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Floating Cloud Licenses

TouchDesigner offers floating licenses using Wibu/CodeMeter's CmCloud licensing technology.

Available for build 2020.28110 or any builds from 2021+

Floating Cloud procedure - After purchase Derivative will send you a credential .wbc file, usually issued during Derivative business hours of 10:00-18:00 EST (UTC-4) Toronto time. For inquiries about your credential file please email our licensing team.


Usage Casesedit

Local Computers Licensed from a Global Pool - Distributed Teams and Remote Workingedit

Floating cloud licenses offer a simple solution for those looking to have a pool of licenses available to any of their team, world-wide. A pool of numerous licenses on one account can be shared between global locations such as offices, studios, or installations, delivering the license to the team member on demand wherever they have an internet connection. This is different from the Dongle based floating licensing, since that solution requires the Dongle and the local computers to be on the same LAN.

Lab Computers at Schools and Universitiesedit

Sometimes lab computers are wiped often and/or don't have admin privledges. Using floating cloud licenses allows the system administrator to install the credentials onto lab computers as part of their disk image. This setup will automatically use licenses when TouchDesigner is in use and return them when TouchDesigner closes.

See also Educational Setup for more information about setting up TouchDesigner at educational institutions.

Running TouchDesigner on Cloud Platformsedit

A great usage case for floating cloud licenses is to make it easy to license TouchDesigner and TouchPlayer when running it on servers in the cloud. Often these virtual cloud servers do not have consistent system codes. This may be because a new instance is spun-up every time the cloud server is launched, or it may be because the way the cloud platform works causes the system code to change often. Dongle-based solutions also don't work since it's rare that access to the hardware is possible for cloud servers.

Reliabilityedit

Since Cloud licenses require an active internet connection to function, they should only be used in non-critical situations, such as in labs or working at the office, or critical situations where internet access is also a critical element. That is, they are safe to use for cloud systems since if the cloud system loses internet, the system becomes non-functioning regardless of it's using a cloud license or not.

Limitationsedit

A single .wbc credential file is limited to 128 connections at a time. If you need more licenses, we'll need to split them across multiple .wbc files. Any machine that is running and has the .wbc credential installed will count against this limit, even if TouchDesigner isn't running.

On-site shows and installations that cannot have downtime should use a software license or a Dongle based license.

Converting Existing Licensesedit

Any existing license can be converted to a Floating Cloud License simply by paying the difference in price between the standard license and the floating license price. There is no store item to do this, so you can purchase the equivalent amount using "Payment Tokens" on the store, and contacting us at sales@derivative.ca to have your license converted over. Note that the conversion does not change the update date on the license.

Setup Floating Cloud Licensesedit

A single user account can have any number of licenses assigned to be floating in the cloud and any type of license can be used ie. Educational - Commercial - Pro.

Activating Floating Cloud Licensesedit

After purchasing your Floating Cloud License, Derivative will send you a credential file which is a .wbc file.

NOTE: The credential files are usually issued during Derivative business hours of 10:00-18:00 EST (GMT-4) Toronto time. For any inquiries about your credential file please email our licensing team.

Install .wbc File

  1. Install CodeMeter Control Center.
  2. Open the Codemeter Control Center app, then grad and drop the .wbc file onto the Control Center to install it.

For the computer to acquire a license from the cloud, this .wbc needs to be loaded into the CodeMeter Control Center and you need an active internet connection. When TouchDesigner or TouchPlayer launches, if a .wbc file is installed on the system, it will attempt to acquire a license available from the cloud service. If any local licenses that are installed are higher (ie. Pro is higher than Commercial), those will be used as well on top of the cloud license. If you don't want to use a cloud license anymore on a computer, you can simply remove the credentials from the CodeMeter Control by following the instructions in the section below.

Only one .wbc credential file is used for all users in an organization that will be using the cloud licenses. The file does not contain any licenses itself. It only contains credentials that are used to contact the cloud server to acquire licenses. If for any reason the credential file becomes compromised (e.g given out to someone that shouldn't have access), then Derivative will need to issue your account a new credential file. All users of the account will need to install that new credential file, as the old one will stop working.

Via Command Lineedit

The credential file can be installed onto the system on the command line with the command:

 cmu32.exe --import --file <yourFile.wbc>

Removing Floating Cloud Credentials from a computeredit

Currently removing a CmCloud license from a computer takes a few steps. We are hoping CodeMeter will release a better solution soon. In the meantime the CmCloud license can be removed using one of two ways.

Via Command Lineedit

Navigate to the CodeMeter runtime directory, usually: C:\Program Files (x86)\CodeMeter\Runtime\bin Execute the command:

 cmu32.exe --delete-cmcloud-credentials --serial <Serial number of CmCloud license>

On macOS the command is simply called cmu.

Enable the 'Remove' button in the CodeMeter Control Panel UIedit

1. Open registry editor by clicking the Windows symbols and type: regedit
2. Create a new DWORD(32-bit) Value at HKEY_CURRENT_USER/SOFTWARE/WIBU-SYSTEMS/CodeMeterCC with the name "AllowCmActDelete" and set entry to a value of 1.
3. Restart the computer.
In order to deactivate the button follow step 1 and set "AllowCmActDelete" to a value of 0 or delete the complete string entry.

Releasing a license that is stuck as in-useedit

If the computer using a Cloud license, or possibly TouchDesigner on the computer crashes, it's possible the license will still be in the 'in-use' state in the cloud licensing server. To solve this simple restart TouchDesigner on the computer that originally was using the license and then close TouchDesigner. This should release the license on the cloud licensing server. If this doesn't not fix the issue please contact us at licensing@derivative.ca.

Network Portedit

Network Port number 22350 is the port that the CmCloud service communicates on.

Installing Required Codemeter Softwareedit

Windows CodeMeter Installedit

  • When installing TouchDesigner, the first dialog of the installer will have an option for "Install Runtime for Dongle Licensing", make sure this is checked on. Proceed with the installation.
  • You can alternatively download the dongle runtime from here CodeMeter Download. We suggest you turn off the 'Automatic server search' option in the CodeMeter installer options, to allow for quicker startup on networks with many machines with CodeMeter installed.

InstallOptions.png

macOS CodeMeter Installedit

  • Download and install the CodeMeter Control Center from here:

CodeMeter 7.0 Download

NOTE: Both version 6.80 and the latest version 7.10 do not connect to dongles in some cases. We recommend using version 7.0 linked to above.

Additional Notesedit

Wibu/CodeMeter's CmCloud licensing technology uses servers located in Germany.

See Also: License Dongle