Price Increase

[dj_buckley]

The biggest gripe for me is that most of the "new features" of late, are half baked or experimental and have been for some time.  Rather than just a fully featured fully working new feature, they either don't work as epected or come with workarounds, exceptions and disclaimers.  And they never seem to make it out of that phase.  The focus of the last few releases seems to be around new users.  Experienced long time users of Max let alone Corona, don't need Power Tools or anything like that.  I can't see anyone that uses Forest Pack switching to Scatter when Forest Pack is about 10 years ahead in terms of development and isn't particularly expensive considering what it offers.  Never gonna please everyone I suppose.

I don't understand the 6 monthly release cycle anyway.  That alone has a rushed feeling about it.  Personally think the release cycle should be as follows:

Big Release - Exciting New Feature(s)
6 months later - Hotfix that fixes anything that was experimental/half baked in the Big Release
6 months later - Big Release

Rinse and repeat.

So you're getting a big release every year and then a smaller bug fixer in between that addresses ALL of the issues from the previous release.

I guess at the end of the day, for customers to be okay with price increases they need to feel like they're getting value for their money.  And of late (last few releases) it doesn't feel like that.  Higher Cost + Less Features = Sour Taste.

[Artisticpixel]

The biggest gripe for me is that most of the "new features" of late, are half baked or experimental and have been for some time.  Rather than just a fully featured fully working new feature, they either don't work as epected or come with workarounds, exceptions and disclaimers.  And they never seem to make it out of that phase.  The focus of the last few releases seems to be around new users.  Experienced long time users of Max let alone Corona, don't need Power Tools or anything like that.  I can't see anyone that uses Forest Pack switching to Scatter when Forest Pack is about 10 years ahead in terms of development and isn't particularly expensive considering what it offers.  Never gonna please everyone I suppose.

I don't understand the 6 monthly release cycle anyway.  That alone has a rushed feeling about it.  Personally think the release cycle should be as follows:

Big Release - Exciting New Feature(s)
6 months later - Hotfix that fixes anything that was experimental/half baked in the Big Release
6 months later - Big Release

Rinse and repeat.

So you're getting a big release every year and then a smaller bug fixer in between that addresses ALL of the issues from the previous release.

I guess at the end of the day, for customers to be okay with price increases they need to feel like they're getting value for their money.  And of late (last few releases) it doesn't feel like that.  Higher Cost + Less Features = Sour Taste.

if they gave me the option to buy a perpetual of 9 or 10 I would jump at the chance and never look back... price hikes and way more instability is adding insult to injury.

[Tom]

Very interesting topic, but I'd like to hear what the Corona team thinks about it?

[Freakaz]

I can't see anyone that uses Forest Pack switching to Scatter when Forest Pack is about 10 years ahead in terms of development and isn't particularly expensive considering what it offers.  Never gonna please everyone I suppose.

I actualy use both, the forest pack and chaos scatter, and scatter sometimes is faster to set up. Yet the pricing of forest pro is very fair, you pay for a product and get to keep the actual product and opt out of paying for future updates if you do not need them.
Corona price increased twice and features added in the past releases are not worth the extra money, adding additional bloatware which is not used, to justify the price increase is not fair. The only thing keeping me in Corona premium is keeping the old render nodes and floating licence. Don't even know what chaos scans and chaos player is, so paying more for mostly same features I had when paid 19,99 euro per month.

[3dboomerang]

The render engines are more expensive now than the software package they're plugged into.

To all the freelancers out there:
3DStudio Max indie licence 1 person: 350€


Corona renderer for 1 person:
Corona Solo Annual: €322.80 (paid per year)
Corona Solo Monthly: 48.90€ (€586.80 paid per year)

Corona Premium Annual: Not even getting into this. Whatever this ransacking scheme is, half of these items listed "extra" should already be included in the the standard licence. This is beyond thievery.

Currently switching to UE5+ and starting to do the rendering there. Materials & Lighting are easily replaced with what that engine is offering, with free libraries and growing.

They need to stop this bullshit. Paying for a freaking node on a computer we already invested into and increasing the price non stop.

Just make the switch already because they won't budge on their prices, obviously.

[piotrus3333]

Insightful read.
A suggestion, if I may: Arnold. You are already getting it with 3dsMax subscription. CPU focused like Corona. Similar speed. Much more features. Just give it a try, dip a toe.

[Jpjapers]

Insightful read.
A suggestion, if I may: Arnold. You are already getting it with 3dsMax subscription. CPU focused like Corona. Similar speed. Much more features. Just give it a try, dip a toe.

