Good morning, I’m a little lost as to the right way to go about this.
I am trying to install various 3d programs to service like maya, but I don’t know if I have to buy the maya license from the official site or use the Thinkbox UBL, if I use the UBL and send a test render maya renders but without consuming the license, from the customer portal, on the other hand I also can’t open maya and install or test anything on each node as it is not licensed so I am quite puzzled.
Finally another question I have with the different versions of houdini, if I have installed version 18.5.759 and the customer makes the project with 18.5.633 is compatible ? if rendering with mantra,v-ray,arnold will have some kind of problem or you have to install all versions of houdini with its engines etc…
I also don’t understand if I buy v-ray license with thinkbox how do I download from the official v-ray site if I only have the license with thinkbox ?
About your first question:
Maya UBL cannot work on your on premise machine, it only works on AWS. Maya does not need a license to render if you have it installed. However it does need a license to open the application and create/tweak the scene. Maya full license will be required from Autodesk to do that.
For you question about Houdini, Deadline supports both versions because it supports Houdini 18.5 in general. I’m not sure about whether both the versions are compatible with each other. I think that they should be. It seems like a question for Houdini developers, I think release notes will also help.
About V-Ray: I think what you are looking for is Vray for Maya? Installation - V-Ray 5 for Maya - Chaos Help this link might help. It’s trial version, so you download it and when you render using it, it will check the UBL provided UBL is set up correctly.
Ok thanks for the answer, from what I understand I would have to buy licenses for each program from the official sites and rendering services like v-ray,mantra,redshift,arnold would I have to let deadline with thinkbox licenses manage it when 1 client sends a job ?
About maya, well in the deadline tutorial you pay for the maya+arnold ubl service and now I realize that you don’t need maya according to this answer.
Finally, do I need the deadline infrastructure service (AWSPortal) to use the licenses because I see that they charge an average of 0.90$/hour.
Update today: I am talking to Autodesk and Chaos and they do not know how to answer any of the questions about floating licenses offered by Thinkbox, they tell me that they do not sell that kind of service and that it would not work.
If you want to render using any of the Autodesk (Maya/Max/Arnold) UBL you can only render on the AWS they are not compatible with non AWS machines. Which means if you want to render on premise using any Autodesk product (Maya, Arnold, 3dsMax) you cannot use UBL. You will need to use Autodesk licenses provided and hosted by them.
If you already have such licenses, you can not only render on premise but you also can make use of those by spinning up to 10 AWS cloud based nodes for each license you have with Autodesk. This called Autodesk Cloud rights. Read Subscription Benefits FAQ: Cloud Rights for 3ds Max and Maya.
Arnold needs a little bit more configuration but works the same way.
In this case (Bringing Your Own License to AWS) you will need to make your own custom AMI by installing full version of Maya/Max/Arnold. The reason why you cannot use Thinkbox out of the box AMIs is that a special version of these products is installed on the AMIs to make them compatible with the UBL.
Not quiet right, if you want to render on premise you can still use UBL except for Autodesk products. If you want to render on AWS you can use UBL 100% or you can bring your own licensing.
Are you trying to calculate how much will it cost to render on AWS? The link I shared above has cost of every component required to rendr on AWS Portal.
Thanks for the answer, we only use our own machines without aws portal, we have purchased v-ray UBL licenses but since 1 month with thinkbox technical support they could not solve my problem with the licence forwarder to use the ubl on our machines.