Why does the fur renderer access the net?

[lowkey]

i think this behaviour is part of the flexLM licensing system, which makes maya perform an IPX loop-back to check if any suitable license has been installed ... fur belongs to the maya 4 unlimited upgrade, so i guess it's just a seperate license check of the enhanced version.

plz, correct me if i'm wrong ! :hmm:

[wireFrame]

Hmmm, strange... I can render fur without connecting to the net. Maybe Maya tries to look for a render license outside your computer first. I don't know... Environmental variables setup I guess.

[erwin1978]

Try running the firewall (http://www.zonelabs.com) and you'll see that it will block the fur renderer. It doesn't actually access the internet because the fur still renders even if I'm not connected to the internet, as long as I allow zone alarm to pass it through.

[underdog]

Hmm..the flex license identifies your computer by the id of your nic. So I would guess that when you start the render its trying to get the id from your nic to compare to the license. Zonealarm would seem to interpret this action as maya trying to access the net.

That's my theory for the day anyway:p

[Waboflex]

This is Zonealarm that's making you think Maya's accessing the Internet. Don't worry though, at least it proves that your firewall's doing what it's supposed to ;)

Maya's licensing is based around the TCP/IP protocols, which allow two or more machines to talk to each other, and of course it's also used all the time for connecting to the Internet. When Maya has to check the license (when you start to render fur, presumably), it does it through TCP/IP, Zonealarm spots this and automatically assumes you're using TCP/IP to access some other machine out in the wide blue yonder. That's why it asks you for confirmation, and it's also why it asks if you want your machine to act as a server to the Internet if your license uses the FlexLM server (like older versions of Maya did). None of this is actually being done over the Internet, it just gets triggered by TCP/IP being used.

So there's really nothing to worry about - like I said it just shows that Zonealarm's doing it's job :thumbsup:

Wabo.

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