For artists at a studio

Someone at your studio has already made your account and paid for your seat. Everything below happens in three screens.

Get the Hub from the website

Your welcome email has a link to the Forged Hub page on forgedstu.com. Download for your platform and run it. It installs for your user only and needs no admin rights.

Sign in with your email address and the temporary password from your welcome email. The temporary password does not open the Hub; it opens a link. Press Finish my account on forgedstu.com and the website asks for your name, what you do, a password of your own and a security question. Come back, press I've finished — sign in, and sign in with what you chose. From then on it is just email and password.

Forgot your password? The link under the sign-in form and your security question get you back in. Forgot the answer too? Your administrator sends a fresh temporary password from the Team tab.

Install Forged Image from the Apps screen

Each product is one card with one button that follows its state. Nothing installed: Install. A newer release exists: Update to 0.1.4. Current: Launch. Updates download only what changed, and the version you had stays installed beside the new one. Manage versions opens the full list; launch any version you keep.

Launch

Press Launch. The Hub starts the compositor with a licence session bound to this machine and good for one launch. Starting the executable from Explorer or Finder instead does not work: it says it must be launched from Forged Hub and exits. That is the licence check, and it is the only one. Rendering headless on a farm needs no licence at all.

When something is wrong

You see	What to do
Could not reach the Hub	Check your network, then tell your administrator. The address is fixed in the build and cannot be mistyped.
Email or password is incorrect	Five wrong tries lock the account for fifteen minutes. Use Forgot your password?, or ask your administrator for a fresh temporary password.
The setup link expired	It lasts an hour. Sign in with the temporary password again for a new one.
"Why unavailable" under a card	The card names which reason applies: no access to this product or channel, wrong platform, nothing published yet, or your studio's release policy filters it out.
The compositor closes at once	Launched by hand (exit 3) or its session expired (exit 4): launch from the Hub. Exit 5 is the Hub unreachable.
Renders are slow and the log says CPU only	Windows: update the GPU driver. Mac: tell your administrator; the build is missing its Vulkan layer.