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[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Discussions about people's expectations, Corona developement, life and other things

« on: 2021-06-09, 15:32:29 »

I think some of you are acctually taking things a bit too far now. Are you able to compare the size of the team with other developers like Chaos Vray or other engines ? Doubt it.

My point of view was to show my aproach to roadmap and I still stand with my beliefs and do not agree with Corona aproach.

Ok, totaly understandable things can get postponed as this is the case now. But being postponed is one thing, and developing a feature for almost two years (tone mapping) or slicer (years now right ?) is not OK.

If the aproach with road map being tentative is to stay I believe it should be accessible to SAAS subscribers only and there should be a BOX option for other people who buy depending on current stable state - no complains then, no disapointment.

BOX option is also more motivating for the company to acctually release something new and on time. Puts it out of the comfort zone of constant steady income. SAAS is the cancer of modern software in my opinion.

And the rates are irrelevant from my POV to be clear. I acctually think that SAAS rate is acctually pretty low. Development pace and reliability is of concern.

Since many of us think like me as I see it, many others agrees with how things are right now and are totaly fine with slow development or not delivering roadmap features for more many releases then the only solution as I see it is either you stay and pay or don't and move on.

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[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Discussions about people's expectations, Corona developement, life and other things

« on: 2021-06-08, 18:59:03 »

Hi Guys,

I know that there is some tension here and understandably so, but please can we keep this thread dedicated to the current v7 Daily Builds?

Thanks,

Rowan

Sorry Rowmanns for the intermission here, just wanted to show my respect for the team, GUYS Please calm down!!
So corona is no longer usable for the tone mapper pushed back so developers can finish it ? How were you making your great images back then ?
I prefer to have a good product instead of a half baked one, i saw the physical mat and its going to change everything, Its a huge change!
We have vray and corona at the office, and i  can say going back to vray is a real pain, everything is super complicated, you have 1000 knobs and check boxes to do a simple thing, corona is just USER friendly and works wonders.
We all want better things, and corona has its flaws we know, but its improving as all .
Thx for making rendering great again.

You have to look at the big picture. It has nothing to do with respect or not. It's like guys using Maya seeing 3ds max (same parent company) the last few years going fast in development (hypothetically speaking) so they ask for the same kind of resources for the development of the software they use. If anything I'm upset with Chaos group for not putting more resources for Corona, while Vray is getting all the juice. (sorry Rowan).

Disclamer: I don't share the same opinions as Bluebox at all, who should certainly calm down.

No idea how you came up with the conclusion I am not calm. Tired of going through this oven and over. Tired mostly of fanboyism here.
1. I haven't said anywhere that the renderer is bad or I fundamentally do not like it. Quite opposite actually.
2. My opinions as I said earlier are not personal against people working at Corona. I do not know personally any of them and it would be quite foolish to think they are personal.
3. My long term opinion about the roadmap still stands -explained many times before and also in previous post. As per your example on Maya I think we actually share quite similiar point of view, maybe I fail to describe it since people still do not understand it.
4.Following the above, I just explained my point of view on the roadmap in the previous post. Was using many anologies many times but people still fail to understand this. So two more:

-think of an election campaign as a roadmap. Politicians promise to introduce new bills etc. That the taxes won't be higher, healthcare will get more attention. After the election nothing changes or is directly opposite. You're satisfied with that ? Gues not. Will you vote the same way if you get hit by unexpected tax and your income declines ?

- your timeframe for realizing a project with the client is a roadmap. You want it to be respected both direcions. If you fail to deliver on time, clients decision making process might get halted, that may lead to not meeting deadlines to finish an interior on time etc. If your client does not send you feedback on time regularly you end up with uproductive time and will have to work extra hours when you start working on other clients projects and then the first client comes back with feedback and demands you finish his visuals first. That puts you in an awkward position.

People memory is short, they mostly do not remember what was promised to them. And my personal view (logic for which I presented many times) is that a roadmap is a form of promise. Only tool that gives some insight on the direction before the "election day". Otherwise we might as well not take into account anything that people say they will do and follow them/buy the product basing on whether we like them or not. Now that would be personal and emotional.

