Demo license activation

Owned by Next Limit
Last updated: 12 Jun, 2023 by Next Limit
2 min read

Activating a Demo license is pretty easy. The process is very similar to a normal license, but skipping the email, password and license key step. Please check this video to check how to do it:



The most common process would be this one:

1.- I want to try the demo
2.- I want to activate the license on this computer now (needs internet connection).
3.- Proxy section; leave it blank and click on Activate if you are not connecting through a proxy to the internet (the most common situation); otherwise, activate it and enter your proxy data.
4.- Select the product demo you want to try from the list and click on the OK button.
5.- Save the license file in the suggested folder and that should be all.


After this process, the License Activator will store a .lic file in this path:

Windows: C:\ProgramData\Next Limit\Maxwell\licenses\v5 

OSX: Users/<username>/Maxwell/v5

Linux: $(HOME)/Maxwell/v5

If you eventually purchase a license of one of our products you can either delete or overwrite this license file.

As you may have noticed in the video, you can also activate a Demo license for a different computer; the process is very similar as doing this for a normal node-locked license; you need to know the host ID of the other computer as well.

In this case you will have to choose I want to try the demo in the first step and then, in the second step proceed as explained for Node-Locked license activation in Activate a license for a different computer section.


The most common licensing error messages

  • Connection error - Usually means the license activator and/or Maxwell Render is blocked by a firewall and can't reach our servers.
  • "License could not be validated" - Usually has the same cause as the above.
  • "License could not be saved" - This means Maxwell doesn't have enough permissions on your computer to write the license file to disk. Start the install process again, making sure to right-click on the installed and chosen "Run as Administrator".

If you still have problems, the first thing you should do is open Maxwell (not Maxwell Studio) and look in the Console panel for any licensing errors. Then go to the licensing troubleshooting page to see if the error message is listed there, and what the solution is.