XSIbatch licenses

[azurecgi]

Can someone confirm to me the license situation with XSIbatch?

As far as I know, Softimage (Network) has 1 interactive license plus 5 XSIbatch licenses, but I have heard that apparently, if you don’t have SI running interactively, another XSIbatch license is available, so you can have 6 nodes rendering!

The reason I am asking is that I could do with as many nodes rendering as possible overnight, but I currently only have a 5 node license for my Render Control Software (Butterfly Net Render - BNR), so I can’t test the theory. However, if someone can confirm that 6 licenses are available, I will purchase another batch of Node licenses for BNR.

Thanks!

[Hirazi Blue]

It's somewhat older information (2009-Oct-14) as it still talks of the old "Softimage Advanced", but this page in the Knowledge Base seems to offer the answer:

1 Softimage license
A Softimage license allows you to run an interactive seat of Softimage (XSI.exe) and render from inside the Softimage interface. For rendering, Softimage uses all CPUs and all cores on the local machine.

Softimage can also use up to four (4) satellite CPUs for distributed tile rendering.

Note that you can use a Softimage license to run xsibatch.

5 Batch licenses
A Batch license allows you to do command-line rendering with xsibatch.exe.

xsibatch.exe can also use up to four (4) satellite CPUs for distributed tile rendering.

Apart from the name change (Softimage Advanced is no more, but the Network License of Softimage inherited its 5 batch licenses, see here), I don't think this has changed:
Softimage license can be used to run xsibatch & 5 batch licenses can be used to run xsibatch.
Ergo (I think): 5 + 1 = 6.

But I can't say for certain, as I don't work for Autodesk... ;)

[azurecgi]

I posted this question on XSIbase as well and Stephen Blair from Softimage Support answered it there.

So for anyone else wondering, yes, if you aren't using the interactive license you effectively have 6 XSIbatch licenses to render on!