Discussions about people's expectations, Corona developement, life and other things

[dj_buckley]

Perfect response, cheers Tom

[dj_buckley]

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

[dj_buckley]

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

[lupaz]

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?

[Feodor]

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)

[TomG]

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

[lupaz]

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)

[TomG]

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

[agentdark45]

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?

[lupaz]

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.

[TomG]

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.

[lupaz]

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.

[lupaz]

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"

[pokoy]

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.

[TomG]

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" ;) )