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IMPORTANT UPDATE:

As of August 1, 2024, the anima PRO licenses and the Upgrade products will NOT be available for purchase anymore. Over the past three years, the adoption rate of anima® ALL has far outpaced that of anima PRO, reaching a point where it is no longer practical for Chaos to continue anima PRO or sell individual models.

However, anima® PRO perpetual licenses will continue to operate for currently supported operating systems (OS) and digital content creation (DCC) application versions. For more details, please take a look at the FAQs available at the Chaos Help Center.


In this article you will find all the information related to the different types of licenses available for using anima®, how and where you can purchase them, and how they can be activated on your devices to remove the limitations of the free anima® LITE Version.

Types of license

There are 2 different types of licenses:

  • Perpetual: These are the licenses that are purchased once and never expire.
  • Subscription: These are the licenses that are based on a rental service for a limited period of time.

PLEASE NOTE: Perpetual products have been discontinued as of August 1, 2024. We keep a description of them below for legacy purposes only, as the products will continue to be operational.

The products that use a perpetual licenses are anima® PRO and anima® Render Node. With the purchase of anima® PRO, you also get 3 Render Node licenses and a Maintenance Plan for 1 year that will let you update your version of anima® to the latest available for no extra cost.

The anima® Render Node licenses don’t need a Maintenance Plan because they can always be updated for free. Also notice that with the release of anima 5.6.0, the Render Node installations will no longer require a license and are free to use for everyone. However, older versions of anima® still require the use of a Render Node license.

The product that uses the subscription license is anima® ALL. This product includes a floating license for using anima® and also full access to the whole library of metropoly® models. Also, it includes render capabilities because each one of the pre-authorized devices can be used in “render node” mode, which means that you can render with your subscription seat and up to 3 extra machines at the same time.

NOTE: You can learn more about anima® ALL and its benefits in the following article: What is included in the subscription?


Where to purchase anima® licenses

The anima® ALL licenses can be purchased on the Chaos website.

The anima PRO and Render Node licenses, along with the Upgrade products, will NOT be available for purchase anymore.

Since the release of the subscription service, the adoption rate of anima® ALL has far outpaced that of anima PRO, reaching a point where it is no longer practical for Chaos to continue anima PRO or sell individual models. However, anima® PRO perpetual licenses will continue to operate for currently supported operating systems (OS) and digital content creation (DCC) application versions.

Also, with the release of anima 5.6.0, the Render Node installations will no longer require a license and will be free for everyone to use. To use the free Render Node version, please download and install anima® 5.6.0 or newer in Render Node mode. If you want to keep using anima® Render Node version 5.5.0 or older, please follow the activation methods described in the article Licensing Render Nodes.

To purchase anima® ALL, please go to the Chaos website using the following link: anima® ALL product at Chaos.

NOTE: For a more detailed information about the purchase process of the subscription, please read the following article: Subscription purchase process

Activating anima® ALL

Each purchased subscription seat uses a floating license that can be used on multiple devices (you will get 4 devices per seat). Once a device is activated, when anima® or the plugin is initialized, it will use any of the seats that are available on the subscription account.

Notice that each seat can be used on only 1 device at the same time, but as soon as it is released (closing anima® or the plugin), it can instantly be used on any of the other pre-authorized devices of the account.

The process to activate and manage the devices is explained in detail in the following articles in the subscription section:


Activating anima® PRO

After purchasing anima® PRO, the license information is automatically sent by email and also added to the Licenses section of the user dashboard.

This is a sample of the information you sent by email:




And this is a sample of the Licenses section on the user dashboard:



Licensing anima® PRO using the User Account

Using this method, anima® will connect to our servers automatically and retrieve all the information related to your licenses using the credentials of your own user account.

First you need to sign in. There are 2 different options to sign in:

  • A) Global In-App Sign-in.
    To use the global sign in from anima®, click on the following icon, on the upper-right corner of the Anima Designer app:


    Then select the user credentials login, here:

  • B) License Dialog Sign-in:
    To sign-in directly from the License Dialog, go to     Main Menu > License.



    Then choose the User Account mode:


    And finally filling in your user credentials:




After that, a list of your available licenses will appear. Here, you can either select one of the ones that are not being used yet and click “Use License”:




Or, if you don’t have any available license, select any of the “Already used” ones and click on “Reset”. This will first clear the current System Code that is currently attached to this license in our servers, and then it will link it again to the System Code that identifies your current machine:




NOTE: Please note that you must have enough “Resets” available in your license to be able to do that. You can check how many resets you have left in your account here:




A message confirming that the license has been successfully activated after receiving the Activation Code from our servers will be displayed:




Close and restart anima®.
From now on, you should see the PRO word in the title bar, here:




Licensing anima® PRO using a Purchase Code

This is the classic activation process used in previous anima® versions. You can choose this second option to activate your license using directly a Purchase Code that is not linked to your current account because it has been purchased using a different email from the same company, or perhaps it was purchased using an older email that you are not using now in your current account.

  1. Go to Main Menu > License.




  1. Enter any of the Purchase Code of your license, which is included in the email you received after purchasing your license. Also, all your Purchase Codes can be seen in your user account, in the Licenses section.
  2. Enter the email address used to place the order and Click on Retrieve.
    Please, make sure to leave the activation code field EMPTY, it will be retrieved automatically from our servers.



4. Continue with step 2 from the process described in the previous section (License using User Account).



Licensing anima® PRO OFFLINE (with the Activation Code)

If your production environment does not allow you to have internet access don’t worry, you can still use this offline method to activate your anima® PRO:

  1. Go to Main Menu > License.
  2. Select the Purchase Code mode in the Activation mode drop-down:

  3. Now click on the Purchase Code text field and paste your license number there (or write it down manually).
    Then fill in the email of the owner of the license:




  4. Copy the System Code that appears in this dialog.

  5. Contact our Support Service by opening a ticket in the Chaos Help Center and asking the support agent to generate an Activation Code. For that, you will need to provide the Purchase Code that you want to use and the System Code that appears in the license dialog on that machine.

  6. Once the codes have been generated by our Support agents, you will receive an email will the list of licenses and Activation Codes requested.

  7. Fill in all the fields in the  license dialog and click SAVE:

  8. And anima® will show you a confirmation that the license has been correctly activated:




  9. Close and restart anima®.



  10. From now on, you should see the PRO word in the title bar, here: