown.

[angiliaduan1]

You should buy license of the software and render engine you want to support.

[neil poppleton]

You can have up to 999 render slaves pc's.....or some large amount....from only a single 3dsmax licence purchase.

[cg_Butler]

You should buy license of the software and render engine you want to support.

 

This is wrong, unless you have to open the maxfile and edit it on your master computer. You don't need to licence any computers that you use for network rendering but you will need to licence them if you want to open max and work on your files.

 

the licence is purely for any machines you need to open and edit maxfiles. So you are correct, you don't need a license.

 

I have a question for you. What's your reason for opening up max on the master machine? All that machine should be doing is running the render manager and the server too if you want it to render.

[amer abidi]

What's your reason for opening up max on the master machine? All that machine should be doing is running the render manager and the server too if you want it to render.

 

Exactly. Master Machine should be like the poker dealer, Dealing cards through backburner, not 3ds max.

No need to open max on it, and should take care of your rendering slaves just fine.