Author Topic: Discussions about people's expectations, Corona developement, life and other things  (Read 19139 times)

2021-06-04, 19:48:19

cjwidd

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2021-06-04, 20:02:49
Reply #1

romullus

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I hope the guys will work hard to release tonemapping early into v8 daily builds. Being the one who uses Corona only for personal needs, i'm ok with that, but for people who can only work with final releases - Q1 2022 - ouch.
I'm not Corona Team member. Everything i say, is my personal opinion only.
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2021-06-04, 20:11:25
Reply #2

EugeneDa

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I hope the guys will work hard to release tonemapping early into v8 daily builds. Being the one who uses Corona only for personal needs, i'm ok with that, but for people who can only work with final releases - Q1 2022 - ouch.

;)



2021-06-04, 21:31:54
Reply #3

scionik

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Nice... in 10 months and 4 features. Only one is really big... but.
I can't find the words to describe how I'm feeling. Just remember how were developed builds before v2...
...
Or... it is a strategy to move people to V-Ray?

2021-06-04, 21:41:04
Reply #4

bluebox

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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.

2021-06-04, 23:18:05
Reply #5

marchik

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again? really? :D
« Last Edit: 2021-06-04, 23:28:04 by marchik »

2021-06-04, 23:46:47
Reply #6

cjwidd

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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.



I'm still trying to wrap my head around the new Physical Material and one thing that stands out to me is that without adding the switch system to determine whether IOR or specular mode is used, it completely breaks compatibility with the Substance in 3ds Max plugin.

The Substance in 3ds Max plugin is a really problematic implementation, but it is the only official guide for replicating Substance graphs in SME.
« Last Edit: 2021-06-04, 23:56:10 by cjwidd »

2021-06-05, 00:00:02
Reply #7

lupaz

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ChaosGroup should have their CEO comment on this.
Why did it take almost a year for a physical material? Seems excessive and worrisome.

2021-06-05, 04:31:58
Reply #8

longhard

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2021-06-05, 07:40:26
Reply #9

bluebox

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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.

2021-06-05, 08:25:55
Reply #10

specialagent

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This is extremely disappointing, Corona is a good render engine but without a proper tone mapper, it is simply a few years behind and there are better choices out there.
Corona 7 is no longer a big release, you should probably change the tagline.

2021-06-05, 09:53:21
Reply #11

tradstown

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2021-06-05, 11:33:19
Reply #12

mienda

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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

2021-06-05, 12:35:17
Reply #13

denisgo22

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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/[:
« Last Edit: 2021-06-05, 12:46:40 by denisgo22 »

2021-06-05, 14:12:12
Reply #14

lupaz

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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

I don't necessarily care about a new tone mapping workflow either. I can use photoshop. But that's not the point here I think.
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.
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?
« Last Edit: 2021-06-05, 14:21:09 by lupaz »

2021-06-05, 15:18:21
Reply #15

bluebox

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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.
« Last Edit: 2021-06-05, 15:44:09 by bluebox »

2021-06-05, 15:46:24
Reply #16

scionik

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

2021-06-05, 16:00:23
Reply #17

bluebox

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

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

2021-06-05, 17:57:49
Reply #18

alexyork

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2021-06-05, 21:11:30
Reply #19

denisgo22

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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.
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

« Last Edit: 2021-06-05, 22:27:29 by denisgo22 »

2021-06-05, 22:59:30
Reply #20

lolec

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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 personally disappointed as a user. I would love the software to get better, specially in ways that we don’t need to guess weather they are better or not, as other renderers have implemented them and people love them. 

People arguing that tone mapping is not needed or important are missing the point, people are upset because the corona team has promised that feature for a long time, just a few days ago, someone asked if tonemapping was still in the works for v7 and they said it was actively being worked on.

Unless something unexpected and huge happened in the past 2 days, the corona team probably knew it would not make it to v7 for a reasonably long time, and knowing it is something people really want, it was a shitty move to just move it to v8 in trello and say nothing about it.

I bet the reason for moving it is good, I bet it’s going to be worth it, just treat your fans with respect and love and spend a little time communicating this to them. Maybe post a quick video explaining the thought process... and do it in a timely manner, if you pull the feature out so late into the release cycle, it is reasonable to expect people getting angry, as everything made it seem like the feature was going to be included in v7 and it was going to be great.

I hope this helps you guys, looking forward to v8 :)

2021-06-05, 23:16:51
Reply #21

lupaz

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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.

2021-06-06, 03:52:35
Reply #22

bluebox

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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.
« Last Edit: 2021-06-06, 05:15:44 by bluebox »

2021-06-06, 07:23:16
Reply #23

BVVV

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HUGE disappointment.

For the new physical material,we have PBR material in 3ds max 2021 and 2022

Expected two versions for nothing

fk vray

2021-06-06, 07:49:12
Reply #24

danio1011

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It would be nice to hear from the devs on this.  Does this come down to the wackiness of 2020?  Lack of manpower?  Reluctance to release things in daily’s? Maybe it’s the smart decision, but it at least appears (perhaps just to the uninitiated) that development has slowed.  Maybe the Physical Material was way harder than they thought...that’s fine!  But we all stake some portion of our livelihoods on the technology we invest in and we want it (and us) to keep up with the times.  I think the general suspicion is that there is a brain drain going on.

I certainly know that with my clients if I were to change expectations with no explanation there would be a general ‘hmpphh!’ response.  It’s just the way things work, communication is key.

2021-06-06, 13:10:05
Reply #25

Feodor

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I will stand up for the Corona Render team, if it takes more time to implement something of high quality, then so be it, I am not a fan of deadlines and crunches, this reduces the quality of the product and the love for it in the development team, as well as increases staff turnover, which is bad for the final product.

2021-06-06, 14:54:58
Reply #26

lupaz

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I will stand up for the Corona Render team, if it takes more time to implement something of high quality, then so be it, I am not a fan of deadlines and crunches, this reduces the quality of the product and the love for it in the development team, as well as increases staff turnover, which is bad for the final product.

It kind of matters who is working though. Hypothetically speaking, let's say ondra and maru aren't coding anymore and chaosgroup just put one junior programmer for Corona. I wouldn't be ok with that. You're paying for a product/service that you think is one thing and it turns out it's not. Transparency is needed ASAP.

2021-06-06, 22:11:56
Reply #27

denisgo22

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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.

no need to worry so much dude (;
I am sure that a brilliant Corona team
in the end will cope with the task for your peace of mind.
I didn't dissuade anyone from anything because it's not very smart. it's just that there are many other problems worthy of a solution besides the "post-process in VFB'" :)



2021-06-07, 01:02:35
Reply #28

shortcirkuit

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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.

2021-06-07, 10:49:49
Reply #29

smadiswelem

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Nice... in 10 months and 4 features. Only one is really big... but..... ((((( agree with that!