Ive been doing this recently but i really really miss lightmix.

[piotrus3333]

Insightful read.
A suggestion, if I may: Arnold. You are already getting it with 3dsMax subscription. CPU focused like Corona. Similar speed. Much more features. Just give it a try, dip a toe.

Ive been doing this recently but i really really miss lightmix.

there is light mixer imager. what is missing from it?

[James Vella]

there is light mixer imager. what is missing from it?

Ha thats cool, I never seen that. I just found a video of it, I love how you can also solo the lights.

[lupaz]

Although I don't like price increases, if good things come with them I'd be ok with it.

But, other than the tilesMap, which is saving me tons of time and it's something that Autodesk should've done a LONG time ago, the latest release (Corona 11) seems unimpressive IMO.
I'm disappointed with the bump filtering improvement. I don't notice any difference between linear and roughness modulation for, for example, a brushed metal effect.

Still, the previous versions brought corona pattern and slicer materials, which are AWESOME.
Enmesh I think it's better though as it supports overlapping and displacement AFAIK.

So yeah. Hopefully when/if Ondra comes back we will see a speed up in development.

[dj_buckley]

Still, the previous versions brought corona pattern and slicer materials, which are AWESOME.
Enmesh I think it's better though as it supports overlapping and displacement AFAIK.

This is exactly what I mean about things existing elsewhere already or they're just half baked in their current form/on release.  There's a thread on here at the minute with caveats about slicer.  And as you said Enmesh exists and has better functionality.  I would be really really interested to hear someone sell Corona to me today if I was a new user.  Originally it had a tonne of stuff in it's favour as USP's, hence why so many people made the switch.  Today not so much.  I'm struggling to think of one thing that Corona offers that I can't get elsewhere.

Looking at the home page it looks like it's selling points are as follows:

Ease of Use - "Render Setup is as easy as pressing Render" - this isn't technically true - there are a tonne of caveats/workarounds sometimes in order to get the result you want.  Also I had to switch back to VRay not so long ago for one job.  That was pretty easy to use these days too.

Affordable - "We aim to keep Chaos Corona affordable and accessible to as many people as possible, without compromising on its development and features." - Ahem, please see entire thread above.

Part of an Ecosystem - "As a Corona user, you are backed by the award-winning Chaos family. Expand your capabilities with Chaos tools guaranteed to integrate smoothly with your favorite render engine." - I'm assuming they're referring to Cosmos and Phoenix here which I have zero experience with, but from what I read, Cosmos is littered with bad models and I've seen a few threads on the Phoenix forums with 'Corona compatibility' issues.  The Corona Converter is a mess and far from smooth.  No Vantage unless converting to VRay first.  So ultimately you might as well pay the little bit extra for VRay in the first place as that seems to be much more smoothly integrated with the 'ecosystem' already.

So really what is the selling point as of today?  Why would one choose Corona from the off these days?

I won't get into the fact that each new release results in something breaking from the previous release i.e. sun targets, curves in tonemapping etc etc etc

[lupaz]

i think you're exaggerating.

I don't know how many resources were needed for the tilesMap, but it was done really well and did not disappoint.

[dj_buckley]

i think you're exaggerating.

I don't know how many resources were needed for the tilesMap, but it was done really well and did not disappoint.

Can't see what you've quoted so not sure which bit you're referring too. But with regards to Tiles - I don't/haven't used it.  I use geometry for anything tile based, either manual or with Railclone/Floorgen, or custom made textures.  But the main point still stands - you can get by without it and it's not 'new'.  Vray has it for a while and I remember using Vizpark Walls and Tiles/Mosaic/Omni Tiles 10 years ago although not sure if that still exists

[lupaz]

But I don't/haven't used it.  I use geometry for anything tile based, either manual or with Railclone/Floorgen

Maybe that's where the problem is. Try using the new features. TileMap with displacement and the fact that takes multimap and mapRandomizer is a very powerful tool.

[dj_buckley]

But I don't/haven't used it.  I use geometry for anything tile based, either manual or with Railclone/Floorgen

Maybe that's where the problem is. Try using the new features. TileMap with displacement and the fact that takes multimap and mapRandomizer is a very powerful tool.

I fell out with displacement a long time ago, I only use it now where absolutely necessary.  Of course I'll take a look at some point, but at the minute it's not enough to make me want to change my entire workflow.

And FWIW, I do keep tabs on the other threads such as "TilesPlayground"