Arnold watermark appears in renders from a licensed workstation of 3ds Max

Autodesk Support

Oct 8, 2023

Products and versions covered

Issue:

When rendering in Arnold from 3ds Max, the rendered images show watermarks.

arnold watermark

Causes:

Watermarked images may occur for the following reasons:

The Skip License Check option in the Arnold render menu is enabled.
Outdated MaxtoA plug-in.
Missing or outdated Arnold license (necessary for Network Rendering).
The ADSKFLEX_LICENSE_FILE is not set correctly.

Solution:

Verify the below points, if one does not help, move to the next one.

Confirm that "Skip License Check" is disabled

With this setting enabled Arnold will always render images with a watermark, even when there is a valid license. To disable Skip License Check:

Navigate to Render Setup.
In the System tab, turn the check box off for Skip License Check if necessary.

Install the latest Arnold Plugin

If necessary, install the latest version of Arnold.

If there is already a previous installation of Arnold, please uninstall it from your control panel.
Install the latest version from the Solid Angle | Arnold Download page.

Verify the License

Upload and verify the license file on License Parser.

If Arnold license is not listed, Generate a new license file from the Autodesk Account (video tutorial here).

Set up the ADSKFLEX_LICENSE_FILE

For more information, review the following resource: How to specify license servers using the ADSKFLEX_LICENSE_FILE environment variable.

Note: Issues with the ADSKFLEX_LICENSE FILE may also represent in errors similar to the following:

00:00:00  1161MB         |  [clm.v1] license server was not set (51)

The error indicates that the license file is not set to the appropriate machines. To rectify, set the file on the command line prior to rendering:
export ADSKFLEX_LICENSE_FILE=@<ComputerName>