Since business decisions should not be personal and emotional this is the only reason I am vocal about breaking the roadmap. Actually liking the engine makes me feel uncomfortable about thinking that not delivering might become a habit. And we already have one feature that is posponed for several releases (already years pending) - slicer.

Anyway, you guys do with this what you want. I give up and will not come back to the topic since clearly either you go mainstream and unconditionaly love everyone and poke their backs no matter what or you're immediately called a troll. Glad that more likeminded people finaly got the courage to also speak up tho.

I'm done. Best of luck to you all.

Sorry for hijacking the topic Rowan.

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[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Discussions about people's expectations, Corona developement, life and other things

« on: 2021-06-08, 10:26:45 »

Anyone comparing Corona to buying a product and not getting what you paid for are just trolls. You should pay for software based on the current stable version. If you are paying for a software based on features that are written on a Trello called TENTATIVE ROADMAP, it's completely your fault.

I completely understand that you have a Corona altar at your place since you call trolls other people trying to have a discussion, but when I'm buying something and paying for it it's either a product or a service. In this particular example it is not relevant. What is relevant is the fact that part of the SAAS fee covers usage of the product already developed which we rent as a service. The other part goes to I asume current team expenses which consists of current operations in part developing further releases.
Therefore as part of the fee goes to development, expecting a reliable roadmap is completely fine because as cool as your vocal support is Corona Team can operate thanks to the money they earn - material support and income.
Following the above one can and pretty much should expect a roadmap so he or she can decide if the product development plan is in lieu with their business expectations or maybe it is better to support some other package and its development.
If you want to pay for a finished product basing on its current stable version as you call it you should be able to buy a BOX version (since it is a closed product and in that case I agree you can't have any further expectations beyond maintenance plan included) and not pay the monthly fees. You got what you paid for, you can check the current features and you either buy it or not and should not complain.  This is just simple logic. Maybe you should think again ?

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[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Discussions about people's expectations, Corona developement, life and other things

« on: 2021-06-07, 18:01:13 »

I still work on Corona, but I am doing mostly management nowadays :(. I try to sneak in programming time whenever I can.

True loss of potential. Thought it unfortunately is this way. We went from developing features overnight to developing over months. Bad move IMO. Miss the old days seeing Ondra posting that something people came up with last evening or few days ago is now complete.

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[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Discussions about people's expectations, Corona developement, life and other things

« on: 2021-06-07, 17:44:34 »

People, why always this comparsion to VRay?...
If you think there is a feature that you really "need" to manage your everyday work, why don't go and buy a license of Vray instead.
Maybe you focus too much on things you find "missing" in Corona. The team behind Corona is still human, so don't you think they have a right to have a living beside development? Especially in this hard times.

Keep in mind that Chaos Group had started Vray development 24 years ago.

Stay motivated Render Legion!

I get goose bumps when listening to such bull**** seriously. This mental emotional fanboyism in this industry is just insane.

Gues what, I admire Ondra for his brains and sense of humour. Ryuu for being able to maintain composure in circumstances of people being really frustrated of features being postponed again and answering in calm and polite manner. I'm pretty sure we'd had an awesome chat enjoying a bottle of beer at SOA in Venice or any other event as they are simply cool guys IMHO.

All this is irrelevant and people opinions are not personal. We and you are ffs paying clients. This relation is pure business one. Noone has anything against Corona Team personally. We are concerned business wise. This market is getting incresingly more competitive on many aspects. We use this software in many ways. Either you keep up or not. If you're looking for friends please do so outside of the forum or in private messages and lets keep this as merit as possible.

Swithing from one soft to another week after week is just not an option. Have you for example thought about creating and maintaining model libraries and material libraries ? I wrote about this many times, to create a logical groud-up structure. Develop core features first like bullet-proof shader so people create their mat and model library once and never come back, or come back to it after 10 years (asuming offline renderers will still exist). Same goes with lighting setups corelated with tonemapping.

We did all those thins already and spent quite substantial amount of time on it and then comes new shader and in near future tonemapping. Obviously our model/mat lib would look way better with the new shader as the new diffuse model is simply better.

