If you are a new customer, you can follow the instructions in the Quick Start Licensing guide. For more information, see Quick Start: How to activate your copy of Maya.
Even if you are an existing Autodesk Maya customer, you must go through the process of obtaining and installing a license if:
Overview of licensing: some definitions
All customers must have a software license to run Maya. A license is a coded record of your software purchase. The license resides in a license file on your machine or a license server machine. Whenever a Maya session is launched, the license management software, FLEXlm, searches the license file to check out a license for that session.
A record of what you purchased from Autodesk, required for obtaining a license through Online Product Activation. For example:
MCF030-B-3322-0933-7182-1111-0000 or 123-45678901
If you did not receive a serial number when you purchased your Autodesk product, contact your local Autodesk sales office or your reseller.
(Node-locked license.) A license for a single computer. It lets you run Autodesk Maya only on the computer where the license is installed. (Or, in the case of hardware locks, on the computer where the hardware lock is attached.)
Standalone licenses look similar to the following sample:
FEATURE Maya sgiawd 9.000 09-jan-2006 \ uncounted 7CD390F11000 HOSTID=000000000000
(Floating license.) A license to be shared by various computers on a network. The Autodesk Maya software is installed on many computers, each with a license file that accesses the network license server. Network licenses require client and server setup.
Network licenses look similar to the following sample:
SERVER pc-server 000000000000 7111
VENDOR sgiawd
FEATURE Maya sgiawd 9.000 10-nov-2005 1 \ FC29A6FBF000
A hardware lock (dongle) allows you to run Maya on different computers (one computer at a time) without having to obtain a unique license for each computer. To run Maya on different machines, you move the hardware lock. You must have a duplicate of the license file on each computer. The software is licensed to the hardware lock rather than the computer’s hardware ID.
In network license configurations, the machine that provides licenses as requested by users on client machines.
If you have problems configuring your hardware lock, see Confirming hardware lock driver activation or go to:
The location and name of the license file is:
The licensing process comments out licenses for previous versions of Maya, but leaves them otherwise intact. Licenses are backwards compatible; that is, a Maya 2009 license lets you run previous versions of Maya.
New customers who purchase Maya receive a serial number in one of the following ways:
After installing Maya and entering the serial number, new customers obtain a Maya license to activate their software. For more information, see Activating the software from a serial number.