Price Increase

[dj_buckley]

Just had an email from Chaos informing of another 10% price increase to an annual Corona Premium Subscription, this coming after last years 100%+ increase.  Thoughts people?

[Jpjapers]

The more the price increases the more incentive i have to learn a realtime engine. So unless they can sort out good, seamless vantage integration soon to save me the hassle, i cant see there being a need for me to remain using an offline renderer for the majority of my work.

[dj_buckley]

Found myself questioning the same thing recently.  I've also started asking myself, "What am I actually paying for?".  No disrespect to the Corona Devs but I was struggling to find a single USP for Corona these days.  What does it have that doesn't already exist?  What does it offer me over other solutions?  I think these are valid questions when the price keeps going up.

I was looking at the 'Major Features' of the V11 when it was released and everything already exists elsewhere.  Sure it's nice to have all in one place and not have to pay for 3rd party software, but it was pretty underwhelming on the whole especially for long time users that already have pipelines and workflows using these other tools and 3rd party software.

Tile Map - already exists and the implementation isn't fully complete i.e. requires workarounds to get it working as a Bump Map.
Scatter Altitude - has been in Forest Pack for years
Scatter Look At - has been in Forest Pack for years
Edge Shader - very specific use cases, isn't quite the Edge Shader I thought it was going to be i.e. akin to VRay Toon
Power Tools - already exists in the form of 3rd party scripts

Then you've got things like -

Roughness Modulation - I'd call this fixing a problem rather than a feature etc

I just feel that at the minute, we're being asked to pay more and more for something that's always second to the party.

So I guess the bigger question is, what is justifying these price increases and what benefits am I actually getting from paying it?

[hurrycat]

This is not encouraging at all. The price increase seems unjustified to me, right after last year's huge price increase and shady Chaos practices.

On top of that, I have the feeling that Corona development has slowed down, with what should be hotfixes marketed as new releases. How can you justify another price increase when you can't show any great new features for it? Corona Tentative Road map is disappointing to say the least.

I'm afraid more users, including me, will start looking at alternatives. My last hope is that something great is coming, but one can only wish.

[arqrenderz]

What we dont like is the features they push, like Corona Power toys... Did i miss that "Feature" from the upcoming ones in trello ? or the Most wanted feature board?
What about the "Rewriting scene parsing" that has been pushed 4 years.. You want to compete with Unreal or real time engines? Make Magic for us, cut those times so the user can see faster what they are working.
Edge map was also a rabbit from a hat to all of us, TOON shader has been asked for YEARS, so i guess its complicated to do, please BITE the bullet and do it, if it can take 4 years to do it we would have it already..

[Peter A.]

I'm biting my tongue hardly to keep it on topic. I'm trying to keep all costs at reasonable level, so I'm considering purchasing Solo Yearly license. It's €322.80 (plus 20% VAT), but it's still huge saving comparing to Solo monthly for €66*12 = €792!!!

The worst thing is that I don't have a feeling that I'm getting better software for bigger price. Support is terrible, Corona seems to be buggier than before so the only thing that's keeping me using Corona Renderer is the amount of work to be finished this year…

[matteosperi]

I am a premium user; and I am very disappointed with the price increase again.
Cryptomatte in VFB as vray : not present yet; and I have the impression that after the acquisition of chaos the development of corona slowed down a lot.
Corona version 11: very disappointing; small developments.

For example: d5 render (lower rendering quality); but the updates are always amazing

M.

[davemahi]

Add me to the list of confused and disappointed. The value is just not there anymore and there are so many alternatives.

[pokoy]

Just had an email from Chaos informing of another 10% price increase to an annual Corona Premium Subscription, this coming after last years 100%+ increase.  Thoughts people?

Just read the email. If I remember correctly the last price increase came with a comment along the lines of "this will allow us to keep the price stable for the next years".

[steyin]

I dropped Corona when the initial increase happened. I expected something like this so I'm not surprised. Granted now my office pays for my rendering subscription, but we are on VRay, not Corona. I would have preferred Corona, but from a purely independent standpoint (in terms of paying for it myself), it wasn't and still isn't worth it at the price point. In all honesty, I expect Corona to be fully absorbed into VRay in the coming years. Still never could afford VRay on my own anyway.
Looking towards Blender/free options now for personal use.

[Luke]

anyone gone over to fstorm? thoughts?

[Tom]

Of course, it's disappointing to receive this email about a 10% price increase, especially when we see the number of complaints posted regarding the slowdowns of Corona 11 with Max 2024. For now, I stick to C10 for this reason.
I don't want to disrespect Corona devs, but one might wonder if they test their software thoroughly before releasing a new version for public download.

And I agree 100% with what was mentioned earlier: the "new features" look more like integrations of already existing third-party plugins features. Personally, I use Forest Pro, and I have no interest in Chaos Scatter.

FStorm? You said FStorm? Hmm... Tempting.

[matteosperi]

Exactly;
Corona 11 can be called 10.3 / .4/.6...
there is no information about AI inside corona and other software like d5 are implementing.
Corona is always superior to realtime engines for static images, but as a user, I don't see the correlation between price increase and real updates provided
(video production, calculation speed, integration with vantage if possible);
and Corona Academy has no new monthly updates.

As a user I prefer fewer versions (corona 11,12) but with real and serious updates (for me corona 11 was the most disappointing version of recent years),
and more updates (11.2,11.3...)
For example vray is at version 6, corona is at version 11??
M.

[matteosperi]

Anyway ,
Corona is always the best software in Archviz for static images;
if the price increases, I hope for a new update management
M.

[romullus]

As a user I prefer fewer versions (corona 11,12) but with real and serious updates (for me corona 11 was the most disappointing version of recent years),
and more updates (11.2,11.3...)
For example vray is at version 6, corona is at version 11??

It's just a number. Would it make any difference if we'd have Corona 3.6 now instead of 11? At least its naming scheme is consistent, unlike of some computer hardware manufacturers, or car brands.