Therefore reliable roadmap is simply a must so people investing or possibly making a switch know what to expect and when to expect it. Period

And oh, COVID. We all (mostly) have children, mortgages to pay and so on. Corona Team isn't the only one affected. We all are. So quit excusing and advocating on not your own behalf with any nonsense argument you can think of.

Show goes on. A thing to remember that Autodesk was revolutionary at some point too. They delivered untill they mostly did not deliver and gained a reputation we all know and most of us share with little features and insane rates. Few steps at a time.

Wanted to edit but somehow replied to myself. Please some mod merge the posts thank you.

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[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Discussions about people's expectations, Corona developement, life and other things

« on: 2021-06-07, 17:40:38 »

People, why always this comparsion to VRay?...
If you think there is a feature that you really "need" to manage your everyday work, why don't go and buy a license of Vray instead.
Maybe you focus too much on things you find "missing" in Corona. The team behind Corona is still human, so don't you think they have a right to have a living beside development? Especially in this hard times.

Keep in mind that Chaos Group had started Vray development 24 years ago.

Stay motivated Render Legion!

I get goose bumps when listening to such bull**** seriously. This mental emotional fanboyism in this industry is just insane.

Gues what, I admire Ondra for his brains and sense of humour. Ryuu for being able to maintain composure in circumstances of people being really frustrated of features being postponed again and answering in calm and polite manner. I'm pretty sure we'd had an awesome chat enjoying a bottle of beer at SOA in Venice or any other event as they are simply cool guys IMHO.

All this is irrelevant and people opinions are not personal. We and you are ffs paying clients. This relation is pure business one. Noone has anything against Corona Team personally. We are concerned business wise. This market is getting incresingly more competitive on many aspects. We use this software in many ways. Either you keep up or not. If you're looking for friends please do so outside of the forum or in private messages and lets keep this as merit as possible.

Swithing from one soft to another week after week is just not an option. Have you for example thought about creating and maintaining model libraries and material libraries ? I wrote about this many times, to create a logical groud-up structure. Develop core features first like bullet-proof shader so people create their mat and model library once and never come back, or come back to it after 10 years (asuming offline renderers will still exist). Same goes with lighting setups corelated with tonemapping.

We did all those thins already and spent quite substantial amount of time on it and then comes new shader and in near future tonemapping. Obviously our model/mat lib would look way better with the new shader as the new diffuse model is simply better.

Therefore reliable roadmap is simply a must so people investing or possibly making a switch know what to expect and when to expect it. Period

And oh, COVID. We all (mostly) have children, mortgages to pay and so on. Corona Team isn't the only one affected. We all are. So quit excusing and advocating on not your own behalf with any nonsense argument you can think of.

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[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Discussions about people's expectations, Corona developement, life and other things

« on: 2021-06-07, 12:17:04 »

wow - whats the problem here guys?  you dont think a world wide pandemic could be the reason why things have slowed down a little?  By little, i mean, little.  The dailies have been coming out fairly frequently and some exciting new features are coming our way, all of which shouldnt change the renders youre producing now all that dramatically - if much at all.  If youre looking for the holy grail, then as they say, its not the tools but the person using it.  I will say though, as ive said many times, the slicer/clipper is well overdue but apart from that, all seems to be progressing well.

peace.

Yep, a lot of ungrateful and impatient people here.

Corona team, keep up the good work.

Yep, a lot of fanboys also here lmao. You're gratefull to Nike for your shoes ? You pay for them, you expect certain quality you paid for. You praise your support on Nike forums to a company that earns on your purchase ? This is getting more and more hilarious.

I am a paying customer as long as the product delivers and has the features I need for my business. My sympathy or lack of (guys seem nice)  is irrelevant.

Hilarious most of you are bit*** on autodesk for not delivering, yet you are completely fine with others not delivering. Strange dissonance.

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[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Discussions about people's expectations, Corona developement, life and other things

« on: 2021-06-06, 03:52:35 »

After Effects--for example. how they work in all normal studios.
I think also for freelancers:)
Same filters-same color grade-same compositions-same resolutions--only update image from renders--0.5 sec of working time:)besides, it never happens that your post process is 100 percent satisfied with the customer. and a lot of things that simply cannot be added to raw renders.
absolutely in any case a third-party application is used

You are biased AF dude. Fact that probably all bigger studios work this way doesn't mean they are the "normal" ones and those that don't use it are somewhat ... I dont know ? Worse ? Not normal ? One might thinkt that is what you suggest.