2021-06-07, 10:57:14
Reply #30

aaouviz

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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.
Nicolas Pratt
Another Angle 3D
https://www.instagram.com/anotherangle3d/

2021-06-07, 11:01:42
Reply #31

smadiswelem

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From the moment you merged with the chaos group, development and new features are very limited compared to what it was before

2021-06-07, 11:56:28
Reply #32

Ryuu

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Hello everyone, sorry that we had to delay the new tone mapping until Corona Renderer 8. Unfortunately, we have grossly underestimated the amount of groundwork we would need for this task. The biggest things, for example:
  • Making the tone mapping pipeline configurable basically means completely redoing the way we handle tone mapping in Corona. Unfortunately, it is tightly bound to lots of code in both Corona itself and our 3ds Max plugin, which needed lots of changes and tweaking.
  • At the same time, we're currently in the middle of switching to a new UI framework. On one hand, this will have lots of benefits in the future because with the current framework, we sometimes need to spend a huge amount of time to work around some bugs or unimplemented features. On the other hand, there is always a learning curve when you start using some new tool, and unfortunately, we have underestimated how much that will impact our work on this task.
Several times we were at the stage where it looked like we would need just 2-3 more weeks to finish this task, only to hit some road block which delayed us for another week or two, if we wanted to do things properly instead of just quickly hacking some workaround that would just bite us in the ass further down the line. Unfortunately, we're still in a similar stage, and so we were faced with a tough decision where all the options would lead to a disappointment:
  • We could just delay the V7 release for a few weeks, put the team in an extended crunch mode and rush the code to make it into the V7 release. This way, however we wouldn't have enough time for polishing both the UI and functionality based on your feedback. We would also be asking to have to do a V7 hotfix just for fixing the bugs introduced during this rush.
  • We could delay this for V8, releasing it in the first few V8 daily builds, and then have the whole V8 release cycle for polishing and implementing even more new tone mapping operators based on your feedback.
Going with the first option would probably be good only as an excuse for ticking off the "done" checkbox on Trello while not really having any benefit for you. For that reason, we have decided to delay this feature for V8. We're planning a bigger post with further explanation & some video/pictures showing the current state of the new pipeline.

Just one note about the amount and importance of new features - please keep in mind that some things that might seem small and really unimportant to you may be essential for someone else, and it may have been something that was preventing them from using some feature in Corona (or using Corona at all). This discussion is a good example of that, where some of you are understandably disappointed that we had to delay the new tone mapping for V8, while others don't mind or even think that this feature is not needed at all. There have been many more bugfixes, optimizations and features done in V7 than what is shown in the Trello board and we'll be updating the board later today with some other bigger items.

P.S. Sorry for this being announced just by moving the tonemapping card on Trello. I wanted to move the card today along with some explanatory post here on the forum, unfortunately, the Trello board got updated prematurely due to some miscommunication.

2021-06-07, 12:17:04
Reply #33

bluebox

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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.
« Last Edit: 2021-06-07, 12:24:12 by bluebox »

2021-06-07, 13:58:15
Reply #34

Mohammadreza Mohseni

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I do not care about the tonemapper either (absolutely understand the people's frustration though), but the development still is slow. we can call v7 something like v6.5 not that big release.
corona as a part of the chaos group ecosystem (still no news on vantage or cosmos support for corona either) can surely use their already new metallic/roughness workflow concept with the exact layers like coat and sheen (thank you for the nice touches on this like specular/ior switch and conversion). it seems really long time to just get this already solved feature, plus, a really bad converter (personally I replace the 1.45version every time I install a new corona daily build). I hope Ondra still working on Corona.

hope to see way more exciting new features in future releases.

thanks corona team for developing this awesome render engine
« Last Edit: 2021-06-07, 14:02:06 by Mohammadreza Mohseni »

2021-06-07, 14:27:07
Reply #35

scionik

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Hello everyone, sorry that we had to delay the new tone mapping until Corona Renderer 8. Unfortunately, we have grossly underestimated the amount of groundwork we would need for this task. The biggest things, for example:
  • Making the tone mapping pipeline configurable basically means completely redoing the way we handle tone mapping in Corona. Unfortunately, it is tightly bound to lots of code in both Corona itself and our 3ds Max plugin, which needed lots of changes and tweaking.
  • At the same time, we're currently in the middle of switching to a new UI framework. On one hand, this will have lots of benefits in the future because with the current framework, we sometimes need to spend a huge amount of time to work around some bugs or unimplemented features. On the other hand, there is always a learning curve when you start using some new tool, and unfortunately, we have underestimated how much that will impact our work on this task.
Several times we were at the stage where it looked like we would need just 2-3 more weeks to finish this task, only to hit some road block which delayed us for another week or two, if we wanted to do things properly instead of just quickly hacking some workaround that would just bite us in the ass further down the line. Unfortunately, we're still in a similar stage, and so we were faced with a tough decision where all the options would lead to a disappointment:
  • We could just delay the V7 release for a few weeks, put the team in an extended crunch mode and rush the code to make it into the V7 release. This way, however we wouldn't have enough time for polishing both the UI and functionality based on your feedback. We would also be asking to have to do a V7 hotfix just for fixing the bugs introduced during this rush.
  • We could delay this for V8, releasing it in the first few V8 daily builds, and then have the whole V8 release cycle for polishing and implementing even more new tone mapping operators based on your feedback.
Going with the first option would probably be good only as an excuse for ticking off the "done" checkbox on Trello while not really having any benefit for you. For that reason, we have decided to delay this feature for V8. We're planning a bigger post with further explanation & some video/pictures showing the current state of the new pipeline.

Just one note about the amount and importance of new features - please keep in mind that some things that might seem small and really unimportant to you may be essential for someone else, and it may have been something that was preventing them from using some feature in Corona (or using Corona at all). This discussion is a good example of that, where some of you are understandably disappointed that we had to delay the new tone mapping for V8, while others don't mind or even think that this feature is not needed at all. There have been many more bugfixes, optimizations and features done in V7 than what is shown in the Trello board and we'll be updating the board later today with some other bigger items.

P.S. Sorry for this being announced just by moving the tonemapping card on Trello. I wanted to move the card today along with some explanatory post here on the forum, unfortunately, the Trello board got updated prematurely due to some miscommunication.

Ryuu, Thank you for clarifying the situation. I guess a lot of people were really surprised. I hope we will see new features, plus it would be nice to show us some WIPes, as you mentioned, at least couple of times a month.

2021-06-07, 15:16:14
Reply #36

LorenzoS

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Hello everyone,
I would like to ask the team if it would be possible to publish on the forum the list of bugs (internalid = xxxxxxx) that have not been solved at the moment and maybe to specify if and when you intend to work on them?

thank you

2021-06-07, 16:18:50
Reply #37

Rendermonkey

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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!



« Last Edit: 2021-06-07, 16:22:51 by Rendermonkey »

2021-06-07, 16:44:09
Reply #38

dj_buckley

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It's not people being ungrateful, it's a completely natural and expected reaction to being let down. 

Imo just make the roadmap private and completely eliminate everyones expectations.  I must admit, from a business perspective it's a bit shit to let paying customers see the roadmap with these features on, keep them interested, get them excited enough to keep them paying their subs, just to pull features at the last minute.  You set yourselves up for a case of over promising and under delivering.  Which is never good.  If I did that, i'd fully expect my clients to be disappointed and at worst, not bother coming back.

Tone Mapping was the one feature I was waiting for, that and fixing displacement. The only reasons I've kept my subscription alive and not switched yet.

Like people have already pointed out, it's mostly disappointing because these things already exist in other available engines and have done for some time.  We're not expecting something ground breaking, merely expecting the software we pay for to at least be 'current'.  As far as I can tell, Corona no longer has a USP or any redeeming feature to keep me from switching back to Vray or moving over to FStorm or some other render engine.  Tech is a fast moving space, so if your customers are disappointed or leaving, you can only survive off loyalty for so long imo.  If you can't keep up, you get left behind, it's that simple.








