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arnold

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Message 1 of 67
pixelmolkerei
9118 Views, 66 Replies

arnold

Hi

im wondering about arnold:

 

do i have to buy additional batchrender licenses for each workstation to be able to batch render?

 

we have 5 Workstations with maya

and 7 renderslaves in the network

 

that would end in 13150 euros additional costs???

 

or do i understand something wrong?

 

Thank you for clarification

 

thorsten

 

66 REPLIES 66
Message 21 of 67
dgorsman
in reply to: slimboJoe


@slimboJoe wrote:

Maya LT does not support ANY rendering, actually.  LT is for modeling and animation asset creation.

 

I'm surprised we have not seen any comments from AD or nVidia rep's here.  We're just speculating and wasting time.  We need official werd.

 

 


I'm hoping for something, but the best chances of that happening are to keep things polite and professional.  Used to be none of the dev teams could post without getting instantly flamed, and have zero desire to return.  While it may feel good on the part of the poster its counterproductive.  We want them to feel welcome here.

----------------------------------
If you are going to fly by the seat of your pants, expect friction burns.
"I don't know" is the beginning of knowledge, not the end.


Message 22 of 67
slimboJoe
in reply to: tl

Polygon and subdivision mesh modelling and Primitive creation are hardly "features" but they are listed in the column as well.

 

Yes, MR is listed as included.  One might assume that MR would be included in future versions as well.  That's just an assumption and not a guarantee.  I'll bet somewhere in the User Agreement that it states, in legalese, that MR might "go away" sometime.

 

MR was included in the package that you purchased as you expected.  Purchasing Maintenance on software, however, you are purchasing bug fixes to the current version and changes in the form of future NEW RELEASES.

 

I get it.  Especially since you have a 3-year contract, you are owed an explanation at least.  I could stop and switch to C4D next year, since I'm buying one year at a time, and it's not such a big deal.  But you're kind of stuck, especially if nVidia does not provide the mayatomr and MR Satellite for free.  Totally get it.

 

We need more info, though. 

Message 23 of 67
grimbleeper
in reply to: slimboJoe

First off, Maya is not the "only" package that ships with Mental Ray. Max does, as well.

 

Autodesk has all but admitted that Max is going to get the same treatment, probably this spring, with it's 13 year-old integrated version of MR soon to get the axe, as well, for...Arnold. After 13 years...it's not just an optional "plugin" anymore, that's a core feature.

 

People expected, and were sold on the idea, that a purchase of 3ds Max or Maya is going to come with a stock, fully-featured, vanilla, high-end renderer, in the same way they expect it to have any other standard set of tools.

 

If you read their Faq on the subject they "ask" this question...

 

"But doesn’t including Arnold with Maya put your render partners at disadvantage?

 

Maya customers will be able to use Arnold out-of-the-box. However, it can only be used for foreground processing on your workstation. You will need to purchase additional Arnold licenses if you wish to scale your rendering capability using either a render farm or the cloud. This helps put Arnold on an equal footing with other third party renderers and allows customers to freely choose which renderer they wish to license when planning their workflows."

 

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/maya/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/Changes-t...

 

There's so much to not understand about this answer. They are blatantly trying to spin removing network features from our bundled high-end render solution as a "good thing" because it levels the playing field for 3rd party render solutions...as though we're not supposed to notice that they get paid and we lose money, as part of this good thing, given that one of those solutions happens to be owned by AD themselves. 

 

Note that Arnold doesn't "disable" batch rendering - it watermarks them.

 

Watermarks.

 

To be honest, that's just adding insult to injury. No fully featured, and fully paid for, version of 3d software should be watermarking your work by default. This isn't a PLE, I paid for. We're a small company, and this stuff is expensive, particularly when we thought we already paid for the ability to do high end rendering from the batch processor, augmented by new features over the course of our contract.

 

Staying up-to-date was supposedly the whole reason to go on subscription vs. purchasing a final stand-alone license. In hindsight, the subscription was a terrible idea, as all it's done is put us between a rock and a hard place. We're still going to have pay a lot of money to have current features, which is what we thought we were paying for. I guess the joke's on us.