Up until recently there was no other way of doing this as renderers focused on producing basic raw image or would let you tonemap it with bullcrap reinhard inside in a limited way and that's it. Specialised software existed to push things further. This also exists because large studios are big structures not as elastic with their pipeline as the smaller ones where changing pipeline is a matter of day(s) unlike the biggies with tens of artists.

As everything evolves there is no need for that workflow with fancy software for people who want to push things just a little behind the line without the need to resolve to soft as AE, Davinci and the sort.

You're assuming that this is the only organic way of growth - want to postproces better - do it external. It isn't. More controll here would totaly sufice many many people. And I see what I get instantenously while I develop it. Without the need to shuffle in and out of max and VFB and opening it in external soft. Sort like the move from buckets to interactive. From Grant Warvick multilayered materials to simple GGX.

We also regularly work with clients in live preview sessions - how do you expect me to show them the final result if I have to go through fifty additional steps to show them the finished image ?
Thins are going WYSIWG way in many fields.
I don't need super advanced pipeline with 5 softwares inbetween a render and finished image. My profile does not force me to incorporate one and more and more people dont need it. I need more controll inside the VFB.

They way you're using this software isn't the only way. The purpose you're using it isn't the only one for which it can be used.

Do not try to invalidate other peoples feature requests only because you do not need them. Other people do and judging by the "most wanted features" thread many people want to get this upgraded.

I bet there is no one more motivated than the corona team to get tone mapping out. It really looks like they are taking it seriously and trying to do something exceptional, witch often means things taking much longer than expected.

I'm sure whoever is working on it is taking it seriously. No doubt about that. The question is how many devs are assigned to Corona for Max these days, and their seniority. It looks as if there's only one person working on this and he isn't Ondra or Maru.

This. Valid point. We suppose to get features. Turns out some are postoponed undefinitely for release after a release, some most highly anticipated like tonemapping after finaly getting to be worked on seems like might take almost two years to get to final stable release (not mentioning time people were vigorously discussing it on the forum). We have a team of developers, Meanwhile Fstorm is developed by just a single guy and I understand that some might argue that it is still not production ready and whatnot but still, one guy.

Here no communication. Zero explanation as to why. Silently removing a feature to next release.

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[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Discussions about people's expectations, Corona developement, life and other things

« on: 2021-06-05, 16:00:23 »

Yeah, we could use another software, vray for example?

Checked Fstorm group on facebook yesterday. Tempting. One-man army developing on ridiculous pace.

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[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Discussions about people's expectations, Corona developement, life and other things

« on: 2021-06-05, 15:18:21 »

Edit 2: And let's be honest, who thought they could do a new physical material AND a new tone mapper for the same version?

They said they will. People might or not make decisions based on that. If they do not introduce new tonemapper then what the hell took 10 months here ? Half the new sky system was done in previous release. Not taking into account mat library as this is not coding. That leaves us with displacement optimizations and basically new shader.

v8 release is expected in Q1 2022, that potentialy leaves the door open for people that need a stable environment and can't fiddle with dailies to get the new tonemapping in worst case scenario in march 2022 ? It is another  9 months from here ! Wrapping up almost two years !

Edit: On the other hand we're getting Aerial perspective and an improved sun & sky model, which I haven't seen yet but hope it will be great.

