Thinkbox "Marketplace" UBL being deprecated

Deadline
1

Those already using UBL likely got the email, for everyone else…

Starting on April 30th 2025, you will no longer be able to purchase UBL via the Thinkbox UBL Marketplace, with the exception of V-Ray and Renderman UBL which will remain available for purchase throughout Q2 2025 (April-June). You will be able to consume any UBL in your account until September 30th 2025, after which the Marketplace and Deadline 10 UBL will no longer be available for use. Moving forward you’ll be able to purchase UBL via the AWS Deadline Cloud Usage Based Licensing system.

We designed the AWS Deadline Cloud UBL system after listening to feedback from our customers. You can take full advantage of the system from within Thinkbox Deadline 10. Deadline Cloud UBL offers an elastic, pay-as-you-go model, billed monthly on your AWS bill, providing increased flexibility. This allows you to scale rendering without purchasing licenses upfront and eliminates the risk of unused licenses. Instructions for getting started can be found here.

Currently, AWS Deadline Cloud UBL supports Autodesk Maya, Autodesk Arnold, Autodesk 3ds Max, Foundry Nuke, SideFX Houdini, SideFX Mantra, SideFX Karma, Keyshot, Maxon Cinema4D, and Maxon Redshift, and we are actively working on adding support for Chaos V-Ray and Renderman, which we anticipate will be available by Q2 2025.

If you have any questions about unused UBL hours, refunds, or need help transitioning to Deadline Cloud UBL, please don’t hesitate to reach out to support@thinkboxsoftware.com. For more details, please refer to our FAQs below.

FAQs

  • Why are we deprecating the Thinkbox UBL Marketplace?

We are transitioning to Deadline Cloud UBL to provide customers with a more modern and flexible licensing experience. Deadline Cloud UBL offers postpaid licensing options, improved scalability, and simplifies integration with Deadline 10 workflows, making it a superior alternative to the Thinkbox UBL Marketplace. Additionally, AWS Deadline Cloud UBL offers a Pay-as-you-go model, billed monthly on your AWS bill, providing increased flexibility

  • What products does Deadline Cloud UBL support?

Currently supported with Deadline Cloud UBL:
Autodesk Maya
Autodesk Arnold
Autodesk 3ds Max
Foundry Nuke,
SideFX Houdini
SideFX Mantra
SideFX Karma
Keyshot
Maxon Cinema4D
Maxon Redshift

  • please note Yeti UBL will not be supported in Deadline Cloud UBL.
    Coming soon (Q225)
    V-Ray
    Renderman

  • You will still be able to purchase V-Ray and Renderman UBL via the AWS Thinkbox Marketplace until support is added to Deadline Cloud UBL (expected in Q2 2025).

  • When will the Thinkbox UBL Marketplace stop operating?

AWS Deadline Cloud UBL currently supports Autodesk Maya, Autodesk Arnold, Autodesk 3ds Max, Foundry Nuke, SideFX Houdini, SideFX Mantra, SideFX Karma, Keyshot, Maxon Cinema4D, and Maxon Redshift. These products will be removed from the Thinkbox UBL Marketplace on 30th April 2025. With an exception for V-Ray and RenderMan. V-Ray customers and RenderMan will continue to be able to purchase UBL hours from Thinkbox UBL Marketplace until support is available in Deadline Cloud UBL, which is expected by Q2 2025. The Marketplace will be fully deprecated on September 30, 2025.

  • Can I still purchase UBL hours for Deadline 10?

Starting April 30, 2025, customers can no longer purchase UBL from the Thinkbox UBL Marketplace hours for all the products except VRay and potentially RenderMan. VRay UBL will remain available in limited quantities until 30th of June 2025 or the day it supported in Deadline Cloud UBLs.

  • Can I still use Yeti with Deadline or Deadline Cloud without UBL?

Yes. you can use BYOL (Bring Your Own License) for these products with both Deadline 10 and Deadline Cloud. While our goal is to offer UBL for as many products as possible, BYOL ensures that customers can continue to render their workloads without interruption.

  • What happens to my unused UBL hours?

We will refund any unused credits. Please reach out to sales (thinkbox-sales@amazon.com) for questions on refunds.

  • What is the plan for unsupported products, Renderman and V-Ray?

We are working on adding support for V-Ray and Renderman. Customers can continue purchasing V-Ray and Renderman UBL hours through the Marketplace until the support is added to AWS Deadline Cloud UBL, expected in Q2 2025. We will keep you updated on our progress.

2

Well this is complete sh*t!

I could be wrong, or something may have changed… but based on previous statements, this means UBL will be available for machines ONLY hosted on AWS, which I’m guessing defeats the point of UBL for many many people, myself included.
If this is true, it’s fantastic they didn’t mention this crippling behavior in the email.

@Justin_B

Yep, that’s exactly the case, the endpoints are only available by way of an AWS VPC.

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No, you can use the new UBL on any machine, local, Aws, azure, gcp, you can use it with other render managers too. You can use deadline 10 or cloud with new UBL.

It’s the old marketplace that’s going away

It does require setting up the AWS account though and running the licenses through here to be billed monthly

3 Likes
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I looked into this further, and from what I can see I can use it outside of the VPC it’s within, so long as I expose it to the internet (bad) or use a VPN/Tailscale subnet router?
I’m currently looking into using a t4g.nano EC2 instance as a Tailscale subnet router to provide external access, because my other cloud machines already use Tailscale to connect to my local Deadline 10 server.
I believe the guide Access AWS RDS privately using Tailscale · Tailscale Docs shows a similar process and should work.
When creating the license endpoint, it’s not directly showing up via the AWS console, is using the AWS CLI or CloudShell the only way to create this? Or is it actually called the deadline “management” or “scheduling” endpoint?
Any guidance or tips are appreciated, the AWS documentation is meh and it’s all geared towards connecting EC2 instances.

On a side note, it appears the pricing for Redshift outside of an AWS fleet is $1/hr, double the previous cost!

2 Likes
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Using AWS CLI or CloudShell are the only ways to create license endpoints at the moment. You may have already seen it, but for posterity, this is a guide on creating a license endpoint and adding metered products to it: Connect customer-managed fleets to a license endpoint - Deadline Cloud

License endpoints use PrivateLink VPC Interface Endpoints under the hood to connect to our service. With correct routing set up, you can point your DCCs to the VPC Endpoint DNS as if the DNS belonged to a license server. The CMF UBL guide touches on this a bit here: Connect customer-managed fleets to a license endpoint - Deadline Cloud

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I’ve got this up and running using a t4g.nano instance as a Tailscale Subnet Router.
The cost of the instance is ~ $3.125/month along with the public ip (instead of a pricier NAT gateway) of $3.72/month, which totals to $6.845/month. As far as I can tell there is no standing charge for the Deadline UBL Endpoint, the only cost is the usage. There’s also a $0.01/hr charge for the Interface Endpoint itself, which is around $7.44/month.

There were quite a few rules to add for the security groups as well as Tailscale Access Controls to allow communication and DNS resolution on the AWS side, but I haven’t run into any issues.

Could I get clarification on usage though? I just want to confirm multiple tasks being run by the same worker are considered a single license checkout, and if multiple workers on a single machine are still licensed individually or if that has changed to machine-based licensing (like normal floating license usage).