Simplified deployment: silent mode installation

Silent (unattended) installation — Project Manager 4

Kstudio plugins are used by freelancers as well as in studios of different sizes – from several employees to hundreds.

Silent (unattended) installation simplifies the deployment of numerous installations into a large network: the setup runs with no dialogs, no questions and no user interaction at all.

In Project Manager 4 everything is built into the installer itself – you pass the options on the command line, and no additional helper package is required.

Project Manager 4 can be deployed across a studio without any user interaction. The setup executable accepts command-line switches directly, so you can push it with PsExec, PowerShell Remoting, an RMM tool, a GPO startup script or any deployment system that can run an .exe.

Requires Project Manager 4.01.15 or newer. Earlier builds ignore these command-line options.
Download the current installer from our website before you prepare a deployment.

Quick start

Install for all 3ds Max versions found on the machine, without any window, and activate an online license key:

Project_Manager_Setup.exe /VERYSILENT /MAXVERSIONS=all /LICENSE=XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX

A more typical studio command — pick the Max versions, set the interface language, choose the AI search languages, reuse a shared model cache on a network share, and write a deployment log:

Project_Manager_Setup.exe /VERYSILENT /MAXVERSIONS=2025,2026 /LANG=en-US /SEARCHLANGS=de,multi /LICENSE=XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX /AICACHE=\\nas\deploy\pm4-models /LOG=C:\deploy\pm4.log

Run the installer with /? to print the same reference to the calling console:

Project_Manager_Setup.exe /?

Command-line options

Switches follow the Inno Setup style — /KEY or /KEY=value, case-insensitive. Quote any value that contains spaces, e.g. /AICACHE="D:\My Deploy\models".

Option	Meaning	Default
/SILENT	No prompts and no questions. A small progress window stays visible while AI models download.	—
/VERYSILENT	No prompts and no window at all. Implies /SILENT.	—
/CONFIG=<file.ini>	Read the options below from the [Setup] section of an INI file (key names without the leading slash). Command-line options override the file.	—
/MAXVERSIONS=<list>	3ds Max versions to install into: 2025,2026 or all.	all detected
/LANG=<culture>	Plugin interface language, e.g. en-US, de-DE, ja-JP.	Language of a previous installation, otherwise the Windows UI language, otherwise English
/SEARCHLANGS=<list>	Languages for AI search queries: short codes such as de,fr,multi, or auto, or none.	auto
/LICENSE=<key>	Online license key. Offline activation keys are not supported here — see below.	—
/NOAI (same as /AI=0)	Do not install the AI engine and do not download any AI model.	AI enabled
/AICACHE=<dir>	Folder holding the AI model archives. Missing archives are downloaded into it, so the next machine reuses them.	—
/DIR=<path>	AI engine folder.	%LOCALAPPDATA%\Kstudio\AI-Engines
/LOG=<file>	Write the installation log to this file in addition to the standard log.	—
/NORESTART	Never prompt to restart Windows. A pending restart is reported through exit code 3010 instead.	—
/?, /HELP	Print the option list and exit.	—

Unknown options are an error, not a warning. A misspelled switch or an invalid value stops the installer with exit code 1 before anything is installed — a silent installation that quietly ignored your /LICENSE would look successful, which is worse than failing.

Using a configuration file

For large rollouts it is easier to keep the settings in one INI file and pass a single switch. Use the same key names without the leading slash, in a [Setup] section; flags accept 1, true or yes.

[Setup]
VERYSILENT=1
MAXVERSIONS=2025,2026
LANG=en-US
SEARCHLANGS=de,fr,multi
AICACHE=\\nas\deploy\pm4-models
LOG=C:\deploy\pm4.log
NORESTART=1

Project_Manager_Setup.exe /CONFIG=\\nas\deploy\pm4.ini /LICENSE=XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX

Anything given on the command line wins over the file, so one shared INI plus a per-machine license key is usually all you need.

Licensing

Pass a single online license key with /LICENSE. The key is applied right after the files are installed, using the same licensing library the registration dialog inside 3ds Max uses.

• Internet access is required at activation time.
• Offline activation keys are not supported in silent mode: they require a manual round trip with identification files through our website. Such a key is rejected with exit code 4 and a clear message in the log.
• If activation fails — no network on the machine being deployed, for example — the installation itself still succeeds. The key is stored in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Kstudio\ProjectManager_4-pending.keys and applied automatically on the first 3ds Max start, silently, as soon as the machine can reach the licensing server. The installer returns exit code 4 so your deployment report shows the machine as “installed, not yet licensed”.

AI models and the shared cache

The AI features (visual search, classification, text search, multilingual queries) need model files. The installer downloads them automatically — you do not have to prepare anything.
On a single machine that is a one-time download; across a studio, downloading gigabytes to every workstation is not.

