Messages

1

General CG Discussion / Re: 3ds Max 2015 features

« on: 2015-01-29, 06:43:58 »

Thank you antanas for your worrying about others! Very useful.

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News / Re: Pricing and release date announced

« on: 2014-11-06, 20:22:34 »

I said it became off the reaches of normal because it was downright rude and offending towards developers.

Aah, I understand why you said that now. :)
: ) No, it's not what you thought. You missed the fact where I said that I'm not talking about corona team in these statements, I even repeated it in my last post, I'm talking about SaaS-"only", like adobe and AD are doing. Sorry for your misunderstanding, I think everything is fine then :)
And I also said previously that the corona model is indeed the best, because there is the choice between Box and SaaS. What becomes toxic, is when you remove this choice and go SaaS-only. You'll say that we would then be free to switch package, that's right in theory, but... again, is it that realistic in practice?
And yes, we are in a capitalist free market, where you are free to make your choices... in theory.

If you want to know more, there are a lot of contents explaining the bad consequences of capitalism (as well as communism lol, I won't develop because it is not the place, a good thing is that knowledge is available with internet now.

This has indeed a lot to do with capitalism, this is the law of the strongest, where greed is the motivation, the strongest takes the power, and this system drives him to eliminate anybody else and take a monopoly position, and then troubles begin.
Look at how multinational companies have taken monopolism over all sectors? Google, Microsoft, etc, and look at what results from their behavior.
One quick example that comes in my mind: are we free to use anything else but Windows on pc? In theory, there is linux, but in practice?
Are we free to use blender? Yes, of course, but realistically?
So, you can see that freedom "seems" to be there, when it actually isn't.

@keymaster
I saw you posted while I was writing.
No, I don't say that greed is "caused" by capitalism, of course not. Greed is a bad caracteristic of human being that he has to fight in order to live decently. There is indeed greed in every society, no doubt. But the problem with capitalism is that it encourages and feed greed! No matter who dies on its path. We could talk about the many branches of capitalism, like the debt system and IMF killing poor countries (and even western ones!), privatizations  choking populations, etc, but again, that's not adequate here. :)
No, with capitalism, especially as we are seeing now, no, you won't see another render engine making you lower prices or steal your customers, but you'll see Autodesk coming to your door, buying corona and absorbing you, you'll only be a simple employee of this giant corporation running the corona departement, or you would have sold it to them, being left with nothing you "own".
This may have already occured in the past, and it will certainlly again; you resisted... but for how long? Capitalism business men beast are greedy and keep a watch on you.

All this to explain why sometimes I like to remind people about moral values and good behavior, even if the thread is cg related: to have a better life with our own consciences and with others in society. But this is another topic related to sociology and psychology which I won't develop here of course :)

3

News / Re: Pricing and release date announced

« on: 2014-11-06, 18:46:09 »

I think this is the point where this discussion became off the reaches of normal and should be ceased.

In business no one owes you anything, and by same logic, no one forces you to do anything. No one forces anyone into SaaS, and if someone doesn't like the choice, he doesn't need to choose at all,
but he's surely not a victim at any point.

I should remind that, in this phrase, I talk about the SaaS-"ONLY" model.
Will you deny the fact that adobe or AD behavior in SaaS-only is a child of capitalism for instance? Greed profit at all costs, even if they are already mutli-billionaires, and no matter who is destroyed in the process. Capitalism at its best.
I don't call anybody to communism, this is also a bad model, but between the two, there is a healthy way.
Anyway, I didn't want to shift the discussion to this subject, it was just like a signature, to give a morality at the end of my words. I always like to discuss ethics and moral with people and I like for others what I like for myself.

I won't talk about this furthermore, because the thread has to remain what it is, but just one or two things.
Of course the base is freedom, but there is a point where your behavior can become toxic. You can't deny the human and moral dimension in every relation we have between each other, even in business.

Juraj, if what I said became off the reaches of normal or didn't make sense, then ask yourself:

Why a large amount of users are so angry against adobe and AD? These companies don't owe anything to users, isn't it?
So, are users right? or are they saying things off the reaches of normal?
Then, think about what you would say to them, would you tell them that if they don't like the choice, they just don't have to choose at all?
Would you tell them that, if they don't like, they are free to leave?
Do you think things are that straightforward in life? 0 or 1?

I don't ask to answer my post here, just questions for yourself.

