Activating Corona 7 and older on farms and computers without host software GUI

Activating Corona 7 and older on farms and computers without host software GUI

Note: this guide applies only to Corona Renderer 7 and older. For information about Corona 8 or newer and the Chaos License Server, please see: 

• How to activate Chaos products?
• Activating Corona 8 or newer on farms and computers without host software GUI

Corona Licensing Server

Manual Installation and Activation

Installation: To automate the installation process on multiple computers, it is best to use the "Unpack files" option in the Corona Renderer installer and then copy the files manually to the correct locations, or use a batch script for this. 

Here is how to use the "Unpack files" option and where each file should be copied:

How to install Corona Renderer manually?

Activation: The activation window will not pop up when running network rendering. Additionally, you might want to automate the process for a large number of computers. You can either use our Licensing Server or, alternatively, you can use the following semi-automatic process: 

Before you proceed:

In this guide we recommend using batch (*.bat) scripts. If you are not familiar with them, here is a quick guide on batch file creation:

1. Open Microsoft Notepad
2. Copy the "code" that should be executed by the .bat file and paste it into Notepad
3. In Notepad, go to File > Save as..., change "save as type" to "all files" and save the file in desired location as file_name.bat
4. Run the newly created file to execute the code

1) If the computers have access to the Internet

Simply create file %LOCALAPPDATA%/CoronaRenderer/CoronaActivation.txt containing your email:password or your serial number.

Note: %localappdata% is a valid path you can use in batch files. Typing %localappdata% into Windows Explorer, command line, Total Commander, etc, will open the correct folder on your computer.

Here is an example batch file that does it. for you You only need to change the email address and password in the second line, and run it on all computers:

mkdir "%LOCALAPPDATA%/CoronaRenderer"
echo coronauser123@gmail.com:p4ssw0rd > "%LOCALAPPDATA%/CoronaRenderer/CoronaActivation.txt"

Upon rendering with Corona for the first time on the licensed machine, the file will get renamed, and Corona will be activated.

Note: if you use this method, please consider that your login/serial number is exposed to anyone with access to the computer until you delete the CoronaActivation.txt file (you can delete it right after the license was activated).

2) If the computers do not have access to the Internet

1. Gather request keys. They are stored in %LOCALAPPDATA%/CoronaRenderer/request-3dsmax.txt or %LOCALAPPDATA%/CoronaRenderer/request-cinema4d.txt . The file will be generated when starting the host software with Corona Renderer installed for the first time.
2. Activate the keys manually at https://corona-renderer.com/customer-zone/
3. Write the bare activation key in the %LOCALAPPDATA%/CoronaRenderer/CoronaActivation.txt file. Here is an example batch file that does it for you. You need to replace the activation key in line 2 with each individual computer's activation key:

mkdir "%LOCALAPPDATA%/CoronaRenderer"
echo bJyaHXd+MV1mxDrNP9zdnQSUC8tBRDL6yaD1QV/It4SmhT0Gfe+daro88vQBARjnTV9gMAoNa > "%LOCALAPPDATA%/CoronaRenderer/CoronaActivation.txt"

Upon rendering with Corona for the first time on the licensed machine, the file will get renamed, and Corona will be activated.

Note #1: if you are using "hide extensions for known file types" option in Windows, you may accidentally save a file named CoronaActivation.txt.txt - please make sure that the file extension is not doubled!

Note #2: The provided batch scripts will work correctly only if you run them under the same Windows user as the host software runs under later. If that is not the case, you can simply replace %LOCALAPPDATA% with the local application data folder of the user that runs either 3ds Max or Cinema 4D (by default C:/Users/[username]/AppData/Local)

Activating demo licenses on render nodes

You can use the method "2) If the computers do not have access to the Internet" to activate demo license on render nodes without access to the host software GUI - just locate the text file with the key, input it here: https://corona-renderer.com/customer-zone/demo/, and save the activation key in CoronaActivation.txt on the render node as described above.

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