/AICACHE=<folder> solves this with one switch. The cache is self-filling: if an archive is missing from the folder it is downloaded as usual and kept there; if it is present, it is unpacked locally with no network traffic at all. Point every machine at the same network share, and the first one populates it for the rest. Downloads are written through a temporary .part file, so several machines can fill the same share at the same time.

Manual preparation is only a fallback — for machines with no internet access, or when you want the very first deployment to run offline too. File names in the cache are fixed and readable, so you can fill the folder by hand; see How to manually download and install AI models for the direct links:

File	Contents
clip-vit-l14-full.zip	Visual model — image search and AI classification
clip-vit-l14-text_encoder.zip	Text encoder — search by text description
opus-mt-<code>-en.zip	Translation model for one search language, e.g. opus-mt-de-en.zip
small100-330M.zip	Multi-language model, used for the multi search language

If the workstations have no internet access at all, download the archives once on any machine with a connection, put them into the /AICACHE folder under exactly the names above, and the silent installation will run fully offline.

A cached archive that turns out to be truncated or corrupted is discarded and re-downloaded, so a broken share cannot silently produce broken installations.

If you do not want AI features at all, use /NOAI: nothing is downloaded and the installation takes seconds.

AI search languages

/SEARCHLANGS controls which translation models are installed, i.e. in which languages your artists can type search queries.

• auto (default) — keep the languages already installed on that machine, otherwise follow the interface language.
• none — install no translation model. English queries always work without one.
• An explicit list — /SEARCHLANGS=de,fr,multi. Exactly these are installed and any other previously installed language is removed.

Use multi for languages without a dedicated model — one shared multi-language model covers them.

Supported search language codes: uk, de, es, fr, it, pl, pt, tr, zh, ja, da, ar, nl, ko, hi, sv, id, sk, cs, bg, hu, vi, th, tl, fi, ro, he, el, hr, no, multi.

Supported interface languages (/LANG): en-US, da-DK, de-DE, es-ES, fr-FR, it-IT, pl-PL, pt-BR, tr-TR, uk-UA, zh-CN, ja-JP.

Exit codes

The installer returns a meaningful exit code, so a deployment script can tell “done” from “installed but needs attention”.

Code	Meaning
0	Success.
1	Invalid arguments — nothing was installed.
2	None of the requested 3ds Max versions was found on the machine.
3	Installation failed.
4	Installed, but the license key was not activated (no network, wrong key, or an offline-activation key).
5	Installed, but one or more AI models could not be downloaded. The plugin works; the affected AI feature does not until the model is present.
6	Installed, but the AI engine could not be placed into the user profile, so AI features are unavailable. Unlike code 5, the models themselves may be fine — the executable files are missing.
7	The silent installation was interrupted before it finished — for example, somebody closed the /SILENT progress window.
3010	Installed, a Windows restart is required to finish.

If several things go wrong at once, the first problem is the one reported — a failed installation is more interesting than the license that could not be applied afterwards. The log always lists every issue.

Logging

Every silent run logs each decision it made — selected Max versions, interface language, search languages, model cache hits, license activation result. Two destinations:

• Always: %LOCALAPPDATA%\Kstudio\data\logs\kstudio.log
• Additionally, with /LOG=<file>: your own file, which is convenient to collect on a share, e.g. /LOG=\\nas\deploy\logs\%COMPUTERNAME%.log

If a machine reports a non-zero exit code, that log is the first place to look.

Before you deploy

• Close 3ds Max on the target machine. In interactive mode the installer warns you; in silent mode it does not ask, and files in use cannot be replaced.
• Administrator rights are required — the plugin is installed for all users, under %ProgramData%\Autodesk\ApplicationPlugins.
• Internet access is needed for license activation and for any AI model that is not already in your /AICACHE folder. With a fully populated cache and /LICENSE omitted, a silent install needs no network at all.
• Demo assets are never installed in silent mode.
• Test the exact command on one machine first, then roll it out.

Deployment examples

PsExec — one machine, waiting for the result:

psexec \\WS-014 -u DOMAIN\artist -p *** -h -w C:\deploy C:\deploy\Project_Manager_Setup.exe /VERYSILENT /CONFIG=C:\deploy\pm4.ini /LICENSE=XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX

PowerShell Remoting — a list of machines, collecting exit codes:

$machines = 'WS-011','WS-012','WS-013'
foreach ($m in $machines) {
    $code = (Invoke-Command -ComputerName $m -ScriptBlock {
        $p = Start-Process 'C:\deploy\Project_Manager_Setup.exe' `
             -ArgumentList '/VERYSILENT','/CONFIG=C:\deploy\pm4.ini' `
             -Wait -PassThru
        $p.ExitCode
    })
    Write-Host "$m -> $code"
}

Exit code 0 means finished; 4 means the plugin is installed and the key will be applied on the first 3ds Max start; 3010 means the machine still needs a restart.

Related

• Manually downloading and installing AI models
• Standard installation and how to receive your license key — see the corresponding FAQ article.
• Deploying Project Manager 3

See Also:

• Installation and Reception of License Key