Kindly, :)
boumay.

4

News / Re: Pricing and release date announced

« on: 2014-11-06, 12:20:29 »

Guys I think I failed to make my point, so I retire from this conversation,

You have been very clear in your explanations, don't worry.

@lacilaci
I think you've pretty well summed up the thing about box and saas.

And I guess people didn't understand what we tried to say in these last posts because, actually the conversation has shifted, while being highly related.
I agree I said that I was expecting a lower price, mostly, and I don't know if people remember the article, because the developpers themselves were suggesting us that corona will always be cheap and, even that it may remain free in a certain way, so you can't blame us to see it "not cheap" when it comes out to more expensive than redshift for instance. Anyway, it's only my opinion after all, and I'm ready to buy it because I think it is still worth it.

But the point, in fact, is that we began to talk about the general saas-ONLY model and argued about it, but we didn't really precised it so people got confused, thinking we were generally complaining.

The reason why we did is because we felt that corona team was leaning towards saas-only in the future, and we wanted to expose the desaster it will be for many of us.

And I'm sure, after reflexion, that the saas-only defenders will actually realize how bad this model is for freelancers and mid-size companies, that many of them will simply close their doors in profit of the big corporations. The rich becomes richer and makes the poor poorer.
This model is in the logic of the greedy capitalism market who eats everything on its way, destroying people and countries.

5

News / Re: Pricing and release date announced

« on: 2014-11-05, 18:06:49 »

Possibly, but on the other hand, an saas option may attract people who just want to try Corona for a while and don't want to pay the whole thing upfront ;) . Plus, if you already invested a lot of time (materials, scenes, workflow) it's more likely that you stay with it, thus renew your saas contract.

saas is very good as an option, in fact it's actually better with it beside box license, more choices=better.
That's saas-only that is bad for users.

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News / Re: Pricing and release date announced

« on: 2014-11-05, 17:20:10 »

I am sorry, but I had only one life savings to burn through when developing Corona. Or even worse, people putting themselves on moral high ground, lecturing us on greed without actually knowing shit about real costs of running a company doing software development. I assume they just want to feel good about themselves when they will later steal it. But it still pisses me off, knowing what offers I had turned down because I did not want to screw our users.

I think like juang3d about saas and other things, in fact I'm in the same situation.
And I also talked about greed, but:
We didn't lecture on you greed, we said saas-"only" is greed. And, I can tell you that we know what it costs to run a company.
As for the last statement about people wanting to feel good about themselves when they'll steal it, I hope you don't think that about us. You just have to analyze what juang said, as well as me, to see that we are very concerned by respecting other's right, and we don't use piracy at all, all of my software is licensed for instance, while I could pirate them at any time.
We are just advising to what we think is right. :)

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News / Re: Pricing and release date announced

« on: 2014-11-05, 15:12:11 »

And I will never understand people saying they dont know if they will have 25€ next month to pay for SaaS even though they could just set aside the money at the beginning.

I don't know if you have ever lived hard times but, for modest freelancers (perhaps in your country as you mentionned in the first articles about pricing), it can easily become difficult sometimes, to pay 25€euros for just a rendering engine, considering the fact that they'd have difficulties to pay their rent and electricity bill (I say this by experience).
People outside western countries aren't able to charge clients as much as others in us or western europe, thus making their revenues small, alongside the lack of employement etc.

It seems that the "only box, saas is evil" group is small, but very loud one.

Then, you should go on the various cg forums and see by yourself how many people are angry about the saas-only model, they are the majority of thread participants. We are not talking about saas as an choice/option, which is well accepted, but as saas-only.
Usually, people defending saas-only model seem to be employed, having a comfortable living, their employers paying all the subs for them, etc, they are not owning their business, thus not foreseeing the conséquences this model has on people's life and on economy.
I agree with juang, I think greed is a main factor for the saas-only model. This is egoist and benefit only the software companies.
I say this because I was afraid this was the route towards which you were leaning, that's what I felt when reading the pricing article. I hope you'll never get seduced by this saas-only. And I repeat, like said others, this saas-only will help killing the middle-class.


