License manager

[mattjgerard]

Just a small thing, but I wish there was a way to deactivate a license from another computer. I routinely continue work at home, and several times I have forgotten to deactivate the license at work in order to reactivate on my workstation at home. Is there a way to do that?

Cheers!

Matt

[DMerz III]

Look into TeamViewer, it takes some setup on both ends, but I've used it before in a pinch, usually for checking on my render queue over a weekend to make sure things are running smoothly.
(allows you to remotely access computer from another).

[mattjgerard]

Ah yeah, I've used that in the past, forgot about it for this issue! Wonder if the IT peeps would let me install it and tunnel in. They have the keys to the kingdom in that sense. The only other catch is that  they actually shut power off to my end of the building at 7. Which really blows because I can't let a render queue run over night, or let a really gnarly image cook overnight. So, if I'm past 7, even with teamviewer I'm out of luck.

Nevertheless, I will investigate the teamviewer option and wait for the resounding "Hell NO!" from IT.

Cheers!

[DMerz III]

The only other catch is that  they actually shut power off to my end of the building at 7. Which really blows because I can't let a render queue run over night, or let a really gnarly image cook overnight. So, if I'm past 7, even with teamviewer I'm out of luck.

Wow, that sounds highly counter-productive! They shut everything down!? I don't want to pretend I know your company or its situation, but our team couldn't get anything done if we didn't rely on overnight rendering. We try our best to leverage the off-hours for rendering and use office hours for all the actual work. Good luck with the IT department, but it sounds like upper management needs to get a better understanding of what efficiency they're losing out on by not utilizing overnight rendering!

[mattjgerard]

Yeah, well, I'm new here, only 4 months on the job so far, so I have no idea what they are thinking. I heard something about a fire happening one night because someone left their little under desk foot heater on all night, and it started a blaze, and management freaked out.  Might be other issues, but yeah, I've never heard of a company doing that.  My computer is restarted every single morning, so I picture someone at the fusebox looking at their watch counting down to 7pm and yanking the big red lever down with sparks flying everything while walking away dusting his hands off for a job well done.

Good news is that the render farm we are setting up is in the IT racks, so that will be on and available 24/7. Having a meeting with the network nerds today. I can say that because I used to be one of them

[mattjgerard]

OK, I'm popping this request to the top again because I'm a dumbass. I was working at home on some projects, and of course forgot to deactivate my license on my home workstation, so I get back into work and I'm SOL. Bless my wife, not being a computer person at all I was able to walk her through deactivating it. Doesn't help that she is visually impaired, and on my 4k monitor at home the text and icons are TINY!!! She did it though, and I'm back up and running.

Adobe has a neat system, where you can wipe out your activations at any computer you are trying to log into, and I do that all the time, as I have 3 computers that I rotate using, depending on what projects and where I am. Would be nice to have a remote way of deactivating licenses from other computers. I know this is a request that is totally based on operator error, but man, it would be nice sometimes!

Thanks all!

[Robb63]

Plus +1000000 on this. Adobe (it has been mentioned many times over the years when this comes up) has what seems to be a very good system from a user perspective for activating/deactivating licenses.

Unfortunately Mattjgerard, as good and customer focused as the folks at Keyshot/Luxion are (and they and their software are great!), this seems to be one area they will not budge on.

[mattjgerard]

this seems to be one area they will not budge on.

Unless there just isn't enough demand to put into the back end services of implementing it. I'd be willing to make a case of beer magically show up at a doorstep if it would help 

[guest84672]

It certainly is on our list of things to do. The biggest challenge is to figure out how to avoid abuse.

[mattjgerard]

Totally understood. There are other renderers that shall remain unnamed that are dealing with the same issues, they tried placing limits on the number of activations per day, they tried an hourly delay for activations, and no matter what there are people complaining. Adobe did that for a short time then threw up their hands and took off all limits, and I can move my license around as much as I want to. I see pros and cons to each. And I understand the trying to limit abuse of the licenses. Y'all are beyond smart so I know you'll figure something out

1) Tie the license to 2 computers via MAC addresses or IP address, or some other identifying marker and allow switching between the 2

2) um, that's all I got. not enough coffee yet to come up with other ideas....

[James.]

This license issue is the biggest productivity obstacle I face with Keyshot as I routinely work in the office and at home. It happened so often that the license was on the other computer that I gave up trying to switch. Aside from that I find Keyshot, especially Keyshot 7, excellent.

I also use Adobe CC and the ability to have the license on two machines means that I am productive in both locations.

[guest84672]

The fundamental difference with Adobe products is that they don't do anything just sitting there. You will need to interact with the applications in order to get a result. KeyShot on the other hand always renders. So if you could kick off a rendering at the office, go home and start using KeyShot again. Then you are essentially using 2 licenses simultaneously.

[mattjgerard]

The fundamental difference with Adobe products is that they don't do anything just sitting there. You will need to interact with the applications in order to get a result. KeyShot on the other hand always renders. So if you could kick off a rendering at the office, go home and start using KeyShot again. Then you are essentially using 2 licenses simultaneously.

Interesting way of thinking about it. Although a slight but inconsequential scenario is if I kick off a bunch of encodings on my office machine then head home and start editing on another project. I did that all the time in my editing days, especially with the multi format long form projects. The difference is that Adobe explicitly  allows 2 computers to be licensed and used at the same time. I've had my tower cranking on an AE render or encoding job and been doing photoshop work on my laptop. But the license allows that, keyshot's doesn't as far as I know.

There will always be those out there that will try what thye can to abuse the system. I think the 2 install/2 use system is reasonable, it allows for 98% of the situations where there is a main install on the work machine, then an install and license on a laptop for locations/travel work, or a second location such as home or remote office. There will probably be those that will try to split a license, but man that seems like a whole lot of trouble:) Maybe there is a way to register the MAC addresses of 2 computers tied to the license?

Didn't know this would be that complicated, but I don't deal with these issues on a regular basis. Plus, I'm guaranteed that I can't run both at the same time since my office building completely shuts the power off at 7pm every night! Thanks to the Network render I can kick stuff to that to render overnight, even if its slower than my local machine.