 

http://help.autodesk.com/view/MAYAUL/2017/ENU/?guid=GUID-AD1E74F3-471A-4B5D-8FB0-9E4EC6EC5252

 

Furthermore, sure you can stick with 2016 short term, but if you were duped into paying for a multi-year subscription contract, you're LITERALLY getting no value for your money, unless you pay this post facto toll booth. Switching renderers, without notice, and hamstringing it's functionality at the same time is simply adding a bill to injury, given that their sales method is subscription based. We didn't expect to have to choose between new features OR distributed network rendering when we signed our contract. It's pretty blatantly unfair to people that have already paid for a reasonable set of future expectations.

 

This isn't just about switching away from MR. Things change, licenses expire, etc. I understand, even if it's a lot of work/money to maintain a pipeline you've built around MR.

 

The issue is Arnold. They had a choice...and they didn't give us a fair trade for the expectations forged by bundling MR for years into our purchasing decision - they gave us an inferior version of the same thing we already had. MR had support for both batch rendering and multiple render nodes. You're going to have to pay somebody to get your render nodes back, and there's a higher than 0% chance it might be AD, which for them, must have looked like an opportunity to make money, vs. the scenario where they replaced MR with an actual license of Arnold, which, again, THEY OWN, and are very capable of doing. It's not a technical limitation, licensing issue, bug, etc.

 

That is the core of this issue.

 

Here's the bottom line. I can do less real work, out of the box, with Maya 2017 than I could with 2016 - which was an intentional design decision by AD to redefine the worth, scope, and capability of the service I have already paid for. I now, suddenly and intentionally, have to choose between an efficient rendering pipeline, or new features - and I've already paid for the new features. That doesn't seem fair. That is the antithesis of an upgrade.

Message 24 of 67
slimboJoe
in reply to: grimbleeper

Excellent post.  Good link to the brand new FAQ.  Interesting stuff...

 

So Autodesk sells individual licenses of Mental Ray Standalone?  Anyone got a link on that?  I cannot find it...

Message 25 of 67
Anifex09
in reply to: grimbleeper

After reading your statement I have to agree. I already owned a license to Arnold so I just didn't give it much thought but, this is a valid argument. When I first started out there is no way I could afford to purchase this program along with a Arnold license. Even though you can write a simple mel script to render inside maya and save out a file sequence this is just not fair to the customer - This to me is a way to force people to use cloud rendering. Bad move Autodesk
Message 26 of 67
slimboJoe
in reply to: Anifex09

Rendering out a sequence with Arnold is built into Maya 2017.  You just cannot (without a purchased license):

 

1. Distribute to other machines like you can using MR Satellite

2. Background or batch render like MR.  Technically you can, but the images are watermarked.  Great for verifying render output as a proof before sending to a render service.

Message 27 of 67

Still no official statement from AD to the question...

 

sure we do not switch production to 2017 now 🙂  but finance needs to be planned.

 

And if such big investments are comming up, renderer needs to be evaluated.

So we need to compare price 2 quality and a serious evaluation takes some time.

 

Thorsten

 

 

Message 28 of 67
pixelmolkerei
in reply to: slimboJoe

the issue is that a render service adds also costs to a project... and thats something you need to concider in the budged.
watermarking is just cutting the overall package we paid for 😞
Message 29 of 67

Hi

 

Yes, for batch rendering with Arnold, you need Arnold licenses.

In your case, if you want to use the five workstations as render nodes, then you would need Arnold licenses for them.

Otherwise, if the five workstations are strictly for use by artists, then you could get licenses just for the seven render nodes.

 

Maya 2017 includes "foreground rendering", which means rendering in the interface. For example, Render Current Frame, the Arnold Render View, and Render Sequence all render frames without a watermark. Render Sequence in the way to render a sequence of frames without using an Arnold license.

 

Batch rendering, whether in the Maya interface or on the command line, requires an Arnold license (otherwise you get the watermark).

 

There's an faq for the changes to rendering in Maya 2017.

 

Arnold licenses are purchased at https://solidangle.com/arnold/buy/. You can see the prices there.

For volume purchases, or any other questions about pricing and terms, you should definitely contact our sales team

 

Thanks


Stephen Blair

Senior Support Engineer

Solid Angle 

 

 

 



// Stephen Blair
// Arnold Renderer Support
Message 30 of 67
mickna2
in reply to: Stephen.Blair

@stephen:

Thank you for jumping in.

