Terms & Conditions

These Terms & Conditions (“Terms”) apply to your use of the website getvalterra.com (the “Site”) and to the purchase of a license for ValTerra for Autodesk 3ds Max (the “Software”). Please read them before you buy.

1. Who we are

The Site and the Software are operated by:

Valerii Nikulin, sole proprietor (FOP) registered in Ukraine, trading as Shall We Art (“we”, “us”, “our”).

Email: [email protected]

Contact page: /contact

2. What these Terms cover

These Terms cover the Site and the commercial side of a purchase: prices, ordering, delivery, and the relationship between you and us as the publisher of the Software.

Other documents sit alongside them, and each has its own job:

• The End User License Agreement (“EULA”) governs what you may and may not do with the Software itself. It is the license, not these Terms.
• The Refund Policy sets out when you can get your money back.
• The Privacy Policy explains what data we process and why.
• Paddle’s Buyer Terms govern the sale transaction itself, because Paddle is the seller of record (Section 4).

If there is a conflict: the EULA governs use of the Software; Paddle’s Buyer Terms govern the sale contract and payment; the Refund Policy governs refunds; these Terms govern everything else about the Site and your dealings with us.

3. What we sell

We sell licenses for ValTerra for Autodesk 3ds Max, a plug-in for Autodesk 3ds Max used by architectural visualization studios. A purchase gives you:

• a perpetual license for the number of seats you bought, and
• 12 months of updates from the date of purchase.

When the 12 months end, the license keeps working forever on every version released during that period. Continued updates require a maintenance renewal at the renewal price shown on the pricing page on the day you renew. Full detail is in the EULA.

Everything is delivered electronically. There is no physical product and nothing is shipped. You download the installer (a .mzp file) from getvalterra.com and activate it with the license keys we send you — one key for each seat in your order. Activation contacts our server once per key, and after that the plug-in runs without an internet connection.

Current version: v0.6.8. Supported hosts: Autodesk 3ds Max 2024, 2025, 2026, 2027. We try to support new Autodesk 3ds Max releases, but we do not promise compatibility with a version that does not exist yet.

The paid tiers differ only in how many seats they include: Individual covers one to four, Studio covers five or more. Buy the number of seats you will actually activate — a seat you did not buy simply will not activate.

4. Paddle is our merchant of record

Payments are processed by Paddle (Paddle.com Market Ltd and Paddle.com Inc., together “Paddle”), which acts as our merchant of record and seller of record.

In practice this means:

• Your contract of sale is with Paddle, not with us. Paddle’s Buyer Terms apply to that contract.
• Paddle takes the payment and issues the receipt or invoice. We never see or store your card details.
• Paddle calculates, collects, and remits any sales tax or VAT that applies to your order.
• If you need an invoice corrected, a VAT number added, or a payment question answered, Paddle handles it. Write to us anyway if you are not sure who to ask, and we will point you to the right place.
• On your card or bank statement the charge appears as PADDLE.NET* VALTERRA, not as Shall We Art or ValTerra. If you do not recognise a charge, look for that line before disputing it: a dispute freezes the order on Paddle’s side and takes longer than asking us.
• Paddle’s own buyer support, at https://paddle.net (opens in a new tab), handles receipts, invoices and payment questions; our support, for everything about the Software, is [email protected].
• We remain responsible for the Software itself: the license we grant you, the license keys, updates during your maintenance period, and support.

5. Prices, taxes, and currency

Prices are shown on the pricing page in US dollars. They are one-time software license fees for a perpetual license, plus optional maintenance renewals.

• Prices are shown excluding VAT, sales tax, and similar taxes. Paddle adds any tax that applies to your billing location and shows the total before you confirm.
• Paddle may display or charge in a currency other than US dollars. The amount and the currency are shown at checkout before you pay.
• Your bank may add its own conversion or cross-border fees. Those are between you and your bank.
• We may change prices at any time. A price change never affects an order that has already been accepted.

Founders pricing

Founders pricing is a launch discount on the per-seat license fee, shown on the pricing page while it runs. These are its conditions, and they form part of these Terms for anyone who buys at a Founders price:

• What is discounted. The seats in the order placed at the Founders price, and only those seats. A Founders seat is the same perpetual license, with the same 12 months of updates, as a seat bought at list price, and nothing is charged later to make up the difference.
• Renewals are not discounted. A maintenance renewal (section 3) is priced at the renewal price shown on the pricing page on the day you renew, whatever you paid for the seat.
• Later seats are priced on the day you add them. Seats added to an earlier purchase are priced at the per-seat price shown on the pricing page on that day: the Founders price while Founders pricing is still running, the list price after it has ended.
• When it ends. Founders pricing ends when version 1.0 of the Software is released, or earlier if the pricing page states an end date or a seat limit and that point is reached first. Once it has ended it is not reopened, including by refunding and re-purchasing (see the Refund Policy).
• The Founders list. Before checkout opened, the pricing page carried a form that held the Founders price for the number of seats entered. That list is now closed. Founders pricing has not changed since the list opened, so for everyone on it the held price is the Founders price shown on the pricing page, and buying through checkout is how it is taken up; nothing needs to be claimed. The list held nothing else (Privacy Policy, section 2.3).

