Poll

3 features you want the most:

Tiles map
31 (6.7%)
Further imrpovements to Corona Image Editor
8 (1.7%)
Significantly faster DOF (Depth of Field) rendering
25 (5.4%)
Sketch/Toon/Stylized shader
29 (6.2%)
Dedicated CarPaint Shader
7 (1.5%)
Dedicated fabrics shader
27 (5.8%)
Lightmix extended to materials, textures, ...
27 (5.8%)
Interactive rendering in 3ds max viewport (with gizmos, object selection, manipulation, ...)
16 (3.4%)
Rendering memory usage improvements
16 (3.4%)
Speed of rendering improvements
42 (9%)
Speed of interactive rendering improvements specifically
31 (6.7%)
GPU/Hybrid rendering
88 (18.9%)
Stability improvements (bug fixes)
12 (2.6%)
Improvements to caustics
23 (4.9%)
Thin film/coating shader
5 (1.1%)
Parsing performance optimization (e.g. for animations)
40 (8.6%)
New and better frame buffer (docked and floating)
23 (4.9%)
Further improvements to Chaos Scatter
15 (3.2%)

Total Members Voted: 178

Author Topic: The most wanted feature?  (Read 525006 times)

2019-01-01, 15:51:01
Reply #585

romullus

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I believe i don't have to remind you, that there are only two certain things in life... ;] I think team has firm reasons to postpone some features in favor of another ones. Maybe they decided that ROI of those features would be too low at this moment, maybe they got instructions from above, maybe... i will just shut up.
I'm not Corona Team member. Everything i say, is my personal opinion only.
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2019-01-01, 16:35:20
Reply #586

bluebox

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This was more of a rhetorical question but thank you Romullus.

Just wanted to point out that people working on a specific rendering engine try to streamline their work and optimize it (yeah capt. obvious :] ). Switching from for example Vray is a huge commitment of time and therefore money investment.

I of course understand that huge amount of people want huge amount of features and having limited resources (developers) the company has to choose which ones to implement at a given time taking into consideration all the factors that you mentioned.

But telling people that something will be done and not doing it for over a year (I think clipper was due to be released in 1.6) is not entirely Fair in accordance to FairSaaS in all of its glorious aspects ;)

And clipper is just an example here. Just trying to figure out what is the key factor that pushes any given feature into production. For example Disney material is at the top of the poll in this topic for a looong time. And it just sits there :)

2019-01-01, 22:58:58
Reply #587

lolec

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I've been on both sides of product development and let me assure you a few things.

-Decisions are unimaginably more complex for the corona team that what you think
-They spend 100x more time thinking about these issues than any customer ever will.
-And based on what I've seen, the Corona team is also working very very hard and they have absolutely no reason not to build the best product they can.

I know, as a customer, there is a small set of features that are disproportionately more important because of your specific use case, and it can be very frustrating when the product priorities don't align with yours.

Just remember that there are hundreds of use cases and hundreds of "hidden" complexities in running a business and building a product.

This is not to say that we as customers should shut our mouths and just wait for the dev team to do their best, but I find that complaining is not the most useful thing we can do, here is what I think it's better:


- Understand WHY a feature is not here, sometimes it's not used by enough people, sometimes it's too complex to build, and in some rare cases, the feature is being overlooked by the dev team.
- Build a strong case on why a certain feature is important and try to get more people to support the idea and help the dev team see something they might be missing (like a market trend, new tools, new workflows etc.)

In the end, I don't think neither this poll nor the trello should be used to inform future jobs we take, we should use them as tools that reflect vision and trajectory, as I currently interpret both of these are:

The poll: People are liking the results from Fstorm and other GPU renders and would want to have those goodies in Corona too. (geo pattern, tone mapping, gpu) Second, the industry seems to be moving to PBR and people are starting to miss proper PBR support in Corona.  Most of the other items seem to have niche support and not general support.

The Trello: Seems like the Corona team is focusing on closing on "essential" features before jumping to new features: stable light solver, caustics, clearcoat, volumetrics. These are MUST have features for any production-grade render. This is a sign of maturity for the product. 
 
