Licensing

Owned by Mihai Iliuta (Unlicensed)
Last updated: 24 Sept, 2014 by dario (Unlicensed)
4 min read

Licensing Maxwell Render v2 Suite

The Maxwell license file is a license.txt file containing information about your license, and it was sent to you in an email from the Next Limit Sales department when you purchased Maxwell Render. The licensing information is the whole block starting with ######... up to #LICENSE ENDS HERE. 

To license Maxwell Render, follow this procedure:

  • Open Maxwell.exe (Win) or Maxwell.app (Mac) and go to Help> License Info. A pop-up screen will appear.
  • Click the Add button in the lower left corner, and copy your license key in the screen, then click Save. Make sure to not change the license text in any way.
  • Maxwell Render is now licensed.

Once you have licensed the software, your license key will be saved in your Maxwell user folder, for example in Windows 7 this would be in: C:\Users\<current user>\Documents\Maxwell\license.txt.

If you are not sure where your license key is stored, open Maxwell.exe (Win) or Maxwell.app (Mac). The console window will display where your license key is located, stating “License found in.....”.

 

Paste your licensing information in the License Info panel

 

If you purchase more licenses in the future, you can add the new licenses to your current ones by simply click on the "Add" button and paste the new licenses text. Maxwell will automatically merge your current licenses with your new ones, and save a new license.txt containing all your licenses together. This new complete license file has to be used on all your computers (old and new). 

You have to follow the same licensing procedure on all the computers you intend to render on.

Propagating your license file to other computers. The fastest way.

If you own license for more than one computer, you have to use the same license.txt file (containing the information of all your licenses) in all the computers of your farm (no matter which will run as Manager and Monitor, and which will be Rendernodes). 

Once you get Maxwell licensed in one of your computer, the easiest way to apply that same license.txt file on the rest is this:

Find the license.txt file in your licensed computer (an automatic search with the term license.txt will easily find it). Copy your license file to a pendrive.
Go to one of your other computers, open the Maxwell application folder (where the Maxwell and Studio applications are stored) and paste the license.txt file there.
Then launch Maxwell from that same folder (the black Maxwell icon). This way you force Maxwell to recognize that license file and get licensed.

Once it gets properly licensed, it will automatically move your license file to another location where it will easily found each time you run Maxwell (usually it is moved to the Users>Documents>Maxwell subfolder). Don't worry about it, this is an automatic process.

Now Maxwell will be properly licensed on that computer. Repeat these simple steps on all your computers. 

 

 

Custom license path

Beyond the regular licensing procedure described above, some users may be interested in having one single license.txt file stored in certain particular location, and all the node computers may read the license file from this unique location. 

To do this, you can use the MAXWELL2_LICENSE_PATH environment variable, that allows to define the folder where the license.txt file is located. Just create a new environment variable in your operating system settings panel named MAXWELL2_LICENSE_PATH pointing to the folder where the license.txt file is stored. Maxwell will then read the license from this custom location. 

 

Licensing Maxwell Render v2 Learning Edition

After purchasing the Maxwell Render Learning Edition, you received an email from the Next Limit Sales department containing your Learning Edition license, in particular a user name, password and a product key. 

To license Maxwell Render Learning Edition, simply follow this procedure:

  • Open Maxwell.exe (Win) or Maxwell.app (Mac) and go to Help> License Info. A pop-up screen will appear asking you to licence Maxwell Render Learning Edition or Maxwell Render (full production version). Choose Maxwell Render Learning Edition.
  • In the License Activator panel, paste your Email, Password and serial Key you received in your confirmation email. Click Activate. Maxwell will validate and activate your license if all the data are correct. 
  • Your Maxwell Render Learning Edition is now licensed.
 
 
 
 
 

Once you have licensed the software, a "mxstdlicMAXWELL_LEARNING.dat" file will be saved in your Maxwell user folder, for example in Windows 7 this would be in: C:\Users\<current user>\Documents\Maxwell\mxstdlicMAXWELL_LEARNING.dat

If you are not sure where your license key is stored, open Maxwell.exe (Win) or Maxwell.app (Mac). The console window will display where your license key is located, stating “License found in.....”.

If somehow Maxwell finds a license file from the Full version plus another one from the Learning Edition (in case you had purchased both in different moments), Maxwell gives priority to the Suite license.