Pricing and release date announced

[Alessandro]

I've got an hobby. That's my Ducati. Believe me, they did't give it to me for free. And no discount... ;)

Btw, maybe edu licence should be more "elastic", but the question is how many "students" will not use their licence for profits? And, is not a personal profit to learn a software? If it is really a hobby, Beta6 should be sufficent, or not?

Of course, it's just my humble opinion.

Alessandro

[dancem]

I don't really understand why so many hobbyists are complaining about Corona pricing if they can afford 3ds Max.. (or can they..?)

As hobbyist, even if I cannot afford 3dsmax licence, I am trying to pay for licenses, and I will be glad to pay for Corona to support it development and be able to use daily builds. I can spend on Corona for my little render farm near 480 EURO per year, but not 1350 EURO. Yes, I can buy ONE license to use Corona on some of my PCs, but then Corona will be useless for me, as it will be slower that any other DR or Network Render on my home farm.
So instead to pay 480 EURO I will pay 0 EURO and use other renderer. That how it works :(

[Alessandro]

Yes, or you can have one (1) work in a year and take for this 1K euro so you have to pay just 350...
Just a curiosity, you have a little renderfarm, how does it cost to buy it and maintain it?

[Juraj]

I believe they might compromise on the Node policy a bit, I think that could be slightly better too. But on other hand, you presented a very outlier's scenario which is hard to think of when the licence needs to cater correctly and equally to mass majority.

[johan belmans]

We also understand that some people just don’t want SaaS at any cost. Well so even for you we have the traditional Box Model. You can buy the licence once and have it forever. You can sell it or do whatever you want. It is yours. Forever.

If I am not mistaken, this is the first software program that you can sell. This is a statement I like!
Do not try this with Autodesk or Microsoft or whatever programs.......

[lasse1309]

what does corona do?

it enables you to produce kick-ass renderings without tweaking numbers all day.
That should be worth the money.

Show some respect to a genius developer like Ondra and his Team.
That's the minimum you can do.

[deshu]

We also understand that some people just don’t want SaaS at any cost. Well so even for you we have the traditional Box Model. You can buy the licence once and have it forever. You can sell it or do whatever you want. It is yours. Forever.

If I am not mistaken, this is the first software program that you can sell. This is a statement I like!
Do not try this with Autodesk or Microsoft or whatever programs.......

In EU you can sell anything that you bought.

[dancem]

Yes, or you can have one (1) work in a year and take for this 1K euro so you have to pay just 350...

I am not using Corona in commercial projects. And I don't have work in this direction (I am working as programmer, and need to pay for other equipment and software, so there no much left for hobby).

Just a curiosity, you have a little renderfarm, how does it cost to buy it and maintain it?

I had spent $2500 for two years to buy 5 used PCs (i7-2600K, 2700K, 16Gb RAM) There no videocards and no HDDs (diskless boot). This year, I had to spent additional $650 for rackmount and cases for them (PCs simply layed on the shelfs before). Also I wish to add three more PCs, to fill rackmount completely, but maybe will do it next year.
My two main PCs cost much more, but they used for other tasks, so I had to upgrade them every year.

[Juraj]

We also understand that some people just don’t want SaaS at any cost. Well so even for you we have the traditional Box Model. You can buy the licence once and have it forever. You can sell it or do whatever you want. It is yours. Forever.

If I am not mistaken, this is the first software program that you can sell. This is a statement I like!
Do not try this with Autodesk or Microsoft or whatever programs.......

In EU you can sell anything that you bought.

Yep, one of the better EU court rulings :- )

But because it's from EU's will the person inheriting licence will get support issues, the companies behave like you expect them to.

[Ludvik Koutny]

Dancem:

So you are willing to invest thousands of dollars into your hobby, but you can't afford Corona for a bunch of hundreds of euros? You can just buy one seat. Since it's your hobby, i am not really sure why you need to DR on 10 computers at once. I would understand it in commercial environment, where you have some clients with requests and some deadlines, but since you say it's a hobby, then there should not be much of a need for such extremes as rendering on 10 computers at once. Electricity bills of those computers rendering for a bunch of days each month would probably easily grow over the price of SaaS licence.

[dancem]

So you are willing to invest thousands of dollars into your hobby

Yes, near $3000 (2400 EURO) per three years, and that equipment will work three or five years more, without additional charges. So it is like near 500 EURO per year for 10 PCs, before they all burn.

but you can't afford Corona for a bunch of hundreds of euros?

Thousand of euros. I will need three Corona licenes for all PCs, 1350 EURO with box versions (for year or two, before next Corona upgrade), or 900 EURO per year.

You can just buy one seat. Since it's your hobby, i am not really sure why you need to DR on 10 computers at once. I would understand it in commercial environment, where you have some clients with requests and some deadlines, but since you say it's a hobby, then there should not be much of a need for such extremes as rendering on 10 computers at once.

Agreed. But when my render-farm will be ready, I will able to search for some work in that direction (I hope so :) ) With one seat it is simple money waste, if you have little farm at home. There are other renders, that can be used on render-farm, and they will be much faster  on 10 PCs, than Corona on one (or three) seats.

Electricity bills of those computers rendering for a bunch of days each month would probably easily grow over the price of SaaS licence.

$2-3 per render day, 24 hours of render.

[ikercito]

Not to spill the beans guys.... If I'm not mistaken an Octane render licence is 459€ for 2.xx with Max integration, and regular updates...

That's the same price as Corona with a Box license (but Octane has updates), or 18 months with "Fair" Saas license (but Octane is yours to keep forever). Not to mention that Octane has got a million features that Corona doesn't nor will have in the near future.

I'm sorry but it just doesn't add up. From a long term perspective this pricing scheme just doesn´t work. I'm afraid that the "fair price" and "affordable" flag was raised too many times and some of us are now dissapointed.

[lacilaci]

Not to spill the beans guys.... If I'm not mistaken an Octane render licence is 459€ for 2.xx with Max integration, and regular updates...

That's the same price as Corona with a Box license (but Octane has updates), or 18 months with "Fair" Saas license (but Octane is yours to keep forever). Not to mention that Octane has got a million features that Corona doesn't nor will have in the near future.

I'm sorry but it just doesn't add up. From a long term perspective this pricing scheme just doesn´t work. I'm afraid that the "fair price" and "affordable" flag was raised too many times and some of us are now dissapointed.

But this is where a little problem appears, what corona devs seem to want to avoid. And that is, to have to select which features get implemented/updated as a free update and which to keep for another "major" release to get you to again buy the full license as an upgrade.

So, the "fair SaaS" model is here a standard mothly payment for any update/upgrade and you get it the moment it is ready no matter what.

And the "box" is just that if you feel you're good for a year or longer with the feature set already implemented and believe that you won't need some new stuff and/or want to have the software without restrictions.

Well that is, if I understood correctly that article :D

[z8er]

My main concern is the render node amount. Our company is on a full Mental Ray workflow. Like others have said, as long as it ships with max, Corona might just have to be a dream. We have a smallish medium sized farm and getting enough corona licenses to fill is just not cost effective enough when we already have MR included. Hope to see a more affordable node system in the future!

[juang3d]

I think there is a lot of movement here, and since a few posts we are walking in circles, I propose that we let some time to the team to explain the different things like the Box subscription and such things, and let's see what they say, what do you think?

Cheers!