6. Orders, acceptance, and delivery

An order is an offer to buy. The contract is formed when Paddle confirms your payment and your license keys are issued. Until then we may decline the order, for example if:

• payment is declined, reversed, or flagged as fraudulent;
• the order appears to be a resale or an attempt to circumvent tier limits;
• we cannot lawfully sell to you (Section 13);
• the order appears to be for fewer seats than will actually be used.

If we decline an order after payment, Paddle refunds it in full.

Delivery. Your license keys — one for each seat in the order — are sent in one email, from [email protected], to the address you give at checkout, after Paddle confirms payment; a copy of each is kept in your account (Section 12). The installer is downloaded from getvalterra.com and is the same file as the trial. The Software is also available through the Autodesk Design and Make Marketplace; a copy obtained there is the same Software under the same EULA, and Autodesk is not a party to that license (EULA, Section 14). If the email does not arrive, check your spam folder, then sign in to your account, then write to us.

Activation. Paste a key into the ValTerra panel inside Autodesk 3ds Max. The plug-in contacts our server once at that moment, records the machine against that key’s seat, and then runs without an internet connection. One key is one seat, and one seat is one machine at a time; to move a seat, use Deactivate this machine in the panel and enter the same key on the other computer. The EULA (Section 3) sets this out in full.

Keep your license keys safe. They are the proof of your entitlement. Within your own organization, give each key to the person who will use that seat — that is what separate keys are for, and the EULA (Section 2.3) allows it. Do not pass a key to anyone else. If we end a key for a breach of the EULA, we email the address on the order in the same step, naming the key and the reason; the other keys of that order keep working (EULA, Section 10.2).

7. The EULA applies to the Software

The Software is licensed, not sold. The license is the EULA, a separate agreement between you and us. It is not part of Paddle’s checkout, so read it before you buy: it is linked from this page, from the pricing page next to the Buy buttons, and from the footer of every page on the Site. Paddle’s Buyer Terms refer to the supplier’s own terms for use of the product; for the Software, those terms are the EULA.

This is true however you obtained the Software, including through the Autodesk Design and Make Marketplace: any terms Autodesk shows you there govern your use of the Marketplace, not the Software.

You accept the EULA by installing, activating, or using the Software, as the EULA itself states. If you do not agree with it, do not install or activate the Software; if you have already bought a license, the Refund Policy applies.

8. Refunds

Refunds are covered in full on a separate page: Refund Policy.

In short: if the Software is not right for you, write to us within the refund window stated on that page and we will refund your license fee. Paddle processes the refund back to your original payment method, because Paddle took the payment.

Nothing in these Terms or in the Refund Policy limits any statutory right of cancellation or refund that you have as a consumer.

9. Trial and Lite

The trial and the Lite tier are free. They are not purchases, so there is no contract of sale and no payment.

• The trial gives you every feature for 30 days, counted from the first time you open the panel, for evaluation. No key, no card and no ValTerra account are required, nothing is registered with us, and output carries no watermark.
• Lite is free and stays free after the trial ends. It is limited in two ways: in fidelity — photorealistic imports come in at reduced geometric detail and reduced texture resolution, captures are saved at a reduced resolution, and one photorealistic import may cover at most 0.25 km² — and in one feature: the ValTerra Sun is built only under the trial or a paid seat, and Lite builds the Daylight system of Autodesk 3ds Max in its place. A ValTerra Sun already in a scene keeps working in every tier. Schematic city imports are reduced in Lite in one respect: an OpenStreetMap-based import covers at most 4 km² per request. Under the trial and a paid seat there is no fixed area cap — a larger area is fetched in parts of up to 4 km² each and joined; the EULA (Section 6.11) states how those requests are made and what the panel asks before a very large one. Terrain imports are not reduced in Lite. Output carries no watermark in any tier. Section 3.5 of the End User License Agreement states the same limits in full.
• Educational licenses are free for students and teaching institutions, for non-commercial teaching and learning.

Free tiers are provided as they are. We may change what the trial and Lite include in future versions. Their use is governed by the EULA, the same as a paid license.

10. Third-party services and your own keys

Some features of the Software work with services that belong to other companies, under your own account and your own agreement with them.

Photorealistic 3D Tiles. These features run on credentials you supply — your own Google Maps Platform key or a Cesium ion token — under your own agreement with that provider, and that provider bills you directly. ValTerra does not resell Google services, and we are not a party to your agreement with them. We do not receive any share of what you pay, and we cannot control their prices, terms, or regional availability.

OpenStreetMap. Schematic buildings and roads are generated from map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database License (ODbL).

Elevation data. Terrain is generated from open elevation tiles. Full credits are on the Data sources & attribution page.

If a third-party service changes, becomes unavailable in your region, or is discontinued, that is outside our control. The EULA sets out what this means for your license.

11. Using this Site

You may read the Site, and print or save pages for your own reference.