2021-06-07, 16:52:53
Reply #39

Ondra

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I do not care about the tonemapper either (absolutely understand the people's frustration though), but the development still is slow. we can call v7 something like v6.5 not that big release.
corona as a part of the chaos group ecosystem (still no news on vantage or cosmos support for corona either) can surely use their already new metallic/roughness workflow concept with the exact layers like coat and sheen (thank you for the nice touches on this like specular/ior switch and conversion). it seems really long time to just get this already solved feature, plus, a really bad converter (personally I replace the 1.45version every time I install a new corona daily build). I hope Ondra still working on Corona.

hope to see way more exciting new features in future releases.

thanks corona team for developing this awesome render engine

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

BTW: the PBR change was absolutely insane, comparable in scope only with caustics - it is not just new material, it also means new converter, converting the material library, dealing with internal conversions from other sources, etc. - in every place where CoronaMtl was used we tried to replace it with CoronaPhysicalMtl. We also fixed some long-standing issues related to media and fakes when doing the new material. I asked Michal to update Trello to add missing features that we already did, so you get better picture what is new in v7.

Covid affected us mostly through closure of schools and kindergartens (which were more or less closed for a year now). Some of the programmers have small kids and they were unable to properly focus with kids at home. Plus organization is more difficult when there is no option to talk face to face. This is the main reason why intervals between releases got longer. Hopefully this is now over, we have vaccinations available for everyone in Czech Republic now.
Rendering is magic.How to get minidumps for crashed/frozen 3ds Max | Sorry for short replies, brief responses = more time to develop Corona ;)

2021-06-07, 17:21:22
Reply #40

lupaz

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I do not care about the tonemapper either (absolutely understand the people's frustration though), but the development still is slow. we can call v7 something like v6.5 not that big release.
corona as a part of the chaos group ecosystem (still no news on vantage or cosmos support for corona either) can surely use their already new metallic/roughness workflow concept with the exact layers like coat and sheen (thank you for the nice touches on this like specular/ior switch and conversion). it seems really long time to just get this already solved feature, plus, a really bad converter (personally I replace the 1.45version every time I install a new corona daily build). I hope Ondra still working on Corona.

hope to see way more exciting new features in future releases.

thanks corona team for developing this awesome render engine

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


A waste of talent IMO.
I once went from being a creative to being management and was a huge mistake, and very hard to go back while in the same company.
I really hope you can convince yourself to go back to programming full time.

2021-06-07, 17:40:38
Reply #41

bluebox

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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.


2021-06-07, 17:44:34
Reply #42

bluebox

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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.

2021-06-07, 18:01:13
Reply #43

bluebox

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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.

2021-06-07, 19:07:24
Reply #44

Ondra

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Miss the old days seeing Ondra posting that something people came up with last evening or few days ago is now complete.

Honestly it is comments like this that made me stop reading forum every day:
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.

If you are not satisfied with Corona on a fundamental level, please use another renderer, you will be happier.
Rendering is magic.How to get minidumps for crashed/frozen 3ds Max | Sorry for short replies, brief responses = more time to develop Corona ;)

2021-06-07, 19:45:06
Reply #45

Feodor

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I am calm about the transfer of the development of certain functions, since having the ability to access the daily builds, I have long ceased to perceive the concept as the final version, for me the final version is a beautiful presentation on YouTube, a detailed article "What's new", plus information in the blog and that's probably all. The build is not stable? All programs are unstable, I'm used to it. If it takes a year to develop a function, then it means a year, any postponement is a continuation of work, for me the main thing is that it would be implemented and implemented with high quality, and quality does not like haste. I advise you to take it into service.

2021-06-08, 01:27:15
Reply #46

lolec

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The message explaining the situation is perfect. Completely understandable. It looks like the team is doing the important and not glamorous work that makes Corona great. Sure it takes 15 minuts for the Fstorm guy to implement new flashy features.... how long has it taken him to make a robust production-ready renderer? right... hasn't happened yet.

It takes courage and conviction from the dev team to work on something "no one was asking for" knowing it will make the product much better in the long term.

Again, I think the only mistake was not explaining this before editing the Trello. After reading about how quality and doing the hard work, even knowing people will be mad temporarily, is the most important thing, I feel even more confident that the new tone mapping will be great and I want to spend a little time sending my support and encouragement to compensate some of the comments from people who don't understand the process.

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.   




2021-06-08, 02:02:26
Reply #47

cjwidd

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I think there is a discussion to be had about whether the new Physical Material was worth the dev team required to implement. I know that sounds harsh, but I have not yet found that it significantly improves my shading workflow - I feel like I am deciphering it more than I am wielding it.

2021-06-08, 02:13:45
Reply #48

lolec

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I think there is a discussion to be had about whether the new Physical Material was worth the dev team required to implement. I know that sounds harsh, but I have not yet found that it significantly improves my shading workflow - I feel like I am deciphering it more than I am wielding it.

Unless you are willing to spend the time they spent discussing the pros and cons, willing to study and understand the industry as well as they do, and most importantly... unless you are willing to suffer the consequences of the decision... NO, you have absolutely no place in that discussion.

If this was a bad decision, they will suffer the consequence. People will stop using their product. You are not even willing to spend the time to understand how to use it, while they spend MONTHS working on it because they think its important, based on information you and I don't have. 

2021-06-08, 02:56:58
Reply #49

cjwidd

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There are two aspects of the implementation that I'm considering, mostly the switch system for selecting whether IOR or specular mode is used as a default - this seems like a way to preserve workflow habits from the Legacy Material - and the sheen layer, which is a kind of built-in falloff map for fabric shading. In general, I'm wondering if users typically resort to falloff maps in lieu of the sheen layer and if they still decouple specular input for artistic control.

The Physical Material also includes presets, built-in clear coat, and an improved diffuse shading model - all of these features seem like improvements in terms of usability. Also, a switch system for global glossiness or roughness parameters was added - a big quality of life improvement.



The high-level goal of the Physical Material was to increase standardization with other render engines and to help prevent the appearance of unrealistic materials that violate energy conservation, etc. On this basis alone, I think the Physical Material is a big win.

2021-06-08, 10:26:45
Reply #50

bluebox

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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 ?
« Last Edit: 2021-06-08, 10:36:00 by bluebox »

2021-06-08, 10:49:49
Reply #51

rowmanns

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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

Please read this before reporting bugs: How to report issues to us!
Send me your scene!

2021-06-08, 17:06:29
Reply #52

arqrenderz

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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.

2021-06-08, 17:29:25
Reply #53

cjwidd

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Yeah the update to support metal / rough is really significant to maintain parity with other render engines and does help improve standardization.

Unfortunately, the Physical Material does break compatibility with the Substance in 3ds Max plugin, but because the Physical Material is built to support metal / rough, updates to the plugin should produce a less complex, more physically accurate shader graph.



2021-06-08, 17:34:33
Reply #54

lupaz

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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.

2021-06-08, 18:59:03
Reply #55

bluebox

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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.
« Last Edit: 2021-06-08, 19:17:49 by bluebox »

2021-06-08, 19:44:27
Reply #56

TomG

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We've discussed the roadmap before and the "can't please all of the people" that goes with it. If we don't post one, people are upset about not having a clue what we are working on. If we post one, people are upset if things change.