But if you (personal) be honest:
1) Wouldn't it be a nice move if AD has inform us a few weeks ago that MR would not be longer shipped with a new Maya version? I extended two subscriptions one week ago. So if I decide to switch to another 3D-Package I have waste money. And yes! If I do not hear anything I believe a new version has at most more features and not one (significant = batch render) less.

2) If number 1) isn't possible: Wouldn't it be nice to have a period of time to switch to arnold? So lets say, MR is bundled with Maya and Arnold for one Version?

3) I feel like I have ordered a new version of my car for the same price like every year and AD gave me a car with a rubber spring as engine. But hey! Why not buying an engine from XY or a better version of the rubber band? Yes more cost....We know.... And If you like to have more than 2 engines it will cost even more (floating license).

Sorry for my sarcasm...
Message 31 of 67
maurice.patel
in reply to: mickna2

Yes, unfortunately the roll out of this did not go as smoothly as planned and we have to apologize for that. That includes simple oversights on our side such as not updating the Maya vs Maya LT comparison chart (which is still based on Maya 2016) - sorry for that unnecessary confusion - as well as things that were also beyond our sole control in terms of our agreement with NVIDIA as to how we could execute on this transition.

 

The FAQ link that Stephen posted covers most of why we are making these changes and what they mean. I agree this change is abrupt and significant. I am sorry about that and all i can do is try and give some insight as to why these changes are happening.

 

Ultimately, it is because we ended up having to face the fact that what we were doing before was not working - our included solution was becoming less and less competitive and users were having to choose alternatives. As each year passed this trend was accelerating. We did not have full control of our own product roadmap (and nor did NVIDIA) and also lacked the flexibility to address new needs such as scalable computing on the cloud. So we worked with NVIDIA to reach an agreement about going our separate ways - and doing this in a way that was as mutually beneficial as it could be. This did put some constraints on exactly how we could roll out this separation. However, one good immediate side effect is that it has re-energized the mental ray roadmap again (see NVIDIA's recent announcements).

 

I do actually think that by making it more competitive (mental ray and Arnold now BOTH have to compete with other renderers to succeed), it will lead to more innovation and better products. Products like REDSHIFT, V-Ray and Renderman will keep us on our toes and it does create an even playing field for all competition. When we acquired SOlid ANgle this was a significant worry for our render partners. It also creates more opportunity for new approaches to rendering (Cloud, GPU etc.) - and we think there will be more options rather than less going forward.

 

So what about Maya? Well we did want to make sure that it had the ability to render the highest possible quality out of the box so we included Arnold foreground processing. However what is not included is the ability to scale rendering beyond your workstation whether it is to your own render farm or to the cloud. This will be a significant change for some unfortunately. 

 

 

 

maurice

Autodesk

Message 32 of 67
dougj7
in reply to: maurice.patel

Hi Maurice,

 

Thank you for the apology and the explanation regarding the roll out of Arnold. I understand that with NVIDIA you do not have sole control. Then there is  the fact that Autodesk owns Solid Angle now, so with regards to Arnold you do have sole control. I'm wondering if the right solution would have been for Autodesk to offer the same batch rendering abilities that were available to us at no additional cost in Maya 2016 since Autodesk has the full authority to do so.

Message 33 of 67
grimbleeper
in reply to: maurice.patel

"However what is not included is the ability to scale rendering beyond your workstation whether it is to your own render farm or to the cloud. This will be a significant change for some unfortunately. "

 

By "change", in this circumstance, it would appear you mean one of two things for people that have signed contracts and use MR, both of which are not good.

 

1). A bill.

2). A waste of money, for sticking with 2016 and wasting your subscription benefits.

 

The way I see it, you had four options here, to make this a fair trade-off, none of which were done.

 

1). You could have negotiated with Nvidia to give everyone a temporary license of standalone MR for the remainder of their current subscription. This meets the expectations we had upon signing our contracts, which is that the ability to do default high-end network rendering, out of the box, wasn't going anywhere, given that it's been supported for several years. Once your time is up, you have the informed, rational decision making power to decide whether or not to continue your subscription knowing that you're getting less for your money out of the box, going forward.

 

2). You could have done the same thing with Arnold as #1. You own it and certainly have the power to do so. This would not be a long term detriment to 3rd party render partners, as the terms of our subscriptions would only exist for a maximum of three years from now.

