Messages

1

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Price Increase

« on: 2024-01-16, 19:54:07 »

When they got aquired by chaos and soon afterwards upped the prices by 100% while bugging the licensing system to an alsmost unusable point on the c4d side, we as a company started a slow switch towards octane + a double switch from Maxon to Blender (Maxon aint fun anymore either). And guess what: It's the same green on the other side.

We'll keep the premium with it's 3 render nodes for the sake of backwards compatibility as long as it stays this way. But an upredictable pricing policy with increases of over 100% in a year is just not relatable. Who knows, when the price increases again? Maybe even next year, when they need to compensate for the loss of subscription customers?

I don't want to be at the mercy of companies like these.

2

[C4D] Feature Requests / License management

« on: 2023-10-30, 15:30:07 »

Could you possibly add standard functionalities to your license management like "release license"?
We got a lot of C4D licenses and use different renderers for different jobs.
We don't have as many Corona licenses as we got Cinema 4D licenses.

Corona licenses work like "first come, first served". The first one, who opens up Cinema 4D in the morning, get's the license. No matter if corona is used or not. The license is blocked.

If someone else wants to use a corona license, he has to ask the former one to close his Cinema 4D (nothing else works reliable, not even logging out of the licensing server), then open his own Cinema 4D, to get the license. This is very impractiable, as two guys need to sort of licensing and none of them can work in the meantime on any job, either.

Octane f.e. activates a license, as soon as you start working with it, not any time earlier.
Insydium Fused acts similiar to Corona, but allows to release a license in C4D. That's ok, too.


PS: I don't consider answers like "purchase more licenses" as a solution.

3

[C4D] General Discussion / Re: Corona Licensing starting to become a bad joke...

« on: 2023-06-22, 09:29:07 »

What's going on there? If I wouldn't rely heavily on Corona as the last 7 years projects are done with it, Id quickly leave the boat.

Been there, done that. My advice: Don't leave quickly. Calculate ~1 year for the transition. Maybe more. You will have to keep at least one Corona license for old projects/clients for some time. There is a lot of stuff to convert, yes. But it pays out in the end. And adding one Octane license just for testing out isn't that expensive.

4

[C4D] I need help! / Re: Deactivate License?

« on: 2023-04-13, 13:21:35 »

Sorry for the late reply. Way too much to do.

Signing out from the licensing server is an option. Thanks for the tipp.

It's still more like a workaround. As it means I'll have to play the sign-in, sign-out game a lot. The license doesn't free up automatically. In fact its blocked, even when the machine "using it", is rendering on octane (no traces of corona in those scenes).

Maybe you could integrate a simple "free license" button? Would be small but time-saving implementation :-)

5

[C4D] I need help! / Re: Metal reflections

« on: 2023-04-03, 23:48:33 »

MI have never used the Rayswitch feature and not sure what the advantage of it would be.

F.e. if you got a lot of unwanted color bleeding (let's say a red carpet), you could use the rayswitch feature to cirumvent the effect (grey carpet version for diffuse).

6

[C4D] I need help! / Deactivate License?

« on: 2023-04-03, 08:31:33 »

Very simple: How can I deactivate a license on a PC, without closing Cinema4D?
F.e. there is one machine rendering several jobs with Octane, but it's occupying a Corona License. How can I deactive this license, while not disrupting the rendering process?

7

[C4D] Resolved Bugs / Re: Motion Blur & Instances

« on: 2022-12-09, 08:24:42 »

Actually normal instances didn't do the job in this case, the bug still exists. Besides that, I often got very detailed Models with lots of Instances in the scene. So Render Instances are a must. And I really don't why I should refrain from render instances. They are basic standard in every other package.

8

[C4D] Resolved Bugs / Motion Blur & Instances

« on: 2022-12-06, 19:38:56 »

Hey there, still (or again?) got this Motion Blur Bug. I guess it comes with Instances, but not sure about this. I could go through the hassle of testing it thoroughly, but this bug exists since the introduction of Motion Blur to Corona. So you propably know it very well. Just a little reminder.

9

[C4D] General Discussion / Re: Licensing question

« on: 2022-11-06, 19:29:34 »

Well, I feel you. We eventually got a mobile router for cases like that. It's supplying internet via mobile networks (mostly G4, very fast) for cases like that. And it saved our ass several times. But it's not very cheap, to be honest.

In fact, you have to be very carefull. Because lot's of software likes to download stuff in the background without telling you, and the internet connection is paid by volume You can tell windows to consider billed internet connections, but this does not affect other porgrams.

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[C4D] General Discussion / Re: New pricing - "thank you" Chaos...

« on: 2022-10-28, 18:02:57 »

We where thinking about going with corona and expanding the license park considerably. But fact is: Any new license got a price increase double the inflation + no render nodes anymore - within half a year. A new license with corona+3 render nodes (for the slowest renderer on earth a must have!), got a price increase from 289.99 € to 775.20 € (corona + 3 render nodes).

Now, in the day-to-day business it's not really about the price increase itself (not from my point of view, at least). It's somehow about professionalism and predictability. Shown practices in 2022 are lacking both key points. And chaos lacks both attributes anyway, as shown in the past (VRay for Modo, f.e.). I really liked corona and the founding companies spirit (FairSaaS in its original idea, f.e.). But now, with chaos showing their typical behaviour I'm really unsure about coronas future.

Long story short: Yes, you should have increased prices over time. By then, you would've known if a yearly price increase around 15% (considering feature theft, see above) would have been realistic. I dare to say no.

11

[C4D] General Discussion / Re: New pricing - "thank you" Chaos...

« on: 2022-10-28, 13:38:20 »

Soooo, the new price is 289.99 €, and 418,80 € for the first month, eh? (see attached image) Chaos with chaos.
Maybe while upping prices like crazy, try to at least communicate clear and without discrepancies.

12

[C4D] General Discussion / Re: New pricing - "thank you" Chaos...

« on: 2022-10-17, 16:48:12 »

Just cut the markting blahblah. It's either crippling existing license use (no floating license anymore) or a hefty price increase.

13

[C4D] General Discussion / Re: License

« on: 2022-10-12, 09:30:39 »

The number of computers specified in each product package has not changed, and the number of licenses you're entitled to hasn't changed.

Are you sure about that? If I remember correctly, the additional render nodes where cut from 3 to 1 some time ago.

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[C4D] General Discussion / Re: Render nodes as a separate purchase starting in V8

« on: 2022-09-15, 10:23:09 »

Oh well, I missed that. And I don't get it. Corona Renderer is the slowest Renderer I know of. Even its RAM usage is mind boggling. I get low RAM messages, where Octane just eats the scene away (in a fraction of time). It is mandatory to have render nodes with Corona. In fact, I would even say Corona is pretty useless without render nodes in productive environments. But milking customers is somewhat trendy I guess. In a business not known for healthy budgets. Keep it going ...

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[C4D] General Discussion / Normal Maps in V8 RC5

« on: 2022-05-06, 07:57:58 »

Maybe I missed a memo, but over here, Normal Maps behave very "different" to what they used to. I needed to render an old project, and everything came out a bit weird. See screenshot attached. Am I the only one with this problem? Couldn't find helpful topics with the search.