I will note you use the word "promise" and this is why it is called a Tentative roadmap, and right up top on the page is a description with a "How To Read" which says:

"
We believe in keeping you informed about our latest development plans for Corona Renderer, and that's what the Road Map is for. But there are some things we ask you to keep in mind while reading the Road Map:

The items listed are ones we hope and plan to work on.

However, due to the nature of software development on something as sophisticated and complex as a mature render engine, there is no guarantee or promise that these will make it into the final release. Our plans may have to change at any time, even very close to release - on rare occasions, even after something has made it in to a daily build. A deal-breaker can show up unexpectedly at any time, so please do not pin your hopes and expectations on anything listed here!

All that we can promise is that we will keep the Road Map updated with the latest information from this development cycle: if something changes and we believe a feature won't make it in to the next version, we'll update the Road Map as soon as we know that. Also, if it turns out something can be added this development cycle, we'll add it onto the Road Map as soon as we know.

Most features have Checklists. You can get an idea of how likely something is to make it into the final release by opening up that particular feature and viewing the Checklist. The more items that are marked as complete, the further development has reached without hitting any deal breakers. Of course, that doesn't mean one can't appear even at the last minute, but that does get less likely as development progresses.

If you would like to know more about how we decide what to work on next, and why it is that plans can change unexpectedly, we'll be publishing a blog post sometime soon that will take you behind the scenes (we'll update this card with a link as soon as it is live.
"

We stand by that - we believe in sharing and being open with the community, and we accept that sometimes this will lead to disappointment when something gets delayed, removed, or proves impossible after all. So we won't remove the roadmap, but neither will it ever be a "contract", "promise", "guarantee" or anything similar.
Tom Grimes | chaos-corona.com
Product Manager | contact us


2021-06-08, 20:32:41
Reply #58

dj_buckley

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Hi Tom

I think the general frustration (although I speak for myself) with items being moved on the roadmap is the wait between releases (i actually think it's quite short - every 6 months'ish), but we're mostly not developers, we're users, so checklists don't really have timeframes to us as we don't appreciate how long these things take.  If it's been shelved because it's going to take a month beyond your planned release date to complete, then i'd rather the V7 release be delayed for a month, than wait a further 5 months to see it in V8.  The dailies simply aren't practical for a lot of us using Corona in production, I personally don't have budgets (both time and financial) to run the risks of using dailies in a live production environment.  So we have no option but to wait for the final stable releases.

Things have been moved plenty of times, as already mentioned the clipper, I think the reaction is different this time, because it's a big feature, it's literally the number 2 most wanted feature after GPU/Hybrid rendering, and there have been major lengthy discussions about it on the forums.  Not only that, but the fact half of the checklist items have been ticked off, makes us, as users, believe it's 'happening'.  Which it is, just not when we thought it was.  And the worst part, was this news was broken to us by another user, not one of the Corona Team.  Your last statement was "we believe in sharing and being open with the community" - but you weren't.  It was a community member who shared/highlighted it.  I appreciate the roadmap is tentative, and things get moved etc etc, but when you can see something being ticked off, you have no reason to believe it won't be in the release.  Had you emailed every paying customer, before taking it off the roadmap, with a note to say, "unfortunately ... bla bla bla" i honestly don't think you'd have got this reaction.

I'd rather each release have one big new feature, and the rest of the dev time spent on fixing previous big features that still don't work perfectly i.e. adaptive light solver, displacement, caustics

Take caustics for example, first introduced in V4, it's still painful to use and no plans for improvements until V8, 4 releases (over 2, nearly 3 years), that's a long time - which is probably where the 'supposedly' slow development comments come from.

Things like Material Library Content updates, and faster colour pickers, and new UI's etc are all nice to have's but not essential, and the take development time away from the essential stuff imo

I have no idea how these things work etc, but the takeover by Chaos, was met with a mixed reaction at the time, but I think people settled at the idea of, hopefully it means access to more resource, more cash injection so more/faster/better development, they even said it themselves in the Q/A about the merger, yet it currently doesn't feel that way, almost the opposite, and that takeover/merger was 4 years ago.

As Bluebox has said, although a few people disagree, but he's right on many levels.  This isn't personal at all.  Archviz is a small industry and it's easy to get 'friendly' with others, but at the end of the day, if you strip back the friendly nature of the industry (fanboyism as some might call it) you're a business and we're trying to run businesses on your product that we pay for, so we have every right to be frustrated/disappointed on a basic level.  Just as customers would in any other industry.  Plenty of analogies have already been used, but they all apply.  In the world of todays 'subscription model' you rely on roadmaps for decision making as a business.

2021-06-08, 21:51:19
Reply #59

TomG

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Problem is, we don't know how long it will take to fix, so we can't simply delay 7 unfortunately. See, it looks like "it won't take long it's just this that needs fixing!" - but that's where we've been for the last 6 weeks or more, where we keep thinking it's right on the edge of being fixed and next week it will be in a daily.... and that hasn't worked out. This is also why it stayed on the roadmap for so long too, as it always looked like we were right on the edge of getting it working. Development goes like that sometimes :(

As for the announcement, well I had planned to do one, but then someone spotted it on the roadmap (and the devs were just staying true to their word to update the roadmap asap), and now here we are. Michal has already explained early on in the conversation what happened. We might still do a video at some point, just to show that tone mapping IS working to some extent, and to show that it IS crashing - all depends on whether there is time, as we focus on getting the rest of Corona 7 ready, and all the stuff that goes into announcing that. We shall see!

And as noted, we do totally get that people are frustrated, annoyed, angry, or upset, and we're not saying they are wrong to be, or not entitled to be. To be honest, we are most of those things too (for what comfort that may be to you). Definitely something we wanted to do, thought we could do, were excited to do - and horribly disappointing to have to sit down and make a hard decision this late in development.

The roadmap does say not to use it as decision making for whether to subscribe as it says these things may not happen - like any product, if you buy or subscribe to it today, do so for what it gives you today. Not all the analogies were correct, because you vote for a politician based on what they will do in the future - but you should buy products based on what they do already, right now. What might come in the future is not something to bank upon, and we've tried to make that as clear as we can in the roadmap, from it's name ("Tentative") to the whole "read this!" part too.

Long and short of it is that we are sorry we've not been able to deliver it as we planned, and we do understand the upset in that regard.

Thanks!

Tom Grimes | chaos-corona.com
Product Manager | contact us

2021-06-08, 22:10:01
Reply #60

dj_buckley

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2021-06-08, 22:19:49
Reply #61

dj_buckley

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Just one side note though, in terms of making business decisions, we (I) do make decisions based on future offerings.  Why?  Because I simply don't have the time to be chopping and changing, relearning new engines etc, so I want something I can rely on for the forseeable and not have to think about it again for a while.  So with a bi-annual release schedule, it makes absolute business sense to look forwards at an available roadmap when deciding to make something my software of choice for the next year or so.  I don't really want to be analysing my setup twice a year based on what has or hasn't happened.

Imo it's an easy solution, change the frequency of official releases to annual rather than bi-annual.

Out of interest do any other software packages have a publicly available roadmap?  Corona is the only one I seem to check, and primarily because it's the only one i know exists

2021-06-08, 22:58:24
Reply #62

dj_buckley

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And this highlights one of the bigger issues at play.  The merger.  Tom didn't address it in his response to me and I doubt they can say too much.  Chaos has been all singing and all dancing recently in terms of marketing and their new branding etc, and there was barely a hint of a mention of Corona in there.

