If you’re new to AWS Portal we recommend starting here. If you’re new to Deadline we recommend starting here.

AWS Portal Licensing¶

Overview¶

Software licensing is a required part of any render farm. In this section, we will explore how licensing works in Deadline and the AWS Portal and how to setup your AWS Portal for licensing.

Deadline and Licensing¶

Most rendering software requires a software license to render. You will need to purchase licenses for the render software you are using when rendering with AWS Portal. You can choose to provide your own software licenses, or you can choose to use various popular software through the Thinkbox Marketplace, which allows customers to purchase software by the hour. Please refer to the Usage-Based License (UBL) section for more information.

You do not need to purchase any licenses for Deadline itself if you are rendering on AWS.

Floating Licenses¶

A floating license is a license which allows a single user or machine to use the software at a time for the duration of the license. The license can “float” amongst different users and machines but can only be used by one user or machine at a time.

Floating licenses can be used with AWS Portal by using the Bring Your Own Licensing (BYOL) system. Click here for setup instructions.

Usage-Based Licenses (UBL)¶

Note

The Thinkbox UBL Marketplace will no longer support purchases of products other than V-Ray and RenderMan starting April 30, 2025. The UBL feature in Deadline 10 is now available via the new Deadline Cloud UBL. For detailed instructions, please see the Deadline Cloud UBL Documentation.

You can continue to use your existing purchases until September 30, 2025. For more details, please refer to this FAQ. For any questions about existing UBL purchases, please reach out to: thinkbox-sales@amazon.com.

Legacy Usage-Based Licensing (UBL) uses pre-paid credit for hours of use of the software. As a user or machine uses the software with UBL, the balance would be deducted from the license on a per-minute basis.

UBL can be shared amongst multiple machines concurrently. For example, if you purchase a UBL with 24 hours of render time, you could render with one render node for 24 hours, or 12 render nodes in parallel for 2 hours each.

Click here for UBL setup instructions.