Corona Licensing Server – Chaos Help Center

Corona Licensing Server

Note: this guide applies only to the Corona Licensing Server application which is available in Corona Renderer 7 and older. For information about Corona 8 or newer and the Chaos License Server, please see: How to activate Chaos products?

The Corona Licensing Server can be used to automatically, remotely activate Corona Renderer on one or more computers on a network, using another computer.

This is especially useful if you have a large number of computers running Corona Renderer and activating all of them manually would be problematic (e.g. render farm), or if you wish to have no Internet connection on the PC(s) running Corona, yet to be able to activate it.

Using the Corona Licensing server

The Corona Licensing Server can be used with all Corona licenses for both 3ds Max and Cinema 4D. To use it:

Select a single computer in your LAN that will act as a licensing server. This computer has to have an Internet connection.
Install the licensing server using our Universal Installer, and run it.
Note: you will need to pick "custom" installation in the installer, and then select the licensing server as an item. By default, the licensing server is installed into C:\Program Files\Corona\LicensingServer.exe in Corona Renderer 2 or older, and into C:\Program Files\Corona\Licensing Server\LicensingServer.exe in Corona Renderer 3 or newer, however, it can be moved to any folder as it is "portable".
Input your Customer Zone login and password in the Licensing Server application. You do not need to confirm it using any button or keypress.

You can also create a LicensingServerLogin.txt file in C:\Users\_username_\AppData\Local\CoronaRenderer on the licensing server computer, containing a single line "email:password". This way you won't have to type in the log in each time the server is started.
NOTE: if you use LicensingServerLogin.txt, please consider that your login credentials are exposed to anyone with access to the computer!
Allow ports UDP 19668 and TCP 19669 in your firewall both for the LicensingServer.exe and 3dsmax.exe or CINEMA4D.exe (depending on your program choice).
Now when any machine on the LAN without an active Corona Renderer license starts rendering, it will use the Licensing Server to obtain a license. There is no need for the machines to have an Internet connection, or to have any licensing details specified, making this very useful for render farms.

For Mac users:

Create a txt file called "CoronaActivation", within this file you will need to enter your customer zone email and password in the following format: email:password.
Then save the file to the location: Library/Application Support/Corona/. Do this for all clients using Corona Renderer. Now from your main workstation, you can run the licensing server. This should then hunt for the newly created txt file and activate all instances of Corona.

If you cannot find the licensing server, run the Corona installer again and choose "customize" then make sure the licensing server is enabled and proceed with the rest of the installation.

Troubleshooting

Always use the newest version

If you encounter some problems with the Licensing Server, please make sure that you are using the latest version available in our official release.

If the computers cannot obtain their licenses from the licensing server

The licensed computers discover the licensing server using a UDP broadcast. This means that the licensing server has to be on the same subnetwork as the nodes. To overcome this, you can specify arbitrary IP/hostname to connect to, using the CoronaActivation.txt file in C:\Users\_username_\AppData\Local\CoronaRenderer - just put the single line: LS:address into it. Below is an example batch file that sets the licensing server IP address to 10.0.1.25:

mkdir "%LOCALAPPDATA%/CoronaRenderer"
echo LS:10.0.1.25 > "%LOCALAPPDATA%/CoronaRenderer/CoronaActivation.txt"

Hostnames (for example "localhost") work too.

This should be done on the licensed computers, not on the computer running the licensing server!

If the licensing server cannot obtain the licensing info

All licensing server outside communication is an HTTPS connection over the standard port (443) to corona-renderer.com. Connections from/to licensing server are also over HTTPS (443) directly between the computers requesting the licenses and the computer running the Licensing Server.

Running the Licensing Server as a Windows service

Starting from Corona Renderer 1.4. the Licensing Server can also be run as a Windows service.

If the "AppData/Local" folder cannot be used for some reason

You can also store the LicensingServerLogin.txt in the current working directory of the Licensing Server (the same folder where the LicensingServer.exe is stored, by default C:\Program Files\Corona\).

Storing the LicensingServerLogin.txt file in AppData/Local will allow only the current Windows user to use the automatic activation.

Storing the LicensingServerLogin.txt file in the Licensing Server working directory will allow any Windows user to use the automatic activation.

The Licensing Server first tries to load configuration from %localappdata%. If that fails, it then tries to load configuration from the current working directory. If that fails as well, it just uses the manually inserted login credentials.

The computers are not receiving licenses even though everything seems to be set up correctly

Please try running the Licensing Server as administrator (right-click > Run as Administrator).