And yes the majority of new features released of late seem to be half implemented with lots of work still to do, I've already mentioned the features, yet they're available and working in other engines.  This is the primary cause of the frustration imo


2021-06-08, 23:12:54
Reply #63

lupaz

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And this highlights one of the bigger issues at play.  The merger.  Tom didn't address it in his response to me and I doubt they can say too much.  Chaos has been all singing and all dancing recently in terms of marketing and their new branding etc, and there was barely a hint of a mention of Corona in there.

And yes the majority of new features released of late seem to be half implemented with lots of work still to do, I've already mentioned the features, yet they're available and working in other engines.  This is the primary cause of the frustration imo

Agree.

Tom, I think it's totally understandable the challenges you're describing. Honestly I don't care that a feature got pushed back if it wasn't that for years I had the feeling of sluggishness in development.

For years now the Corona team has been a black box for me at least. Before the merger I knew who was working on Corona, and I think there was only corona for Max.
Today I don't know. May I ask you how many developers are currently working on Corona for Max full time, and what is their seniority?

And one more question: Why isn't Chaos adding more resources to Corona for Max, knowing that there's this feeling of slow implementation among the userbase? Is adding more devs in the talks with Vlado?

2021-06-09, 13:26:56
Reply #64

Feodor

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Remember a simple truth, after the merger, Corona ceased to be an independently developing product, now it is under the control of its competitor, who sets the agenda and does not let you jump above his head. You have noticed that Corona has stopped giving new functions to Vray, rather just takes it, it used to set the fashion, and now repeats it. Everything is quite expected "Nothing personal only business" (C)

2021-06-09, 14:26:57
Reply #65

TomG

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Remember a simple truth, after the merger, Corona ceased to be an independently developing product, now it is under the control of its competitor, who sets the agenda and does not let you jump above his head. You have noticed that Corona has stopped giving new functions to Vray, rather just takes it, it used to set the fashion, and now repeats it. Everything is quite expected "Nothing personal only business" (C)

This is a simple untruth. No basis to this at all, we remain an independent team as always. As for resources the challenges remain the same - finding programmers who are actually good.... who are in Prague. The dev team all has to be in Prague, in one place. So there's no "Chaos sets the agenda for the team size / available resources" - what sets that are the number of good programmers who are in Prague (not in Sofia). The C++ Dev job post has been on our website constantly, because we are still always looking https://corona-renderer.com/about/jobs

Tom Grimes | chaos-corona.com
Product Manager | contact us

2021-06-09, 14:45:09
Reply #66

lupaz

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This is a simple untruth. No basis to this at all, we remain an independent team as always.
This is confusing Tom. We pay to ChaosGroup and Corona's programmers get their salaries from Chaosgroup as well. Is this not correct?

As for resources the challenges remain the same - finding programmers who are actually good.... who are in Prague. The dev team all has to be in Prague, in one place. So there's no "Chaos sets the agenda for the team size / available resources" - what sets that are the number of good programmers who are in Prague (not in Sofia). The C++ Dev job post has been on our website constantly, because we are still always looking https://corona-renderer.com/about/jobs

This is really sad and concerning. Ondra isn't programming anymore, Maru I don't know where he is cause he hasn't show up at all to comment on this. And on top of that any programmer that works for Corona dev needs to be in Prague. What are the chances of this happening any time soon?
Can't you send the production of Corona for C4D to a different capital? Or find devs anywhere to work remotely? I know you already talked about this and I'm not bringing anything new, but this is not encouraging.

Please! Bring Ondra and Maru back to code for Corona for Max! (I'm not screaming, I'm begging)

2021-06-09, 15:00:01
Reply #67

TomG

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You do know that Maru (Marcin) is in the support team and has never written any code for Corona in his life, right?
Tom Grimes | chaos-corona.com
Product Manager | contact us

2021-06-09, 15:07:46
Reply #68

agentdark45

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This is a simple untruth. No basis to this at all, we remain an independent team as always. As for resources the challenges remain the same - finding programmers who are actually good.... who are in Prague. The dev team all has to be in Prague, in one place. So there's no "Chaos sets the agenda for the team size / available resources" - what sets that are the number of good programmers who are in Prague (not in Sofia). The C++ Dev job post has been on our website constantly, because we are still always looking https://corona-renderer.com/about/jobs

Oof. Far be it from me to tell someone how to run their company, surely you must know that this is a severely limiting requirement (to both the pool of skilled dev's, and final product output?) With the world the way it is now, could some dev work not be done remotely?
Vray who?

2021-06-09, 15:09:25
Reply #69

lupaz

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You do know that Maru (Marcin) is in the support team and has never written any code for Corona in his life, right?

No, I didn't. Then please, bring Ondra back.

2021-06-09, 15:10:56
Reply #70

TomG

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I'll note that while we believe in being open about things like what features we are working on, business decisions like the company structure, who pays salaries, why we choose to have developers in one location, and so on are (like with any business) not stuff we will be discussing - that's all internal, proprietary information. You can see who is on the Corona team at https://corona-renderer.com/about/people of course, which we keep updated.
Tom Grimes | chaos-corona.com
Product Manager | contact us

2021-06-09, 15:14:24
Reply #71

lupaz

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You do know that Maru (Marcin) is in the support team and has never written any code for Corona in his life, right?

And Tom, sorry but you seem to be very strategic in your responses. Relevant and legitimate questions had been asked from some users and all we see from you is side answers and "look forward to really cool stuff in the future".
Please, how many devs are working today fulltime on Corona for Max? And, are they senior or not?

EDIT: I just saw your answer above.

2021-06-09, 15:18:45
Reply #72

lupaz

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You can see who is on the Corona team at https://corona-renderer.com/about/people of course, which we keep updated.

Wait, you have a team of 19 developers or so and it still took 10 months to do the physical material? Is this accurate? is that team really working full time? How many are working on Corona for Max?

"Development
Michal Prokš – Lead Software Architect
Martin Šik – research, development
Filip Jurčák – research
Petr Vévoda – research
Bohuš Brečka – development
Martin Dorazil – development
Milan Dunghubel – development
Baudouin Feildel – development
Petra Hapalová – development
Aleš Křivák – development
Miro Mikšík – development
Tomáš Nováček – development
Ondrej Poláček – development
Jakub Šťasta – development
Tomáš Šváb – development
Nikola Tomšů – development
Erik Veselý – development
Michal Wirth – development
Luděk Uiberlay – web"


2021-06-09, 15:21:24
Reply #73

pokoy

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Guys, please leave it to the Corona team and management how to handle positions and all the internal stuff. The moment a client wanted to control how I run my business would be the moment I would show him the door, I guess it's same for everyone here. Give them the benefit of the doubt and please stop assuming that what they do is a simple linear job that magically produces features after every 8 hour shift.

While most of you seem to see only negative implications of the merger, I want to point out that it has (probably) brought the benefit of being nested into an established network and better communication channels to software vendors which in turn allows Corona to work better within the hosts and gives both Vray and Corona more leverage.

I'm going to stay out of this discussion otherwise but clearly some assumptions which are meant in a negative way are unfair towards a team that provides stellar support. Let's not casually spoil the good relationship the team and the user base have, and don't make it hurt them to visit this place and stay in touch with us. Please.


