Confused on the licensing for building a render farm

[hasnul]

Hi,

I have been talking to many people and there seems to be different answer regarding the license. So i wanted to ask it here.

I am planning to build a small render farm lets say about 12 nodes. Let's say i wanted to do for 3dsmax and maya.

1. There are people who said that i only need to buy one license on the head node and for the slave node, i do not need to buy the licenses. I just install them and let them be.
2. There's another one that says i need only to buy 1 for every 5 nodes, so for 12 nodes, i need 3 licenses.

Now, if i were to use a rendering manager like enfuzion, and render using mental ray or vray, then how does that work?

I hope someone can clarify this because I am not sure which one is really true.

3rdly, is it possible to buy the NLM version online? I saw you guys selling online but is that only for standalone?

Regards,

Hasnul

[Stephen.Blair]

It will depend on whether you go with Max or with Maya, or mental ray.


With Max and BackBurner, you can set up a render farm of 12+ nodes using your one Max license.
If you use a different render manager, then you'll need 1 Max license per render node.



With Maya, you get 5 Batch licenses with each seat of Maya, so you would need multiple seats of Maya to have 12 render nodes.
Doesn't matter what render manager you use.



If you go with mental ray Standalone, then you'll need a license of mental ray standalone for each render node.



You cannot purchase the Network version online. The online stores sells Standalone only. Edited by: stephenblair7080 on May 14, 2010 5:16 PM

[trs02446]

Further question on Maya on a render farm:

For the purposes of Maya and it's 5 Batch licenses, what constitutes a node?

Is a node a computer (i.e. MAC address)?

Is a node a CPU?

Is a node a core?

We have a 36 computer farm running other software. Most computers are dual, quad core.

Thanks,

Tom