Please review the following considerations before arranging Login-based Licensing for students/instructors to use.

Installation

What if I have already installed active Houdini Education licenses in a different manner?

You will be able to switch to Login-based Licensing by returning any installed licenses back to your SideFX account so they are now uninstalled entitlements.

Once I have licenses that are ready to install, how do I set up Login-based Licensing?

Please review the step-by-step instructions here.

Students’ Access

If a school opts to add individual students' emails for Login-based Licensing access, how much control would the school have to remove students' emails when they no longer want certain students to have access (based on enrollment dates, etc.)?

If the logins are all listed under the same account (for the school), the administrative account can create/delete logins at any time.

When a school is ready for a staff/faculty login to have administrative permissions, please contact education@sidefx.com or support@sidefx.com so that we can grant the appropriate permissions.

If a school opts to use one shared account login for multiple students instead, is there any way to prevent a student from logging in and changing the password?

Unfortunately, anybody with the login and password can change the password. There is nothing to prevent a student from doing so, which could prevent other students/users from accessing a school’s licenses. For this reason, we strongly recommend that a school’s IT administrator creates individual account logins for students so that each student can only “check out” one license at a time.

If a school uses a shared account login, could the school/IT admin change a password monthly?

You can change the password as many times as you wish. There are no limits.

Once a student has accessed a license, how can it become available to the license pool again?

In order to free the license, students will need to close their Houdini session. Students do not need to log out of their account. Closing the browser will not free the license automatically.

If students share a generic account login, is their project history accessible/viewable to anyone who shares the same account login?

No, projects and files are neither shared, nor visible to other students. Only license usage is visible to others. If students share a common login, only the licenses are shared.

Instructors’ Access

Can free Instructors’ licenses be set up via Login-based Licensing?

Yes, but we recommend that Instructors’ licenses be created within accounts that are independent from the school’s main account (which houses the students’ licenses).

Internet Connection

How often does the system check that a user has stable internet? What happens if a user loses their internet connection (how quickly would they lose access)?

The licensing system checks for valid licenses approximately every minute. If it cannot find licenses*, and there is a Houdini session running, it will have a grace period of 20 minutes before it shuts down. The user will be warned about this.

*If a connection issue is causing no licenses to be found, there will be a grace period of 2 weeks + 20 minutes with the current seat.

The license system will keep on checking, and if it finds licenses again, all is good. Otherwise, it will shut down Houdini.

If a render is going, it will finish the render.

If the SideFX servers/connection is down, we will grant Houdini FX licenses to anybody that connects via Login-based licensing. But this is only if it is due to SideFX’s server failure.