2021-06-09, 15:23:39
Reply #74

TomG

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Well, people see a lot more than me than "look forward to cool stuff in the future" :) I reply with help to problems and questions, we didn't just say "look forward to cool stuff in the future" but explained what happened here, wrote extensively on what the road map means long before this came up, and of course I do a lot more besides :)

As for the list of 19 developers, as mentioned just a moment ago, discussing who is working on what and when is not something we've ever done, nor will we start doing. The daily running of the company is our business - the features in the software however is your business, and that's where we will keep you updated (within the limits of development, as in, unexpected things can happen).

Thanks!

(hmm almost 3,778 posts from me - I can guarantee they are not just "look forward to cool stuff" ;) )
Tom Grimes | chaos-corona.com
Product Manager | contact us

2021-06-09, 15:28:30
Reply #75

TomG

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Oh there was an earlier point that almost got lost here - about Chaos' recent rebranding and new ecosystem approach and where was Corona in that. Can't tell you much, because then.... I would be fired ;) But just so you know, there will be more information about this kind of topic very soon. Umm so this time it is "look forward to stuff in the future" as my post after all!
Tom Grimes | chaos-corona.com
Product Manager | contact us

2021-06-09, 15:29:44
Reply #76

lupaz

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(hmm almost 3,778 posts from me - I can guarantee they are not just "look forward to cool stuff" ;) )
I didn't imply that you don't do anything else Tom. Come on.

2021-06-09, 15:32:29
Reply #77

bluebox

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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.

2021-06-09, 15:33:37
Reply #78

lupaz

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The moment a client wanted to control how I run my business would be the moment I would show him the door, I guess it's same for everyone here.
Nobody is trying to control anything here. I have legitimate questions. I invested in this software for years and need to make a decision whether I move forward with it or not. I need info to make an informed decision.


2021-06-09, 15:34:27
Reply #79

dj_buckley

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Oh there was an earlier point that almost got lost here - about Chaos' recent rebranding and new ecosystem approach and where was Corona in that. Can't tell you much, because then.... I would be fired ;) But just so you know, there will be more information about this kind of topic very soon. Umm so this time it is "look forward to stuff in the future" as my post after all!

Sounds interesting and as I thought, I knew you wouldn't be able to say too much, I wasn't necessarily highlighting the merger as a negative thing, but I appreciate how these business deals work, and it's never easy to speak publicly about those dealings

2021-06-09, 15:59:32
Reply #80

lupaz

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Guys, please leave it to the Corona team and management how to handle positions and all the internal stuff. The moment a client wanted to control how I run my business would be the moment I would show him the door, I guess it's same for everyone here. Give them the benefit of the doubt and please stop assuming that what they do is a simple linear job that magically produces features after every 8 hour shift.

I'm sorry, but I need to say this: If your client pays the retainer fee and then you don't deliver as expected, you'll find yourself with tons of questions from your client. Showing him the door wouldn't be good business. But I don't want to tell you how to run yours.

2021-06-09, 16:04:44
Reply #81

Ondra

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I think you really make it hard for yourself with that road map in my opinion corona team. Living up to the hype of everything that is on there is great but when you fail short of what is promised it brings much disappointment and frustration. I think seeing something that was really anticipated on the road map being pushed back really put everyone into a frenzy mode. You might want to think about making it private, someone even updated the new sky model aerial perspective as done and it was not. Making a few highlights every couple of months to show us what's being worked on might be the better option.
The roadmap still contains useful info and we actually implement most stuff that is pending in the current version. I dont want to remove this info just because some people cannot read the big warning at the top.

And another thought as to why many people seem to be upset. A lot of the "new" features we are getting are already in v-ray and people didn't expect it will take such a long time to implement them in corona.
For me the new PBR material is great but the material converter is a total mess right now and the material library needs updating too.
Me personally I am starting to think it will take up to what three years to get stuff that is already into v-ray into corona and the latter just got cosmos so that seems like a really long shot to even think about.
That's why I am also thinking about trying out V-ray again.
Hopefully you prove us all wrong and manage to surprise us all.

VRay has 10 years head start on features. Corona vs. VRay is a matter of personal preference at this point, so feel free to try VRay if you need more features and are OK with the increased complexity.
Cosmos is coming by the end of the year BTW - stay tuned for next version announcement.
Rendering is magic.How to get minidumps for crashed/frozen 3ds Max | Sorry for short replies, brief responses = more time to develop Corona ;)

2021-06-09, 16:21:54
Reply #82

Ondra

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But I don't want to tell you how to run yours.
Then why do you keep telling us how to run our business?

Showing him the door wouldn't be good business.
If client demanded to see how many artists worked on renders and what is their seniority, I would show him the doors SO FAST.

In fact, our business would be better if you started using another renderer, and I once again encourage you to do it. It is clear you have your ideas and we cannot convince you otherwise. This is nothing new, we already had this wave of "Corona development is now slow" before commercial release and another right after commercial release. Some people don't like the direction we are going and leave for another renderer, but we get 5 more new users for every leaver. We just cannot satisfy everybody at the same time.

These discussions are going in circles and are getting ridiculous. I won't be discussing ridiculous claims such as that PBR material is not a big feature. I already deleted few random posts that were disrespectful towards us or other users, and I will continue doing that as I see fit. They only annoy us and other users, and come from a very small minority of users.
Rendering is magic.How to get minidumps for crashed/frozen 3ds Max | Sorry for short replies, brief responses = more time to develop Corona ;)

2021-06-09, 16:27:10
Reply #83

pokoy

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Guys, please leave it to the Corona team and management how to handle positions and all the internal stuff. The moment a client wanted to control how I run my business would be the moment I would show him the door, I guess it's same for everyone here. Give them the benefit of the doubt and please stop assuming that what they do is a simple linear job that magically produces features after every 8 hour shift.

I'm sorry, but I need to say this: If your client pays the retainer fee and then you don't deliver as expected, you'll find yourself with tons of questions from your client. Showing him the door wouldn't be good business. But I don't want to tell you how to run yours.

Guess what, I did actually underperform or not deliver on time in some instances. You seem to omit that one possible outcome that goes like this: talk it over, understand each other's position and realities, shake hands, move on and continue to work together.

2021-06-09, 16:42:10
Reply #84

Ondra

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To once again address few topics raised here:

Corona development independence: Corona is part of Chaos and directed by me. We entered into the contract with general understanding of common goals, and as a result I never since received any significant pushback to my vision. So the only thing that changed is that you need to trust Chaos, not Render Legion.

Corona roadmap reliability: the roadmap is not set in stone, because development is tricky business. Please read this disclaimer: https://trello.com/c/j5AVQ4oX/197-important-road-map-information-please-read before relying on anything on the road map.

Development speed in general: We are still implementing features as fast as possible. with constraints of general lack of renderer developers, challenges of working in a large codebase, etc. There are no artificial limits e.g. in funding. Unfortunately you need to accept that Corona is now a mature software product and its development will never be as fast as in the very beginning. This is how all software works. Easy to add features were already added, we have large userbase that encounters more bugs and produces more feature requests than ever before, and we need to maintain the already added code. With more developers we are in fact adding features faster than in the past, they are just spread thinner across the vast number of feature requests.

Picking features to implement: we wrote about this here: https://blog.corona-renderer.com/behind-the-scenes-the-corona-renderer-development-process/

Innovation in v7: we added missing items to the trello roadmap to clarify what is new: https://trello.com/b/EfPE4kPx/corona-tentative-road-map-3ds-max. I still want to add more info on the speedups, because some are huge (50%). Overall v7 is large release centered around PBR and the related infrastructure and shading changes.

