Unified RLM Licensing FAQs

What are the new unified ISV Licenses?

To simplify the process to set up and manage RLM licenses Maxon will unify all their licenses under one ISV (“Independent Software Vendor”) starting on April 20th, 2022. For technical reasons all licenses will be consolidated under the “redshift” ISV.  

As a result, customers that previously had multiple RLM server license files to support their Maxon products will now only require 1 RLM server license file for all their products. The client machine configuration will also be simplified to follow only one approach that will work for all products released on and after April 20th, 2022.  

This change will only impact customers that 1) need to renew their subscription after April 20th, 2022, or 2) that want to upgrade to newer versions of their products with their existent RLM subscriptions.  

Please note that to be able to take advantage of the new consolidated ISV, you will need to update your RLM server to version 14.2. You can download the executable here or use the executable provided in the RLM license server bundle (Windows 64-bit, Windows 32-bit, Linux 64-bit, macOS 64-bit) . For more information about the implications of this change, please visits our RLM related FAQs. 

What products are licensed via RLM?

Unified RLM licensing is available for the following products:

• Maxon App 3.0 and greater
• Maxon One (subject to the release versions below)
• Cinema 4D 24 and greater (new installations of Cinema 4D 24 and 25 are required, available from maxon.net)
• Redshift 2.0.00 and above
• Red Giant (all releases via Maxon App 3.0+)
• ZBrush 2022.0.5 and greater (via Maxon App 3.0+)

Do I need a new license file?

To make use of unified RLM licensing and the latest releases of our tools, you'll need an updated license file. We know this is a big change, so you're not required to switch you next renew or add more licenses to your subscription.

How will my license consumption and usage reporting change?

Maxon One is consumed entirely when any individual Maxon tool is used. This was always the intention, but was not previously implemented in RLM. As a result you may see increased usage.

All Maxon tools can be used on a single computer with a single Maxon One license (share=h).

As an example, if you have 10 Maxon One subscriptions, Cinema 4D and Red Giant can currently be entitled separately - so you may actually have some combination of more than 10 artists using Cinema 4D, Red Giant and Redshift. Moving forward only 10 artists will be able to check out any of these products.

Similarly, use of any Red Giant tool will consume the entire Red Giant license. You're likely already seeing this behavior, with all Red Giant tools being checked out as vfxsuite.

Additionally, a bug made it possible for Red Giant Render-only licenses to be used in GUI instances, so you may see increased demand for Red Giant GUI licenses.

With the new Unified RLM license, you'll see a single Maxon One product with associated license usage, and token based licenses for each separate tool (Cinema 4D, Red Giant, Redshift, ZBrush). When each of these tools requests a license, they'll first attempt to acquire an individual license for that product (in the case of Universe a Red Giant license will be attempted). If an individual license isn't available, the Maxon One license will be checked out. You'll see an accurate report of licenses in use per product, and the license column will show which tool requested the license.

Once you've had a chance to evaluate usage patterns, your Maxon account representative can provide you a quote for additional Maxon One subscriptions, or splitting Maxon One subscriptions into separate per-tool subscriptions. Note that per-tool subscriptions will not include the Maxon One bundle discount.

Can I prevent users from installing applications and updates via Maxon App?

Yes! Maxon App 3.0 includes a new RLM mode that prevents individual users from installing Maxon software and updates.

To override this behavior and install as an admin you can exit the RLM mode, log-in with a my.maxon account and install products through the Maxon App UI. They will be recognized as available products when going back to the RLM mode. 

How do I specify the RLM server for Maxon applications?

You must configure each client machine so that it can find the license server and checkout licenses. This can be done either via environment variables or a client.lic file on the system.

The following logic is used to determine the license server:

1. redshift_SERVER environment variable (note that redshift ISV is used for all Maxon products)
2. RLM_SERVER environment variable
3. REDSHIFT_LICENSEPATH environment variable - defines the location of the client.lic file for Redshift only
4. MAXON_LICENSEPATH environment variable - defines the location of the client.lic for Maxon App, Cinema 4D and Redshift. (Red Giant and ZBrush obtain licenses via Maxon App)
5. For Redshift only, Redshift default license paths:
   1. Windows: %PROGRAMDATA%\Redshift\
   2. Mac: ~/redshift/
   3. Linux: ~/redshift/
6. For All Maxon Products, default license paths:
   1. Windows: %PROGRAMDATA%\Maxon\RLM
   2. Mac: /users/Shared/Maxon/RLM
   3. Linux: /etc/opt/maxon/RLM

In the case of environment variables, the content should be provided as port@hostname or port@ip

In the case of client.lic, the format is as follows:

How do Render-only Licenses work?

Both Cinema 4D and Red Giant offer render-only licenses. The Commandline render only licenses provided for Cinema 4D can be used with command-line tools such as Deadline and Qube to distribute render jobs in a network.

Cinema 4D render-only licenses are bundled with Redshift CPU, so network rendering using the CPU is possible at no additional cost. Redshift GPU requires a separate subscription per render client.

In the case of both Cinema 4D and Red Giant, commandline (render-only) instances will first attempt to checkout a render-only license. If a render-only license is unavailable, an available GUI license will be checked out as a fallback. To prevent GUI licenses from being used by render-only clients for C4D, you can use RLM grouping or an environment variable : MAXON_RENDERONLY = true. 

In the case of Red Giant you can prevent GUI licenses from being used for render-only clients setting the environment variable  MAXON_DISABLE_RENDERONLY_FALLBACK = true.

When do RLM .lic files expire?

Simply put, if the expiration date is November 8, the licenses are not longer valid on November 9 at 00:00 in the local timezone of the license server. Here are some more details from Reprise:

• The license expires at midnight on the date specified, in other words, it is valid for the entire day of the expiration date.
• RLM uses a proprietary algorithm to check for clock windback. This algorithm does not access any other computers, and has been used in RLM since version 1.0. It is fast but sometimes returns false positives.
• The expiration time, like the expiration date, is in local time either for the client (for nodelocked licenses) or on the server (for floating licenses).