You must not:

• copy, republish, or redistribute Site content for commercial purposes without our written permission;
• use automated tools to place unreasonable load on the Site, or try to gain access to parts of it that are not public;
• interfere with the Site’s operation or security, or attempt to defeat license enforcement through it;
• present yourself as us, or suggest that we endorse you or your work.

We may change, suspend, or withdraw any part of the Site at any time. We do not promise that the Site will always be available or free of errors.

Forms on the Site. The one form on the Site is the sign-in box of your account (Section 12). Using it is not an order, and nothing is charged through it; payment is taken only in Paddle’s checkout (Section 4). The Founders list form that the pricing page carried before checkout opened has been taken down. What we do with the addresses it collected is described in the Privacy Policy, section 2.3, and you can ask us to remove yours at any time.

12. Your account

Buying a license creates an account for the email address used at checkout. There is no password: you sign in by asking for a one-time link, which we email to that address, and the link works once and for a short time. The account lists your license keys, one per seat, lets you give each key a label of your choosing to tell keys apart — a workstation or a project, for example — can send a key to you again, and lets you sign out on one browser or everywhere. It holds nothing else.

The account is a convenience, not the license. Closing your account does not end a paid license: the keys you were sent, and any machine already activated with them, keep working, and your perpetual license and its update period continue as bought. Closing only removes the copies of the keys that the account keeps, and the labels you gave them, so keep the email that delivered them. To close the account, write to [email protected] from the address on it. We may close an account that is used to attack the Site or to circumvent license enforcement, and if we do, the same sentence applies: a paid license is not ended by it. What the account stores is described in the Privacy Policy.

13. Sanctions and export

You confirm that you are not located in, or ordinarily resident in, a country or territory subject to comprehensive sanctions, and that you are not a person or entity designated under applicable sanctions programmes, including those of Ukraine, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States. We may decline or cancel any order on this basis.

14. Intellectual property in Site content

The Site and everything on it (text, layout, design, images, video, and the ValTerra name and logo) belongs to us or to our licensors, and is protected by copyright and other rights. Nothing on the Site transfers any of those rights to you.

Rights in the Software are dealt with in the EULA. Rights in third-party map data stay with the respective providers.

15. Trademarks and affiliation

ValTerra is an independent product by Shall We Art and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Autodesk, Inc. Autodesk and 3ds Max are registered trademarks of Autodesk, Inc.

ValTerra is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Google LLC. Google, Google Maps, and Google Maps Platform are trademarks of Google LLC.

OpenStreetMap is a trademark of the OpenStreetMap Foundation.

These Terms grant you no rights in anyone’s trademarks.

16. Disclaimers

The Site is provided as it is. We take care with what we publish, but we do not warrant that the information on it is complete, current, or error-free, and we may correct it without notice.

Warranties for the Software are addressed in the EULA. In summary, the Software is provided “as is” and is a pre-visualization and content creation tool. It is not intended for surveying, navigation, construction-grade measurement, or safety-critical use.

17. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, our total aggregate liability arising out of or related to these Terms, the Site, or your purchase will not exceed the amounts you paid for ValTerra licenses in the twelve (12) months preceding the event giving rise to the claim. This is the same cap as in the EULA, and the two caps are not cumulative.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for loss of profits, revenue, data, or business opportunity.

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability that cannot be excluded or limited by law, including liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud. If you buy as a consumer, your statutory rights are not affected.

18. Events outside our control

We are not liable for delay or failure caused by events outside our reasonable control, including war and hostilities, power or infrastructure outages, failures of third-party services, and acts of government. If such an event affects delivery of your license key, we will deliver it as soon as we reasonably can, or refund you.

19. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms. The version that applies to your purchase is the version published on the Site at the moment your order was accepted, and we keep the date of the last change at the top of this page.

Changes to the Site or to free tiers take effect when published. We will not apply a changed term retroactively to a purchase that has already been made.

20. Governing law and disputes

If something goes wrong, write to us first. Most problems are faster to fix by email than by anything else. For payment and invoice questions, Paddle is the right first contact, as Paddle is the seller of record.

These Terms, and any dispute or claim arising out of or in connection with them, are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction. This is the same choice of law as in the EULA.

If you buy as a consumer, this does not deprive you of the protection of the mandatory provisions of the law of the country where you live, and you may bring proceedings in the courts of that country. The sale transaction itself is governed by Paddle’s Buyer Terms, because Paddle is the seller of record; the choice of law above applies to your relationship with us.

These Terms are published in English. Any translation is provided for convenience only.

21. General

• If any provision of these Terms is unenforceable, the rest stays in effect.
• Our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of it.
• You may not transfer your rights under these Terms without our written consent. We may transfer ours to a successor of the ValTerra business.
• These Terms, together with the EULA, the Refund Policy, the Privacy Policy, and Paddle’s Buyer Terms, are the whole agreement about the Site and your purchase.

22. How to contact us

Valerii Nikulin, sole proprietor (FOP) registered in Ukraine, trading as Shall We Art

Email: [email protected]

Contact page: /contact

Write to us about licenses, support, or anything in these Terms. For payment, invoice, and tax questions about an order, contact Paddle as the seller of record.