Moving tonemapping to v8: We did massive amount of work during development cycle of v7 to make the tone mapping modular (which allows faster, more flexible pipeline, with more tone mapping operators). Unfortunately there were some unforseen problems and we had to move it to future release to avoid bugs or release delay. This does not mean the work is lost - we now have head start for v8, the feature will be released early in the release cycle, and in 1 year there will be no difference between releasing this in v7 or v8. We will soon show video with prototype to give you sneak peek.


Rendering is magic.How to get minidumps for crashed/frozen 3ds Max | Sorry for short replies, brief responses = more time to develop Corona ;)

2021-06-09, 16:50:06
Reply #85

lupaz

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Then why do you keep telling us how to run our business?
I'm not. If anything it's wishful thinking.


If client demanded to see how many artists worked on renders and what is their seniority, I would show him the doors SO FAST.
Very different than what happens in corporate america.


In fact, our business would be better if you started using another renderer, and I once again encourage you to do it.

You never encouraged me to do so as far as I know, unless you're talking about Bluebox.


It is clear you have your ideas and we cannot convince you otherwise. This is nothing new, we already had this wave of "Corona development is now slow" before commercial release and another right after commercial release. Some people don't like the direction we are going and leave for another renderer, but we get 5 more new users for every leaver. We just cannot satisfy everybody at the same time.
Got it. I whished I heard this years ago.

I won't be discussing ridiculous claims such as that PBR material is not a big feature.

Just for the record I never said anything like that.

I"m so disappointed. I feel the way I felt 10 years ago with vray.

2021-06-09, 17:11:15
Reply #86

Hardleft121

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I use Corona all day, every day, since 1.7.  I love it, it is incredible.  So fast, and so easy to use, and so greatly priced.  It is a gift from above in my workflow that I am grateful for every day.  Thank you all for your hard work, perseverance and openness.

What is going on here is disgusting.  The Corona team has our experience with their rendering engine at the forefront, and it is easy to see.  Questioning their decisions and priorities and staffing are misguided emotions to be pouring on these hardworking, earnest people.

Long live the memory of Jaroslav.  Thank you for moving the product forward through so many challenges in the last many many months.  Thank you for everything that everyone on the team does.  As a single artist in Dallas, Texas, I love you guys... and your incredible product.  Thank you.

Greg

2021-06-09, 17:13:14
Reply #87

Ondra

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Then why do you keep telling us how to run our business?
I'm not. If anything it's wishful thinking.

Well, there is bunch of stuff like this:
A waste of talent IMO.
I once went from being a creative to being management and was a huge mistake, and very hard to go back while in the same company.
I really hope you can convince yourself to go back to programming full time.

If client demanded to see how many artists worked on renders and what is their seniority, I would show him the doors SO FAST.
Very different than what happens in corporate america.
Indeed, but if you prefer corporate PR, I can recommend some excellent renderers developed in corporate america :D



The last part was not specifically meant for you, but in general. There will be always releases that add features  that you like and releases that target other users. We are developing Corona with tens of thousands of people in mind, and Corona can never go back to "we have 100 users that we target and adding features is easy because it does not need to be compatible with any existing component". If you are not OK with this deal, it is best to move on. We aim to satisfy most people, but cannot please everybody


Rendering is magic.How to get minidumps for crashed/frozen 3ds Max | Sorry for short replies, brief responses = more time to develop Corona ;)

2021-06-09, 17:24:31
Reply #88

lupaz

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Well, there is bunch of stuff like this:
A waste of talent IMO.
I once went from being a creative to being management and was a huge mistake, and very hard to go back while in the same company.
I really hope you can convince yourself to go back to programming full time.

This was meant to be a compliment to you. Sorry you didn't take it that way.

2021-06-10, 10:38:07
Reply #89

Ondra

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I removed the last iteration of the endless and tiring discussion. Bluebox clearly does not want to listen to anybody with different opinion and keeps being shitty and condescending to them, so I had to ban him.
Rendering is magic.How to get minidumps for crashed/frozen 3ds Max | Sorry for short replies, brief responses = more time to develop Corona ;)

2021-06-10, 14:40:53
Reply #90

lupaz

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Well, he was out of place. I hope I wasn't, and if I was I apologize.
Corona is truly great and everyone here I'm sure wishes the absolute best to the dev team.
I just can't wait to see new things.

2021-06-10, 15:59:23
Reply #91

Ondra

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Well, he was out of place. I hope I wasn't, and if I was I apologize.
Corona is truly great and everyone here I'm sure wishes the absolute best to the dev team.
I just can't wait to see new things.
You and everyone are welcome to participate, criticize, praise, and comment on Corona. The discussion just needs to stay pleasant ;)
Rendering is magic.How to get minidumps for crashed/frozen 3ds Max | Sorry for short replies, brief responses = more time to develop Corona ;)

2021-06-10, 21:13:03
Reply #92

davemahi

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Ya, I have also been less excited about Corona releases. I feel like the momentum that Corona used to have is gone, and the road map is out of step with our studios needs.

2021-06-10, 22:49:06
Reply #93

burnin

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Development usually follows S-curve and disruption has come to rendering in form of Hybrid XPUs use, AI assistance... (even light baking would be beneficial a whole lot)... still, for Corona there aren't any intentions to stay in the loop. So will it stay behind? Since at a moment it just seems getting overwhelmed, complex and confused while some fruits are already dropping off before the harvest...
IDK... I hope not.

« Last Edit: 2021-06-10, 22:53:00 by burnin »

2021-06-11, 14:16:26
Reply #94

maru

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Damn, I wanted to stay quiet here, but...
This is again what seems to be a difference in how software development looks from user point of view and "behind the scenes". If you only knew how much work is being done every day, I am sure 90% of those harsh comments would not be posted at all.

Also comparing the speed and complexity of Corona 1 development to Corona 7 development is like comparing building a house to building a city. :)
Marcin Miodek | chaos-corona.com
3D Support Team Lead - Corona | contact us

2021-06-11, 14:43:43
Reply #95

lupaz

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Damn, I wanted to stay quiet here, but...
This is again what seems to be a difference in how software development looks from user point of view and "behind the scenes". If you only knew how much work is being done every day, I am sure 90% of those harsh comments would not be posted at all.

Also comparing the speed and complexity of Corona 1 development to Corona 7 development is like comparing building a house to building a city. :)

It was how the events developed I think. The news came on a Friday, so all weekend people commenting on this without any official comments.
It took several days for a comment by Ondra to show and almost a week for a comment from you.

You're right. We have no idea how much work is needed to do this. Absolutely no idea whatsoever.



2021-06-11, 18:12:45
Reply #96

TomG

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Not the meaning - the meaning is this, when you start building (creating a piece of software), all is open land and building is easy and goes fast. Once your piece of software is mature and production-ready, now LOTS of things interlock and depend on each other, making it harder to develop new features in it, especially when people rely on it for their livelihood so you can't afford to break what people are relying on.

So, building a house in an empty field is easy. Building a house in the middle of a city is hard, requires planning permission, has to account for all sorts of things around it, and has to fit and blend in, all without stopping the traffic or closing the shops :)
Tom Grimes | chaos-corona.com
Product Manager | contact us

2021-06-11, 19:20:14
Reply #97

hldemi

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I wonder if there is gonna be the end one day. End of new features. How far can we go. Will there be anything that can make revolution in photorealism since some authors already crossed the uncanny valley of photorealism with existing software. Is all thats left some Qol improvements and speed improvements.

