Table of Contents

This page provides information on how to use Anima on a network.


Centralized Asset Management

Using Anima you can download the models from the library directly from inside the Anima application. If you are going to use Anima on multiple machines connected to the same network, we recommend setting up your “Purchases” folder in a shared location to make sure that all the machines are using the same updated resources.

Sharing the downloaded models in the same network location is a good idea to use it as a sort of download cache, to avoid downloading multiple times the same models. You are not forced to do it because Anima will automatically download any of the assets you may need, but sharing the same Purchases folder with your colleagues will save you time and bandwidth (keep in mind that the new 4D models have a considerable size).

However, the Render Node installations of Anima don’t need access to the “Purchases” folder, only to the Anima project folder, because all the resources used in a project are stored inside the subfolder named “resource cache”, placed inside each project folder. We use that “resource cache” subfolder to store all the resources used by that particular project in the most efficient way. This way, we ensure that any device having access to the Anima project folder will be able to load and render the scene without issues, and you won’t need to manage the contents of the “Purchases” folder manually.

Therefore, as you do when you render with any other DCC application like 3ds Max, Maya, or Cinema 4D either either locally or using a Render Manager like Backburner, Pulze, Batch Render, Team Render or Deadline, your only need to put your Anima project folder in a shared network and then import it into your scene. After that, the Anima plugin will be able to find and load that scene from your local network (ALL, PRO and Render Node), and will render the Anima content without issues.


The Purchases Folder

Then you can configure your Anima preferences to set the “Purchases” folder on another network path, in order to share your purchased assets with all the other machines.

To set up the Purchases folder in the Anima Designer application, go to Anima Menu > Preferences:




Then, change the “Purchases” path to set a shared folder on your network. You can either edit the path field manually or browse to a path location using the […] button on the right side.




After that, all the content present in the folder will be moved to a new location automatically.

When you change your “Purchases” folder to another location and the current one already has some models, the dialog from the 2nd image below will appear. As you can read there, if you click the “OK” button, all the assets you have in your current “Purchases” folder will be moved to the new location. However, if you click “Change path” the new path will be set and saved in your preferences, but no assets will be moved nor overwritten. This way you can freely choose to let Anima handle the transference of the assets or manage it yourself.




Whenever you set “Purchases” to any location, a few .xml files and 3 subfolders (“models“, “clips” and “streams“) will be automatically created there. For example, if your “Purchases” path is set to “Z:/_AXYZ_/purchases“, then the Anima actors (all the *.y files) will be placed inside the subfolder “Z:/_AXYZ_/purchases/models“.


Blocked Purchase Folder

Notice that when the Anima Alive is active, the “Purchases” path is blocked on the preferences dialog. We added this limitation when we introduced Anima Alive to avoid library inconsistencies between the plugins and the core Anima application during the synchronization updates.

You only need to stop the Anima Alive to unlock it that field again by simply closing your 3D application or changing the currently opened scenes in either Anima or the plugin app.



Purchases Folder on the Render Nodes (DEPRECATED)

On the Anima Render Nodes you can also define a Purchases folder, but notice that this is a setting that is only kept to ensure backward compatibility with Anima 4.1.x or older. Since version 4.5.x it is not necessary anymore to set up the Purchases folder in the Render Nodes because they now use the new “resource_cache” subfolder from the same Anima project to get all the assets used in the project, so setting the Purchase folder on the nodes will have no effect at all on the newer versions.

Learn more about this in the following article: Understanding the Resource Cache.


Invisible Mapped Drives

If you have problems to have access to your mapped drives from Anima, it means that the main Anima process “anima.exe” is running in a user environment that does not have those mapped drives mounted yet or in which the access to those drives has been marked as unavailable by Windows (this could happen if the NAS or Server that hosts the network drives was not reachable for a while).

Sometimes you can even open a Windows File Manager and an Anima File Browser in the same user session, but see the mapped drives on one of the windows only. This counter-intuitive behavior is a known issue in Windows systems and is described in full detail in these articles:

This usually happens when Anima is launched from the installer because the installer is always executed with “admin” privileges and the processes that are launched from there are inheriting the same windows environment. If this happens, the problem can be easily solved by closing Anima and starting it again from the Windows Start menu.

If that does not solve the problem, there are two alternative solutions that can also be used to solve this situation:

  • Make sure that the user that is running the Anima process has actually access to those drives and that the drive mapping is also set up on that account. You can see the users related to each process in the Windows Task Manager, at the Details Tab.
  • Use the extended UNC paths instead of the mapped drives. For example, let’s say that the path “Z:\ANIMA_Assets” has a “Z:” mapped drive that corresponds to the UNC path “\\You_server\your_shared_folder“. Then you can replace that part to get the full path: “\\You_server\your_shared_folder\ANIMA_Assets”


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