 

3). You could have made Arnold be feature comparable to MR, out of the box, including comparable networking abilities. In my opinion, this is what you should have done. There is not a good reason why something as arbitrary as batch rendering should occur with watermarks. You're pretty blatantly asking us to accept that this "upgrade" is predicated upon switching out our current high-end rendering solution for something that is less functional, and asking to double dip to regain that functionality. That is not an upgrade. "Upgrading" is supposed to make things better not worse. You made us pay for something that is intentionally worse, by design, in a fundamental way. You're asking us to pay again, to reverse the conditions you implemented.

 

4). Given the radical changes you're making to the expectations we had when signing our contracts, you could have given people the option to pay out the difference of our contracts to have perpetual versions of 2016, if we wanted to stick with the version indefinitely - instead we have to keep throwing money in a hole to achieve the same thing, all while getting none of the benefits of updated features.

 

Again, I understand if you have to move away from MR. However, I strongly believe you're not doing so in a way that's fair to people, and have pretty much only considered your own best interests in the transition, instead of even the smallest of bones thrown to your customers, who are pretty much, themselves, getting thrown under the proverbial bus.

 

Like I said, contracts were paid for under the expectation that Maya/Max contain stock high-end rendering with network rendering supported by default. It's been that way for years and years, and no reasonable person would have expected otherwise for the foreseeable future. It's not just an "unfortunate change"....and the situation is in no way out of your hands, or outside of your control. You own Arnold, and decided, very, very, intentionally, to give us less value in the trade-off. You could have given us something of equal value for the money we've already given you, and chose not to. This is very important to me. It's not like Arnold doesn't support these things - you don't want it to support those things. We're talking about hundreds and hundreds of dollars, approaching the price of the subscription itself - per seat!. This is not a small change.

 

Again, none of this would matter if you offered perpetual licenses. You basically want people to pay for things in advance, in good faith, even though you're obviously proving that you will not honor that faith in your "product", which far from being an improvement, is going to come with a surprise C.O.D. price-tag attached, if you want to continue to use it to do real work. The take-away from all of this is that your subscription model, far from being a "good deal" is actually something that has negative value. It's a literal waste of money, due to you intentionally hamstringing our expected bundled renderer, and forcing us to either spend money to restore functionality we already paid for in previous upgrades, essentially double-dipping, or waste money on versions we won't use - forever - if we want to keep working, and not lose the right to run 2016. 

 

We didn't purchase our contract under the condition that you must pay for a render solution plugin to use high-end network rendering and have current, up to date software. You're asking us to accept that condition after the fact, and after you sold us a service that did the opposite.

 

In summary, you didn't give proper warning, offer no compensation whatsoever for the trouble and chaos your decisions are causing, and you are blatantly asking to us to retroactively accept less value for our money, because it's primarily good for you and your render partners, all in the middle of our contract terms, after your sales pitch, once you've already cashed our check. I'm sure the fine print makes all of this ok, it always does, but that doesn't make it morally ok.

Message 34 of 67
maurice.patel
in reply to: dougj7

Hi Dougj

I don't think that really was an option for several reasons:

  • Solid Angle was a significant investment it was far from cheap and we are a business - I am not going to pretend that ws not an important factor
  • Past history has shown us that bundling a free render does not keep that renderer competitive - its a flawed strategy
  • Doing so would have made it more difficult for NVIDIA to continue to support mental ray especially in the short term or to derive revenue from mental ray - this at least gives them and others a chance to compete for the business

maurice

Message 35 of 67
grimbleeper
in reply to: maurice.patel


@maurice.patel wrote:

Hi Dougj

I don't think that really was an option for several reasons:

  • Solid Angle was a significant investment it was far from cheap and we are a business - I am not going to pretend that ws not an important factor
  • Past history has shown us that bundling a free render does not keep that renderer competitive - its a flawed strategy
  • Doing so would have made it more difficult for NVIDIA to continue to support mental ray especially in the short term or to derive revenue from mental ray - this at least gives them and others a chance to compete for the business

maurice


Everything you've said is good for everyone in this scenario, except your customers, who are being asked to, literally, pay for all of this, so everyone else in this relationship is better off, particularly you. We're dead last on the list, and being intentionally put between a rock and a hard place. I understand if Solid Angle was expensive, but that cost shouldn't be passed on to us in the middle of our contracts, by the sudden paywalling of core features that have been integrated for several years.