Sorry for being offtopic but this got me thinking.

2021-06-11, 19:59:41
Reply #98

lolec

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That comment above about the house and the city is so flawed.
If you gonna start building a city you better hire a construction company, not rely on the same three people that did your house...
Because news flash those three people will do a terrible job and it will involve a lot of problems and a lot of setbacks, also they will promise you deadlines they can not keep. Sound familiar?

I struggle to understand how someone could be so out of touch with reality that they will tell the people actually DOING the thing "what you say is flawed"  How would you know more than them? Can you imagine I come to your work and after looking around for 10 minutes I start telling you that what you are doing is wrong? After you've spent years doing that?

The problem with analogies is that they only work on people who already agree with the premise in the first place but criticizing the analogy is absurd... Yes software is also not made of bricks... yes, software doesn't need streetlights.  Obviously, corona 1 is not EXACTLY like a house and corona 7 is not EXACTLY like a city.  But as Tom said, Corona 1 had to worry about much less things than Corona 7.

I hate forum arguments, I know they don't convince anyone, I know I look as much as a fool as the people who disagree with me. I know I look like a mindless fanboy.

I'm not doing this to convince anyone.

I know exactly what it takes to build products, I know how hard it is and discouraging it is to read comments like the ones we've seen in the forum lately. I'm also very familiar with the frustration of working your ass off for a year and not being able to say exactly what you think because as creators, you need to keep composture.

Reading some of Ondra, Maru and Tom comments, it's clear that the negativity is getting to them, enough for them to break character and express their disappointment.

My only goal is to offset the negativity and make the dev team feel a little less crappy.

Corona is a fucking brilliant piece of software. I see and appreciate the little details that go into that.  A product is much more about what It DOESN'T have than what it DOES HAVE. Corona is brilliant at not adding stuff, I know this will only be understood by a handful of people and will be seen as crazy talk by the rest. Hopefully, the dev team will smile knowing that every time I use Corona, I appreciate all the things it doesn't have. I even appreciate that it doesn't have Tonemapping YET, because doing great things take time. 

Many people say they decided to move to Corona because of the features mentioned in the roadmap, not only do I highly doubt that, but also it's a terrible decision. Personally, I didn't choose Corona because of the current or future features, but the ideology and principles behind it.  These principles guide all future decisions. The same people that decided to do all the things you love about Corona, decided to move tonemapping to V8, it is reasonable to expect that you will end up loving that decision too. Just be patient.

Thanks again for the decisions you make, I hope you have the resources you need to fulfill your vision and that you don't get discouraged. Thanks for making hard decisions, this shows real love for the product, and when a product is made with love, it makes a difference.

Looking forward to v8!






2021-06-11, 21:05:55
Reply #99

lupaz

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My only goal is to offset the negativity and make the dev team feel a little less crappy.


I wouldn't call it negativity but expressing frustration. There's nothing wrong with that and at a certain point it could be necessary.

Look at 3Ds Max for example. Years of extremely punishing comments everywhere by so many users, some more vocal than others.
But you know what, for a couple of years now things started to improve in the 3ds max team. The change came with the frustration that the users were expressing I think.

I understood what Marti meant. If your software grows, grow the team that makes it. Easier said than done though off course.
« Last Edit: 2021-06-11, 21:11:43 by lupaz »

2021-06-11, 22:23:43
Reply #100

lupaz

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2021-06-12, 01:23:45
Reply #101

TomG

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The team is larger since the merger, it has never stopped growing, we're probably at twice the size we were at the time of the merger (gut feeling, I don't have the records of what the team size was back then to count :) ).

We have never said "development is slower because there isn't enough people" but rather "development may feel slower because things are mature now, new features are less revolutionary, and it can take more time to implement features due to the complexity of the engine and how much interrelation there is between all the parts" (where "more people" doesn't always solve that last one, when it comes to how things interrelate - in fact sometimes more people makes that worse and not better, with things more likely to break :) Not all problems are of a nature that more people makes it go faster, as the old analogy goes if it takes 1 woman 9 months to grow a baby, it will not take 9 women 1 month to grow a baby).

We are always looking for new good developers, but they are in short supply and that would be true merger or not, the merger is not a magic wand in that regard nor was it ever expected to be :) The search for good developers to grow the team does not equal "OMG we are really short staffed" though, just that we are always looking to grow the team.

Cheers!

Tom Grimes | chaos-corona.com
Product Manager | contact us

2021-06-12, 01:56:33
Reply #102

lupaz

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The team is larger since the merger, it has never stopped growing, we're probably at twice the size we were at the time of the merger (gut feeling, I don't have the records of what the team size was back then to count :) ).

We have never said "development is slower because there isn't enough people" but rather "development may feel slower because things are mature now, new features are less revolutionary, and it can take more time to implement features due to the complexity of the engine and how much interrelation there is between all the parts" (where "more people" doesn't always solve that last one, when it comes to how things interrelate - in fact sometimes more people makes that worse and not better, with things more likely to break :) Not all problems are of a nature that more people makes it go faster, as the old analogy goes if it takes 1 woman 9 months to grow a baby, it will not take 9 women 1 month to grow a baby).

We are always looking for new good developers, but they are in short supply and that would be true merger or not, the merger is not a magic wand in that regard nor was it ever expected to be :) The search for good developers to grow the team does not equal "OMG we are really short staffed" though, just that we are always looking to grow the team.

Cheers!

Thank you Tom. Just one comment: not everyone is waiting for revolutionary changes. Many are mentioning a slice tool of sorts. Or, for me, I love things like the material and map selct, or the uvw randomizer. maybe adding levels to the color correct tool? To me those are eye candy. Maybe others feel the same way amd there's no need to tackle two huge endeavors like a new phisical material or a new tone mapper.
Small things can go really far in my opinion.

2021-06-12, 02:06:44
Reply #103

TomG

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All discussed back in November, https://blog.corona-renderer.com/behind-the-scenes-the-corona-renderer-development-process/ - where we discuss how we prioritize what to work on next (and how that is never a perfect science).
Tom Grimes | chaos-corona.com
Product Manager | contact us

2021-06-12, 10:00:59
Reply #104

LorenzoS

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Hello everyone,
I would like to ask the team if it would be possible to publish on the forum the list of bugs (internalid = xxxxxxx) that have not been solved at the moment and maybe to specify if and when you intend to work on them?

thank you

up

Hi all,
my proposal to team is to create a specific area like this:

https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php?topic=96.0

where the user can vote the priority to solve the know bugs.

Thank you

2021-06-12, 10:27:13
Reply #105

romullus

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I could be wrong, but i think that bugs has always highest priority over the features, so making voting poll for them just doesn't makes much sense. If some bugs are not fixed for a long time, that probably means they are very hard to fix. I'm sure that devs want their software to be as bug free as possible and they don't try to introduce too many features without fixing old bugs first.
I'm not Corona Team member. Everything i say, is my personal opinion only.
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2021-06-12, 12:08:36
Reply #106

LorenzoS

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Quote
If some bugs are not fixed for a long time, that probably means they are very hard to fix.

One sample...This is, i think, a simple bug to solve but it's still here:
https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php?topic=27332.msg173933#msg173933