Purchase & License FAQ

Answers to common questions about purchasing, licensing, and maintenance

Below you will find answers to the most common question we get asked about purchasing, licensing, maintaining ForestPack and RailClone.

For more information, please see the detailed FAQs in our knowledge base

Purchasing

Who will process my order?

Your order will be securely processed through our partner Verifone. You will be redirected to a part of their website dedicated to ITOOSOFT. If you have questions regarding this process, you will find all the information you need in their customer care center.

How do I know the status of my order?

Once you have finished the checkout process and entered the payment details, your order will be put in the queue for processing. Your order will be processed within 1 business day, and you will be notified via email how to download and install the software.

More than one business day has passed since I ordered the software, but I have not received an email. What should I do?

Sometimes, we have problems with some customers because they don't receive our emails (usually because they have anti-spam filters that block our messages), so we have no way to contact them. If you don't receive news from us within 24 hours after ordering, or you don't receive a reply to your emails, please contact us by posting in our public forum, so we may contact you.

How can I get an invoice for my purchase?

After completing the order, you will receive a VAT invoice from Verifone, with the confirmation email.

Taxes and VAT not included in prices

The prices shown on the web don't include VAT.

Value Added Tax (VAT, IVA, TVA, MwSt, BTW). For European Customers Only

In some cases, a percentage of VAT will be added to the product price, depending on where you live and if you're ordering for a company or for personal use.

The final selling price will be displayed after entering all the customer's data and before the order is completed.

If you are a business customer within the European Union, be sure to enter your VAT ID in the order form, to calculate correctly the VAT percentage.

Upgrade Maintenance Plans

What is an Upgrade Maintenance Plan?

The Maintenance Plan gives you access to the following benefits:

  • Automatic upgrades to the most up-to-date versions of the software, including major releases and patches.
  • Early access to Beta versions and the opportunity to test and suggest new features before they are included in the final release.
  • Premium technical support and prioritized incident management, including first response to your issues within 1 business day, and usually much faster than that.
  • Special subscriber-only promotions and discounts.

By default, all licenses include a one-year maintenance, but you can choose an extended plan at the time of purchase.

What happens when the maintenance plan period expires? Does the software stop working?

Absolutely not. You can continue using the product forever. Once your maintenance plan expires, you will not be able to download the latest upgrades.

What is the cost of the maintenance plan?

Prices are available here. The price is per license per year. We offer discounts for three-year maintenance plans when purchasing new licenses, and by renewing group of licenses.

I have not renewed by maintenance plan for several years. How much must I pay to get the latest upgrade?

Prices are available here. You can renew your maintenance plan at any time. Once renewed, you can download all updates released up to the renewal date, and one year thereafter.

What are the benefits of choosing a three-year maintenance plan?

When you purchase a license of our products, you receive a one-year maintenance plan by default. The three-year maintenance plan plan guarantees a long period of software updates and new features, with a discount.

Why do you offer maintenance plans instead of scheduled upgrades?

The maintenance plan allows us to include new features more frequently, without waiting for a major upgrade several months or more. It also provides a specific cost to our customers, what is a must for some companies.

For what products is the maintenance plan available?

The maintenace plan is available for our two commercial products, ForestPack Pro and RailClone Pro.

How can I verify and renew my maintenance plan?

They are included in the "My Licenses" section in the the User Panel. From there, you can verify your licenses, maintenance plan and purchase renewals for them.

Licensing

Can I use Forest Lite and RailClone Lite for my commercial projects?

Yes. Both plugins can be used for personal or commercial projects.

What are the license restrictions for the library models and sample scenes?

You can use the samples and library models for your own scenes, but you are not authorized to distribute or resell any model based total or partially on them, including geometry, texture or materials. This limitation applies both for the Lite and Pro products.

Does the software include some anti-piracy system?

Yes. After purchasing the software, an authorization code is sent to you. This code is used to install and activate the license. In the activation process the license is linked to the computer and can only be used on that computer.

How does the activation process work?

With an active Internet connection, the activation process can be completed online. The software will connect with our activation server through a secure connection, and the activation codes will be sent and installed automatically. If your computer is not connected to Internet, there are alternative activation methods using a web page or by email.

How many times can I activate a license?

For security reasons, our activation server allows you to activate a license only a certain number of times (5 by default). If you exhaust the maximum number of activations, please send an email to support@itoosoft.com and we will increase the activation counter associated with your license.

Can I transfer the license to another computer?

Actually, the software doesn't include any option to transfer the license. To move the software to another computer, uninstall it from the old machine and activate the license on the new one. For this purpose we allow 5 activations by default with each license, which should be enough for a long time, and you can request additional activations when needed.

If you change your computer frequently, we suggest purchasing a network license type (see details below).

What is the difference between standalone and network licenses?

Under a standalone license, the software is constrained to a certain host. A license is needed for each computer the software will be installed on.

In network license mode, a pool of licenses is available on the server, for use in any computer on the network. You only need to have licenses for the maximum number of simultaneous users expected, not for each computer where the software will be installed.

A great advantage of the network licenses is that you only need to install and activate licenses on the server, not on the workstations. This allows you to change or upgrade the computers more easily, without having to worry about reactivating licenses.

What are the requirements to use network licenses?

Network licenses require you to install the License Server software in a Windows computer. It may be a workstation (even the same machine used to run Max), or a separate server.

Although the server software does not require a powerful system, it is mandatory that the computer hosting the license server be running and available while there are computers using the licensed software.

Are network licenses more expensive than the standalone?

No. For the convenience of our users, we offer both types at the same price. During the ordering process, you must choose the type of license more suited to your needs.

If you want to modify the license type after purchasing, please contact us by e-mail BEFORE activating the license. If the license was already activated, we charge a 30 Euro handling fee.

Do I need to purchase additional licenses for my render nodes?

No. In the setup program you will find a specific installation option for render nodes.

Can I edit scenes on one workstation while rendering on other with an unique license?

One license is required for each workstation to edit or render interactively. We define interactively as using 3ds Max manually by an operator.

Non-interactive render modes (such as batch render, distributed rendering or backburner) don't require any license.

Essentially, regarding license requirements and render nodes, our software works exactly same as the 3ds Max licenses.

Can I open scenes which use the plugin on computers that don't have an active license?

Yes. You can open and work with the scenes, but the objects cannot be edited or rendered.

I have several workstations but a single network license. As soon as a workstation open a ForestPack or RailClone scene, it grabs the license from the server. How can I avoid it?

Just switch the license mode to "standalone" (ITOOSOFT->ForestPack Pro->Change License Mode), clicking cancel in the license code request dialog.

You can switch back to the network license mode in any time, running the configurator again. In this way, you can define easily what workstations are authorized to use the ITOOSOFT licenses.

How do I install the software in the render farm?

The setup program includes a custom option for render nodes. You can also install them manually following the ForestPack and RailClone technical guides.

Is there a guide describing the License Server, Server manager and the other related software?

Yes. You can see the full licensing guide here.

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