Awesome reasoning. I ordered a Mercedes, they deliver Dacia for a few months as a substitute. Well nothing happened, it still has wheels right ?
Not to mention that Reworking tonemapping is next to GPU/hybrid and new shader voted as the top 3 most wanted features in the forum.

hi,
I am a little bit  surprised by this strong demand for improvement of "tone mapping". I'll be curious if a lot of people use Vray's new "ACES" workflow which seems like a gas factory to me. I do not really believe in ready-made solutions because what matters in the end are the images produced ... After obviously all improvements are welcome but I do not believe too much in the revolution of "tone mapping" for the architectural image ... but that's just my point of view ...

mienda

totally agree. anyway task
"do absolutely the whole post-process"  in Frame Buffer
I personally find it completely unrealistic and unnecessary because there will always be certain applications that make more accurate corrections and post-processing. yes of course it can make the work easier also in post-processing and possibly get a more attractive look, but what has been done now in Vray in this direction is just ridiculous. just try to play with all these bells and whistles with a resolution of 8-k in Frame Buffer with huge heavy scene in 3dmax/[:

And this advocating in form of "why do we need that feature, it can be done in other software"... Sure it can, but imagine a situation where you render dozens of images per project and you need to provide absolute consistency. Why would I import it to other external software to do postprocesing when I can do it straight in the VFB and not waste any more time ?
This workflow is as valid as the one with postpro in external soft. Your arguments are not in any way superior.

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[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Discussions about people's expectations, Corona developement, life and other things

« on: 2021-06-05, 07:40:26 »

I guess I sympathize a little with some of the ire regarding development speed, but some of the updates for v7-8 are tectonic shifts in how Corona Renderer handles essential aspects of the rendering pipeline (e.g. physical material and tonemapping), so I can't say I'm surprised it could take nearly a year or longer to implement.

Last really "tectonic" shift we saw was Interactive renderer IMO that generated large influx of new users as it was a blast in a workflow and something fresh.
Besides you can call something tectonic when it existst. As far as I remember people speak about tonemapping overhaul for years now and it is posponed for second time already. As is for example slicer - lost count already for how many releases it gets pushed back - 3 or 4 already, probably even more ?
Promises, promises. I'll believe it when I see it. So far I don't.

Pareto principle should be put into the development plan.
Interactive renderer, good shader, good tonemapping. This should be top priority at all times and 20-30% foundation. Rest 70-80% is more or less important noise.

I really do hope that tonemapping gets prioritized hard AF in the dailies after v7 release.

So far my all time point stands. How can you invest in something when it does not deliver (roadmap). Imagine a client coming back to you and comissioning another set of renders if the last time you screwed up and after agreeing on doing the job in 2 months you did it in 6 or 8 ? You might get a second chance if you screw up once. But do it again and you never see that client back. Moreover you can be sure he mentions to his colleagues in the field that it would be somewhat wise to maybe look for some other contractor than this particular company X as they fail to deliver.
This is so basic business  ethics I can't even imagine how this can be of a discussion.

Basic thinking operating on the example of slicer is - OK, the renderer is cool, meets my requirements has this killer IR feature, lacks the feature I really need in my day to day work but there are workarounds and they say they will introduce the feature in the next release. I'm making a switch. Guess what. Promises.

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[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Discussions about people's expectations, Corona developement, life and other things

« on: 2021-06-04, 21:41:04 »

Just noticed on trello that you yet again postponed to next release probably the most anticipated feature that people beg for for at least two or three releases.

HUGE disappointment.
HUGE red flag.

"Big release focused on significantly improving workflow and realism" - we get:
-shortening time spent opening the scene - like 10-20 sec. on scene open is that big ?
-optimizing displacement
-improved sun and sky - partialy done in previous release
-material library content update - half moved to next release. Anyone btw using this day to day in serious projects where most materials is client requested and thus custom made ?
-new shader - only meaningfull update

All the above in 10 months development time. Trying to be highly diplomatic - I'd call it sluggish.

Sorry to say this but for me this is a joke. Again - highly disappointed. Starting to look for alternatives.

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[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Corona Renderer 7 for 3ds Max - Daily Builds Discussion

« on: 2021-05-19, 20:15:08 »

Just noticed you guys continue on the sky model with aerial perspective. Now we really want to test all those features together with improved tone mapping :D

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[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Corona Renderer 7 for 3ds Max - Daily Builds Discussion

« on: 2021-05-13, 21:02:25 »

Very much being actively worked on :)

Pls gib ! We can't wait any longer to get our hands on it :D

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[Max] Daily Builds / Re: Corona Renderer 7 for 3ds Max - Daily Builds Discussion

« on: 2021-05-13, 16:12:16 »

+