Let's take an example of a typical scenario for a vfx freelancer on this model (in dollars)
- 195 for max (completely possible in their monthly rental scheme this is the price)
 - 55 for tp
 - 50 for fumefx (I'm making out this, it's just theoretically)
 - let's say another 50 for krakatoa (I'm making out this, it's just theoretically)
- 32 for corona

So this makes approx. 400/month just for work. BTW: this is just for one workstation, one person! think of two or three workstations!
When you are in a scenario where it has been 2 or 3 month of unemployment, and a project pops up, you don't even have the opportunity to take it because you couldn't pay your saas'ss, and you can't use a single software. You would have been happy to use, even an older version of owned software, just to complete this project and pay your bills.

Do you see why many people prefer owning their software?

8

News / Re: Pricing and release date announced

« on: 2014-11-04, 20:04:16 »

I also find the pricing disappointing.
I remember that corona developpers said they wanted it to be accessible to the majority, and that they were considering the fact that people in their region weren't as wealthy as western countries, etc. The idea of corona remaining free was even mentionned.
So I was hoping to see it cheaper, around 200 dollars or so. I was a bit surprised to see it at almost 600 usd and more expensive than redshift.

9

News / Re: Pricing and release date announced

« on: 2014-11-03, 20:37:18 »

Total payment for 3 years on box and you pay (450+100+100+100 = 750). Total payment for 3 years on SAAS (25 x 36 = 900

Don't forget to say that, apart from being more expensive, with saas you get nothing at the end. You own nothing. As opposed to the box license, which you really own perpetually, and that you can use when hard times come. It is a huge difference, just like owning your house, or renting it.
This saas, if it is the only option (as AD does), is really a mid-class killer.
I hope that, with corona, you'll always have the choice and that keymaster won't remove this in favor of saas only.

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[Max] General Discussion / Exclude objects from motion blur

« on: 2014-10-31, 23:29:09 »

Is it possible?

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[Max] General Discussion / Re: Very long time for parsing the scene

« on: 2014-10-29, 17:06:24 »

I just remembered that the pc files are 25.8gb for the 200 actors scene and 113gb for all of them! So that's too heavy to upload. Or if you have the anima crowd software, I can send the max scene with the ani file (only 2,8mb).
Anyway, I also noticed that my scene seems to have been cleaned by switching to mr, applying materials, etc, I don't know. And when I reverted back to corona, parsing was fast (for 200 actors at least).
Then, strange things began. I tried to clone these 200 actors in this "clean/fast" scene, but parsing was long again.
But stranger than that is, when I undone the cloning, and render the 200, scene parsing returned long (???!).
What's happening? Do things get dirt in corona with scene manipulation/time?
I hope you understood (sorry for my English)

btw, a test on the base scene for 1150 actors (imported ani file): after 50min parsing was still running.

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[Max] General Discussion / Re: Very long time for parsing the scene

« on: 2014-10-28, 18:41:13 »

translation time with mental ray = 1min36
I'll see if keymaster is ok for looking at the scene and, if yes, try to upload it one way or another.

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[Max] General Discussion / Re: Very long time for parsing the scene

« on: 2014-10-28, 14:33:46 »

The problem with my scene is that I can't convert to corona proxies, because they are individual 3dsmax objects with specific animation for each one of them.
I guess the fact that corona has problem with lots of animated objects is somewhat true, and I will have to split the scene.

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[Max] General Discussion / Re: Very long time for parsing the scene

« on: 2014-10-28, 11:00:14 »

I can't give the scene, it is more than 2gb big.
And, I would really like to have 6 min parsing time, in my case it is more than 30 min with all actors, and 13min30 with only 200.
Problematic :(

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[Max] General Discussion / Re: Very long time for parsing the scene

« on: 2014-10-27, 23:15:05 »

Ok, so I tried several things.
It seems corona has problems with animated objects.

First of all, I took a snapshot of 200 actors, so no animation, only static editable meshes, scene parsing is fast. With them animated, it is very long.

Then I exported the 200 actors meshes from anima, each one of them having a pc2 file: scene parsing took 13min30 with only 200 actors animated.

It seems there is no difference regarding the animation method, anima imported *.ani actors, or editable point cached meshes:
200 static actors = fast
200 animated actors = long

And with my 1150 actors I must render, scene parsing is taking more than 30 min, in fact I didn't had the patience to wait, I cancelled the render each time, so it could take 45min, 1 hour, I don't know, but it is unusable. And I imagine it does scene parsing every frame, so, it is very problematic.

I have to say that it is impossible to use corona in such a scenario for me, there could be other fixes to try, but I'm out of ideas now.

Any suggestions?