 

What do you mean by "free" renderer? Haven't we been paying for MR all these years in our licensing fees and subscription costs? How exactly is that "free"? Your wording seems carefully chosen to imply that a high-end renderer has been some kind of bonus feature for 13 years, as opposed to a standard feature of Max or Maya.  How much did the cost of licensing MR previously factor into our subs in the first place? If we were already paying that, how is this not double dipping for a limited functionality version of Arnold compared to our fully featured versions of MR?

 

If you pay the $800 to regain the batch renderer features, that pretty much made your bundled version of Arnold redundant, correct? No matter which way you slice this, you're seemingly giving us less than we had before, and calling it an upgrade, which is a double whammy. We get a negative upgrade that we paid for in advance, and render nodes we're going to have to repurchase, which we'll have to pay for now. Either that, or we pay the full price for a version of standalone software to rent an outdated version of Maya for 3 years.

 

How are we supposed to have any faith whatsoever in the subscription process, if you can simply recharge us for newly disabled core features in a new version? This makes the whole concept of an "upgrade" an absurd game of Russian roulette, as opposed to the "Christmas morning" feeling it's supposed to invoke. It also seems utterly contradictory to the spirit of the subscription promise, which was that you're going to get all future upgrades included in your price. How can this promise be properly explained when our software now watermarks our renders by default, unless we pay to upgrade again, to the same company that told us, when we signed our contracts, that we got all future upgrades included?

 

You can't make an argument that Arnold should somehow be thought of an optional piece of add-on software, a la Zbrush or Mudbox, separate from standard tools, when you've been bundling in and advertising a real 3rd party plugin, MR, for years and years as an integral and standard core feature. In other words, a fully featured high-end renderer is an expected part of the deal, at this point, just like UV tools or anything else, regardless of what you call it or how much you payed for it. It feels like you're attempting to frame the issue like the limited functionality of Arnold is supposed to be some kind of "bonus" we get on top of the rest of the software - as though we weren't paying you to license MR all along.

 

You can take a cut of Maya's subs, or anything really, and funnel that into development to keep it competitive, just like, we can assume, the checks you were writing to Nvidia - again, to say otherwise, is you pretty blatantly wanting to double dip. We already pay you for a high-end fully featured renderer in our subscriptions.

 

I'll add a 5). to my above list, concerning what you could have done to make this a fair situation, and that's giving us a heavily discounted version of Maya that gives us no high-end renderer whatsoever. If we're to believe that Arnold is worth nearly $800, that should have given us a good chunk of that off our subscription fees, correct? Then "competition" would be truly open. Again, however, that's not what you chose to do. That would have been a solution that didn't put your customers dead last. 

 

Claiming that bundling in a fully featured version of Arnold will somehow make MR less competitive doesn't really hold water, anyways. If having a fully featured renderer bundled in made everything else less competitive, where did Arnold, V-ray, Redshift, etc. come from in the first place? MR has been a standard, vanilla option for years. By this logic, these other solutions shouldn't have had a chance. Who would pay for something you already get for free? Furthermore, you're pretty blatantly saying that the needs of Nvidia are seemingly more important than the justifiable expectations of your customers to not see their features held for ransom, after they've already paid you. Aren't we your business partners as well? Why aren't you looking out for our interests?

 

Linking Arnold's potential lack of competitiveness is to it's bundled features inside of Maya is just a statement about your own internal monetary policies. How you do or do not subsidize your products is your business. It's not a real justification, honestly.

 

Essentially, it seems like you're saying, in various ways, that you need more money to offset the purchase you made. I don't have to agree with a price hike, but that's your business to do so. 

 

The problem is you're retroactively leveraging our subscriptions to get this money, instead of letting us make informed choices about your price hikes, before paying for your service. It feels like you've found a clever way to somehow implement a price hike after we've already paid you, which we must pay if want to see the money we've already spent go towards anything.

 

 

Message 36 of 67
atdrocker
in reply to: grimbleeper
Message 37 of 67
Anifex09
in reply to: dougj7

I do think I figured out why they went through all the trouble of adding a sequence render option and not giving the user a single license. It is because a Arnold License would work with Houdini - Cinema4D - Katana - and you get the idea. One license works for multiple platforms and from a business perspective this would not be a wise move.
Message 38 of 67
grimbleeper
in reply to: Anifex09


@Anifex09 wrote:
I do think I figured out why they went through all the trouble of adding a sequence render option and not giving the user a single license. It is because a Arnold License would work with Houdini - Cinema4D - Katana - and you get the idea. One license works for multiple platforms and from a business perspective this would not be a wise move.

There's no reason, though, it had to work that way by default, as they already have two separate versions of the renderer. They could have given Arnold the missing features, and limited it to only working with a valid license of Maya - exactly the way MR worked.

 

Nvidia sells MR standalone licenses that are not tied down to host software, just like Arnold. You didn't get one of those licenses when you you purchased a seat of Maya/3ds Max/etc.

 

A real puzzle, for me, is how does Arnold's licensing work in regards to the built in renderer. They're not exactly clear about it.

 

We're told that you need a render node license to use the batch processor features of 2017, and we're told that every render node on a farm needs to have it's own license. They confuse the issue by stating that

 

"Pre-existing Arnold licenses are only consumed in situations where you need to render without a watermark; for example, during batch rendering. They are not consumed for interactive rendering with Maya."

 

What? Does calling a network render need a license or not?

 

So...

 

If you want to enable the scenario of having your main workstation and a single other render node both working on an Arnold render, concurrently, in Maya 2017, do you need to purchase one or two additional render nodes, on top of your subscription?

 

It sure sounds like, from their description, that the answer is two. Which would cost you a minimum of US $1590, if you want node locked licenses.

 

http://help.autodesk.com/view/MAYAUL/2017/ENU/?guid=GUID-AD1E74F3-471A-4B5D-8FB0-9E4EC6EC5252

Message 39 of 67
corestudio
in reply to: maurice.patel


@maurice.patel wrote:

Hi Dougj

I don't think that really was an option for several reasons:

  • Solid Angle was a significant investment it was far from cheap and we are a business - I am not going to pretend that ws not an important factor
  • Past history has shown us that bundling a free render does not keep that renderer competitive - its a flawed strategy
  • Doing so would have made it more difficult for NVIDIA to continue to support mental ray especially in the short term or to derive revenue from mental ray - this at least gives them and others a chance to compete for the business

maurice


Maurice-

 

I'm sure the last think you want to hear are more opinions on this, but my .02

 

1. Businesses always pass on costs to their customers, of course. It's the *way* in which you do that that makes all the difference in the world. Sometimes you just have to add value for your customers to simply retain them. Once you lose them, they are VERY hard to regain.

 

2. But your past history is a single data point, correct? MentalRay? Or were there others? Was it the bundling or the software/company itself that was the problem? Haven't Maxon, SideFX, Foundry (modo) etc all made great, competitive improvements to their bundled renderers? Not sure it's such a flawed strategy but perhaps a flawed implementation.

 

3. That's not our problem. If MR was allowed to languish they have nobody to blame but themselves.

 

cheers

 

Gary

Message 40 of 67
Stephen.Blair
in reply to: grimbleeper


grimbleeper wrote:


 

A real puzzle, for me, is how does Arnold's licensing work in regards to the built in renderer. They're not exactly clear about it.

 

We're told that you need a render node license to use the batch processor features of 2017, and we're told that every render node on a farm needs to have it's own license. They confuse the issue by stating that

 

"Pre-existing Arnold licenses are only consumed in situations where you need to render without a watermark; for example, during batch rendering. They are not consumed for interactive rendering with Maya."

 

What? Does calling a network render need a license or not?

 

So...

 

If you want to enable the scenario of having your main workstation and a single other render node both working on an Arnold render, concurrently, in Maya 2017, do you need to purchase one or two additional render nodes, on top of your subscription?

 

It sure sounds like, from their description, that the answer is two. Which would cost you a minimum of US $1590, if you want node locked licenses.

 

http://help.autodesk.com/view/MAYAUL/2017/ENU/?guid=GUID-AD1E74F3-471A-4B5D-8FB0-9E4EC6EC5252


 

If you render in the Maya 2017 interface, Arnold won't use a license. Batch rendering launches a new process (render and then mayabatch) and that requires an Arnold license to render without a watermark.
What's "calling a network render"? If that means batch rendering, either from the Maya UI or on the command line, then that requires an Arnold license.
If you want two machines to do batch rendering, then you need two Arnold licenses.
Stephen
Solid Angle Support

 

 



// Stephen Blair
// Arnold Renderer Support

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