hi, as my username implies i'm an artist and am somewhat tech illiterate (alright, severely tech illiterate, my monkey brain knows shapes but 0 and 1s confuse it), and I need help cracking Nuke.
Now, if you dont know what Nuke is, I dont blame you, because its a very niche tool used in compositing (which is already pretty niche) and has become the industry standard over the decades because of its versatility and capabilities, heres a vid showing its latest release in action https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77Wh7ekKx3E
It's legitimately an excellent software, and no real competition exists yet. Unfortunately the people who own The Foundry (the publisher) are greedy fucks, know they hold a monopomy on this kind of market, and an INDIE/student licence is 500 fuckin quid a year, which is far too much for a college student like me (or any solo artists). Now this is an issue because it's widely used in animation/VFX/film, and yet I can't learn how to use it properly with the free Non-Commercial version, which is limited and simply shit (half of the features are missing and you're limited to HD720, bleh). This really hurts my workflow and means I can't push my demoreel to the best of my abilities and build my skills up.
So after using this monkey brain of mine I realised I had no money and thus decided to crack it once my current school license runs out. However there's a (BIG) problem. See The Foundry is notorious for it's products, but it's also notorious for threatening individuals caught using cracked versions of their software, or suspected of it (usually it's the latter too lol). Here are a few threads on the topic, seems you get an email out of the blue demanding tens of thousands in damages and threat of legal action.
https://forums.cgsociety.org/t/the-foundry-is-spying-on-us-i-wonder-who-else/1600447/171
https://www.reddit.com/r/NukeVFX/comments/olw8t7/legal_advice/
https://www.reddit.com/r/LegalAdviceUK/comments/brm71n/the_foundry_license_compliance/
https://www.reddit.com/r/vfx/comments/7k35ve/psa_the_foundry_is_cracking_down_hard_on_piracy/
Now an important point here is that The Foundry is a UK company, and the UK has, it seems, ridiculously bad IP/Copyright/privacy laws and thus The Foundry abused the fuck out of em and put all kinds of shit in their software to spy on you. Apparently they can literally fish details of your projects and the name of your files, they can even tell when you create a node, down to the second... Obviously this is absolutely terrifying and should this happen to me i'm not joking when I say I would dissapear and become a sheperd in the french alps or something (yes i'm a disgusting 
sorry hexbear 
). Now even though i'm legit terrified this could happen, I've still been snooping around trying to find cracked versions of the software and ended up finding a few, all of them use something called an RLM server to fool Nuke into thinking it's getting legit pings back from The Foundry.
Here are the links I used:
https://en.lbsite.org/the-foundry-nuke-studio/
https://rsload.net/soft/editor/23387-the-foundry-nuke-studio.html#comment (notoriously shitty speed on this one unless you shelled out for the premium)
Now this is where my many questions arise:
-Has anyone here used this sort of method before (using a server license thing to spoof software)?
-Is firewalling the software safe enough or should I completely disconnect while using to avoid any chances of the company tracing my IP and delivering some bullshit email with threats?
-How legal are these emails? Lots of people seem to say that you can just ignore them and they won't actually sue you because the EULA for Nuke is borderline illegal in many countries, including France?
I'm sure i'll think of more questions in the meantime but that's all I can think of for now, this is an absolute monster of a post but I really don't want to go to jail over some fucking software used to make slop 
Yes, I've used the activation server trick before.
Unfortunately due to the nature of the program, I really can't say how well this would work. I think it should be fine if you have a beefy enough computer. But if you really want to get the program into a "sandbox", I'd install a virtual machine (essentially a copy of your OS, or any OS for that matter, running within your OS) and completely disable networking within the virtual machine.
VMs sound like black magic to a lot of people but it's essentially just taking resources from your actual computer and running a, well, virtual computer. If you can pirate expensive software you can totally set up a VM. Another great benefit of using a VM to run risky software is if it has malware, you just nuke the VM and it's like nothing ever happened.
i'm actually slowly setting one up now that my college year is over and i've got a friend who's somewhat of a genius with computers helping me so i'll def try that, my PC was built for VFX so it should handle this without a hitch
i use netlimiter for blocking connections. easier to use than windows firewall.
my friend asked me for Nuke once and yes it did work with RLM server.
Oh excellent! Youre the kind of person I hope I could find with this post, could you give me more details on the RLM server and the procedure? Is your friend still using Nuke to this day, was it hard to set up? I'm a lemon with computers despite spending most of my time working on one.
for more context heres the text file that comes with the RLM.exe:
SINGLE MACHINE
1.Install Your Foundry Product
2.Install FLT7 (If you already have our rlm server working and running , jump to step 8)
3.Stop Foundry License Server
4.Copy the cracked rlm.foundry.exe over the original one (C:\Program Files\The Foundry\LicensingTools7.1\bin\RLM\rlm.foundry.exe)
5.Edit xf_foundry.lic replacing HOST_NAME MAC_ADDRESS PORT . You can get those informations using rlmutil.exe , a simple dos window ipconfig/all or you can start Foundry License Utility and choose Diagnostics and Run Diagnostics, you will find your hostname, your mac address (System ID)
PORT is by default 5053 if you dont put any (dont forget to delete the word PORT then if you dont want to specify one) . If you need more infos read RLM manual.6.Copy the xf_foundry.lic to C:\ProgramData\The Foundry\RLM or C:\Program Files\The Foundry\LicensingTools7.1\bin\RLM\
7.Restart RLM Server you can do that from services or just with Foundry License Utility (the best way to check logs and infos) Select RLM Server and Click on Start Server
8.Start Your Foundry Product and Enjoy it !!
Did you and your friend use a similar method or something different? You can PM if you want but I think it could help other users to have this in comments and available to search
yep i think it work but it was a bit tricky. i think the rlm method is the only one for nuke.
alright sweet I'll check that too! thanks!
Actually one thing I forgot to mention is that I've already use Nuke with a legit license on my PC so is that a risk? I assume The Foundry already knows my IP and who I am by now so should I wipe my drive before installing and running this?
i don't think they identify you by ip especially since ip addresses are usually dynamic (or in certain countries shared among multiple users). they probably use hardware id so change that instead.
ok good to know, I'll probably install it on a separate drive that i will wipe just to be extra safe, thanks!
man if you can actually use Nuke you're top-tier tech literate, because that shit is actual black magic
lmao I wish I was but I only know how to use it but the way it actually works and shit like scripting and creating your own nodes is black magic to me too
I actually got this specific one from 1337x too but sadly it's out of date and missing some features I need, I actually have all the torrents I need, I'm just asking for info on how to carefully install and avoid a lawsuit (very normal thing to do when you want to learn something
)actually now that posts are archived and can be found I'll link a page with regularly updated cracks of Nuke Studio (includes NukeX and Heiro) in case someone needs it! https://rsload.net/soft/editor/23387-the-foundry-nuke-studio.html#comment
the activation server trick will work. idk how well firewalling works on windows or mac, but on linux you can literally write rules that check the destination of the packets and send them somewhere else, or just drop them.