I don't expect they will focus in too many new features until Corona is stable and robust as a production render, something a studio can pick up knowing that it will work for them 99% of the time and they won't need to hack or fake stuff out, or switch renders in a few years. Once that is solid as a rock, I would expect they would start exploring things.

Exploring things means breaking things, and when client's livelihood depends on your product, you can't be as aggressive with new features. Fstorm can get away with whatever they do because pretty much no one is using it for "serious" work.





2019-01-02, 10:09:01
Reply #588

karnak

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Thank you lolec, I think your message has very good insights and is very respectful of both consumers and the development team.
Corona Academy (May 2017)

2019-01-04, 11:29:59
Reply #589

Jpjapers

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Really good response there and it makes sense to do whats best for the company. I think a fair bit of frustration from what ive seen comes from the development fstorm has in some areas and its just one man doing the dev. It seems fstorm has stuff corona doesnt but corona has more necessary and production ready stuff than fstorm.

I agree that it seems ridiculous that some features get pushed back release after release. I originally asked for the clipper in 2014 i think. But there are some features like a proper PBR material and like Geopattern or Reworked tone mapping that make larger parts of the production pipeline easier and id rather have those completed first. Clipper would make a very specific part of the workflow easier yes. But it wouldnt make as much difference as a proper PBR material would.

2019-01-04, 15:54:12
Reply #590

bluebox

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Really good response there and it makes sense to do whats best for the company.

I agree that the company must do what is best for itself. We as companies or freelancers do the same. What I do not understand is why from one point of view people say that we as the users should not keep our mouths shut about the development and on the other hand each time someone decides to speak up some other person appears arguing that there should be no complains because the corona team does super job providing us this great plugin.

I agree that Corona is great. I love working using it. I respect the developers. But we are all buing a product here, and doing so in SaaS way part of what we pay goes to fund the development.
So the everlasting narrative of being eternally gratefull to the Devs for doing their job that some people present is getting irritating.

I would love to meet Ondra some day for example in Venice and talk about ponies and stuff over a beer or something and make friends. But I firmly believe this kind of stuff should be done off the forums ;)

If a feature was promissed and it doesn't get delivered I do not see a point why users should not talk about it.

I agree that it seems ridiculous that some features get pushed back release after release. I originally asked for the clipper in 2014 i think. But there are some features like a proper PBR material and like Geopattern or Reworked tone mapping that make larger parts of the production pipeline easier and id rather have those completed first. Clipper would make a very specific part of the workflow easier yes. But it wouldnt make as much difference as a proper PBR material would.

I completeley agree. I asked a question about this in the daily build section but it wasn't answered. I also believe that the product should be built logically from the ground up. If proper PBR shading is a standard these days such shader should be IMHO one of the first things to implement so users building their material library won't be forced to rebuild it as a whole and reshade all their assets, and instead build them with correct shaders from the beginning.
Same goes for tone mapping.

I also would have those features paired with mentioned geopattern sooner than even mentioned clipper. Clipper was just an example here.

2019-01-04, 16:11:09
Reply #591

TomG

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Just a quick note, no-one should keep their mouths shut :) We do always welcome hearing requests, whether that is for something never asked for before, or a request that someone notes "I first asked for this back in 2017". We don't take that as criticism, just as a reminder.

That said, we do ask that people understand that their request is a request, and while we do listen to and consider every request, that won't always mean we implement every request; and that people keep in mind that prioritizing development is a balancing act between a lot of different considerations, so if we do implement something, when that happens may be quick or may take a long time, or even may change (we think we can do it, but other things come up in priority and it gets pushed back). So, feel free to remind us it's a long standing request, but please don't yell at us :) Which I don't think anyone has been doing, to be honest, it's all been respectful. And I think the system is working well for both developers and users!
Tom Grimes | chaos-corona.com
Product Manager | contact us

2019-01-04, 16:15:36
Reply #592

lupaz

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maybe they got instructions from above, maybe... i will just shut up.

AKA Vlado?

The amount of new features that Vray had since they joined forces with Render Legion is impressive. It made a come back.
I don't know if it was just a coincidence or not. But I really hope Vray is not taking strength from Corona.
Fstorm reminds me of Corona before the merger.
With that said I love Corona and have nothing but respect to the Corona team.

2019-01-04, 16:26:25
Reply #593

bluebox

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Thanks for taking the time to answer Tom.

One more thing I wanted to add. As I mentioned before I believe that people invest a LOT of time by committing to a specific rendering engine.

Therefore I do not agree that any Road Map should be treated loosely. I believe it should reflect the development road as closely as possible. Even further than the next upcoming release.
In that way noone gets disappointed in the long run, because he or she can check if their personal vision of  developing their own company alligns with the development road of the engine they committ to.
This will be of course more or less of an interest for different people depending if they do more specialised niche type of services or just general rendering.

And concerning hobbits, I mean roadmaps ;) When can we expect an update to the existing one ? Are you guys close on deciding next things that will get done ?
« Last Edit: 2019-01-04, 16:34:05 by bluebox »

2019-01-04, 16:52:30
Reply #594

TomG

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That's a good take on the roadmap, ty for the feedback on that. I will have to leave it to the developers on how close it is to seeing an update based on latest thinking about what can fit into Corona 4 :)

On the previous post, the merger has not changed our team, and the Chaos Group and Render Legion teams are separate. They don't cannibalize time or people from each other, we just share ideas. So no, V-Ray is not taking strength from Corona :)

On the comparison to FStorm, just a note that it much easier to add exciting new features when a render engine is younger. As it gets older, the big ticket items are already done - but also the platform becomes much more complex, and adding a new feature means making sure it doesn't break the other 1,276 features (while when earlier in development, that's "make sure it doesn't break the other 312 features"). Again, the merger has nothing to do with this, just to do with Corona Renderer being a more mature product now, and the associated caution that has to come with the fact that many production studios are relying on it so we have to be super careful not to break anything people depend upon. Hopefully this puts your mind at rest :)

EDIT - also, that means that change is not to do with the merger either, again it's just to do with maturity and all that comes with it ;)
Tom Grimes | chaos-corona.com
Product Manager | contact us

2019-01-04, 17:16:31
Reply #595

lupaz

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Got it.
Thanks Tom.
Also Fstorm is being pushed by the innovation in GPU, which doesn't seem to be as fast with CPU unfortunately.

"Caution"...I'm not sure I like the sound of that :)

I totally understand. And I wouldn't like a bloated software either. In fact, the material library is something I never use for example.

As you said corona is a well rounded engine. It works great.
But I would love to see what is that long term research that I heard about.
It would be great to have improvements more than features too. For example, a better AA, or better bump mapping, or a better BRDF. (please note I'm saying OR, not AND)
I can see how those things could break the code, but I wish the team lots of courage :)
« Last Edit: 2019-01-04, 17:32:01 by lupaz »

2019-01-04, 18:01:26
Reply #596

TomG

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Ah, well by "Caution" I just mean "extensive, very detailed testing and QA" - not "reluctance to do something" :)
Tom Grimes | chaos-corona.com
Product Manager | contact us

2019-01-05, 02:37:37
Reply #597

zokni

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The opinion of a guy:

Let me tell you my honest opinion, after that anyone can kill me if he/she wants to.

First of all, I love to work in Corona and I respect you guys. I worked at a software development company for a longer time 120 years ago I know a little bit how things go.

I use Corona every day in the office. Almost a year ago, fortunately I was able to persuade my boss to switch to Corona from Vray.
I was a subscriber as well for a long time, much more than a year as far as I remember.

But how the development goes it makes me a dissapointed. Lets see what happened in Corona 2 one by one with all my respect.

- Advanced camera/bokeh effects - Nice, thats what we like to see, it adds to the overall quality, unfortunately our clients atm don't really want to pay for closeup DOF shots, but its a nice feature. I don't really use it, but thumbs up.

- Corona toolbar - Cool, it should have arrived no later than in Corona 1.3

- Memory optimization - Adds nothing to the overall quality, not a new feature, it helps people who have less RAM.

- Heterogenous media - