Educational license for Arnold for Maya

[skullmunky]

In my school we have a small lab with Maya 2018, and we're trying to figure out how to install the Arnold license so students can batch render without the watermark.  We went through the steps on the Autodesk educational site to get an Arnold license, but it only has instructions on adding it to a license server - how do you install the license if you're not using networked licenses?  

[Stephen.Blair]

The educational license is a network license. You'll have to set up a license server.

https://support.solidangle.com/x/fBhSAw

[Anonymous]

I'm having the same problem, in the arnold support portal says that we need a license file to install to the rlm. Autodeks only provides a serial number and a product key, could anyone help us? 

thak you very much

[Stephen.Blair]

Hi

https://support.solidangle.com/display/A5AILIC/Getting+educational+licenses

Getting educational licenses

1. Schools get a free 3-year license for 3000 x Arnold
2. To get the free Arnold licenses, go to the  Autodesk Education Portal
   
   https://www.autodesk.com/education/free-software/arnold
   
   
3. The education portal will give you an Autodesk serial number.
4. Go to registeronce.autodesk.com to register the serial number.
5. Then go to autodesk.com and sign in to your Autodesk Account. Arnold will be listed under your account, and you'll be able to generate a network license.
6. The network license is an Autodesk license, so you need to use the Autodesk Network License Manager:
   
   Autodesk licensing for Arnold
   https://support.solidangle.com/x/fBhSAw

[natasha.l]

Hello @skullmunky & @Anonymous, 

Just to add. Please be sure to that the account administrator chooses the IT Administrator option from the "Role" drop-down. Only an administrator has the access to generate a Network License File in Autodesk Account. 

Keep us posted. 

Please "Accept As Solution" if a reply or replies have helped resolve the issue or answered your question, to help others in the community.

[Anonymous]

Okay, I have a similar question about this because the way the licenses and the information is being disseminated. It's extremely confusing, and not just for me. There are tons of posts on multiple forums asking about this.

When I first started to set this up, I registered Maya 2018 and generated a license file, and installed the License Manager thinking that would be it.

The trouble it seems is that when I test a network render using Arnold I get the water mark.

SO, it appears that in order to run both Maya and Arnold, two separate, license files are needed. 

1 - a license file for Maya

2 - a license file for Arnold

Is this correct?

This is what I've done so far: The first license -Maya 2018 Education Perpetual Multi-User

1. I've gone to the  Autodesk Education Portal and received a serial number for Maya 2018
2. I then visited registeronce.autodesk.com to register the serial number and generated a license file for Maya 2018
3. I then downloaded and installed the Autodesk Network License Manager
4. Then I installed the license file for Maya 2018, using the license manager and finally, set up the client machines       

This allows me to setup Maya, and use the MTOA plug-in, to render a sequence without the watermark, which is great.

The issue at hand though is that I can't network render without getting a watermark.

So, do I need to:

1. go to the  Autodesk Education Portal
2. Get an Arnold serial number
3. Visit registeronce.autodesk.com to register the serial number and generate a license file for Arnold
4. Then go to autodesk.com and sign into my Autodesk Account and look for Arnold so that I can generate and account? 

A few extra details about our setup. We've discovered that Backburner is a separate download if you want to use the Server, Monitor and Manager apps.

Could this affect the water mark issue?

Thanks.

[Stephen.Blair]

You need an Arnold license to batch render without a watermark.

You get the Arnold license at the Autodesk Education Portal, as you described.

https://support.solidangle.com/x/-ok7B

For Backburner, or any other render manager, you have to make sure that the render manger processes have the ADSKFLEX_LICENSE_FILE setting in their environment.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Stephen. I'll set up the Arnold license on the network server today and let you know how it goes.

Thanks for letting me know about Backburner. I'll take care of the that as well.

[skullmunky]

Hi everyone, thanks for the responses.  We were able to get it working in our lab, eventually, by setting up the network license server to serve the Arnold licenses. 

It would be helpful if Autodesk and SolidAngle could provide a way to use an educational license for Arnold as standalone.  School computing environments are not "one size fits all."  In some educational classroom and lab contexts, standalone node-locked licensing makes more sense than using a networked license server. 

These cases might include:

- limited IT staff, so there isn't someone to administer a license server

- the license server generates conflicts with some other network administration feature

- the building has limited network infrastructure / no built-in ethernet wiring / unreliable wifi coverage

I've personally taught in different places where one or another of these issues would be a dealbreaker on being able to use the software.  Autodesk's educational licensing is wonderful and levels the playing field for access to the best tools in the industry, but that falls apart when the license scheme restrictions run up against the reality of physical and staff infrastructure.

I'm at a well-resourced private engineering school in North America, and even for us this was a showstopper for over a year.  We were honestly very close to either (a) abandoning Arnold and moving to Renderman, or (b) abandoning Maya completely and redesigning our curriculum around another suite of tools (something like Blender + Modo + Nuke + 3DCoat + Substance + Houdini ).  Maybe we're an edge case or something, but this was one of my more frustrating experiences in 18 years teaching Maya.  

[Anonymous]

Yeah, I'm in the same boat. I've written a 16 page step by step guide for walking through the setup for this.

When it comes to how the licensing is managed, I couldn't agree more.

It's been a huge headache for our IT staff.

[Stephen.Blair]

16 pages?

I'm not IT, and I figured it out with no training, in a few hours.

Or is it 16 pages of troubleshooting various problems?

[Anonymous]

I tend to have a lot of text in my guides and miss counted the pages. Either way there's quite of bit of information required to set this up. There's a considerable amount of room for improvement on the part of software vendors.

There's no reason that getting the serials, registering them, and getting the software should be this much of a hassle for people.

Autodesk could simply put the required steps in one place and let people know what they need. Instead there are a multiple different pages scattered around that lead to the right information.

[Anonymous]

I forgot to mention that a large part of what I was writing about involved setting up the software to work together.

Here's the guide if you're curious. 

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/installation-licensing/easy-setup-for-educational-licensing-with-arno...