Help Desk

How do I license Houdini Products?

A walkthrough guide for licensing Houdini

Account Activation

Once your account has been created, the system will send an activation email for your licensing account. Your email address will also receive other notifications from the system such as new license entitlements to be installed, upgrades or extensions to existing licenses. Please ensure that you have licensemanager@sidefx.com whitelisted in your spam settings.

NOTE:

Apprentice users will not be able to manage their licenses with their SideFX web account through the License Administrator. This is reserved for Indie, Education and Commercial users.

Licensing

For Apprentice users, please refer to licensing Houdini Apprentice.

These are the three choices for installing/using your Houdini Licenses:

Method 1: Install Licenses to your Computer

With this method, you can install the licenses directly to the computer so your machine can serve itself licenses.

In this configuration, the machine is both a client and the license server to itself. The benefit of using this method is that you don't need an Internet connection. This makes it a good option for laptops on the move which may not have a persistent Internet connection.

If you have workstation licenses, those licenses cannot be served from a central server machine. You either have to install the workstation licenses locally with this method or use login-based licensing.

Using the License Administrator (hkey):
  1. If No Account is shown in the top right account button, Click the button and log into your SideFX license account using your email address and password.
  2. Click your account button again and select Install license Entitlements.
    If you don't have this option, select "Switch to on-premise license server" first.
  3. Press the Select All button or manually specify the quantity of each entitlement to install.
  4. Press the Install button.
NOTE:
If the options in your account menu are different and you see "Switch to on-premise license server", you are using Login Licensing and will need to click "Switch to on-premise license server" to use local licensing.
Account Button

Your machine serves itself the licenses. When you install the licenses locally, the machine name and hardware information are encoded into the license itself so renaming the computer name can invalidate the licenses.
Method 2: Login Licensing

With this method, you don't install the licenses locally. You set the machine to look to SideFX and launch Houdini.

This option is quite flexible as you can run Houdini on different computers or if your machine is formatted or crashes, you don't need to worry about how to release the original licenses. The complexity of licensing is taken away. However, this option requires an Internet connection. If you have started the Houdini session and Internet connectivity is lost, the license will be checked out for two weeks by the machine unless the Houdini session is closed.

Using the License Administrator:
  1. If No Account is shown in the top right account button, Click the button and log into your SideFX license account using your email address and password.
  2. Click the account button again and select Switch to Online Licensing(SideFX Login).
  3. You will be asked if you are sure you want to make this change, due to the always online requirement, select Yes.

The Server(s) column should list SideFX if you are using SideFX as the license server.

License Administrator Login
Method 3: Installing floating licenses to a network server
Follow Method 1 to install the licenses to the machine that will act as the central license server. Only floating licenses (LAL/GAL) can to be served to network clients.
You will not be able to mix LAL and GAL licenses on the same server. For more information, please refer to How do I setup a network license server?

Troubleshooting:

Most licensing issues can be resolved by following the above, if you cannot resolve your licensing issues, please email support@sidefx.com with the license diagnostic from the machine you are trying to license. Please also include your Account number and or/email used for licensing so the support team can easily locate your account information.