Free Package: No need for a License Key
You don’t need a license key and you dont need to run the license server if you are using the free package downloaded from the 3Delight website. After you have install the free package, you can start to use it and do rendering immediately. Note that the free package can be used for commercial work.
You will need a license key if you want to run more that one instance of 3Delight. You will also need a license key if you want to use more than four cores for rendering. In both cases, you will need to purchase one or more licenses.
Requesting a License Key
To obtain a license key for the license(s) you have purchased, you must first determine on which machine the license server will run and find its "Host ID". The Host ID is a unique identifier to each machine and is used by the licensing software to correctly identify the system on which it runs. We only need to receive the Host ID of a single machine on your network (even if you have purchased multiple licenses).
Once 3Delight for Maya is installed, you can get the Host ID by following these steps:
Open a shell (Linux and Mac OS X) or a command prompt (Windows).
Execute the following command:
licutils hostid
This will print a unique hexadecimal identifier of the current machine and this is your Host ID. Please email it to sales@3delight.com to receive your license key. Note that you have to execute this command on the computer you intend to use to run the license server.
Additional Notes
3Delight licensing is controlled through a separate proprietary program called licserver that will be included in the packages you will receive from sales (the program is not included in the free package since no license key is needed in that case). The licensing software can run on the same machine where the software is installed, or on another machine on the same network. The license server provides floating licenses: they can be used on any machine on a given network.
The Host ID is usually the MAC address of the machine, but not always. The MAC address can change after the machine is restarted. The command we provide automatically detects this and will return a fixed and proper Host ID. For this reason, it is important to use the licutils command to obtain the Host ID.
The license server we provide is designed to serve licenses easily to thousands of nodes even if running on a low performance machine. On the other hand, it can become unresponsive if installed on a powerful machine with a too heavy load (if it is also used for rendering for example). So, it is important to carefully choose the machine for the license server as it may affect the performance of an entire render farm.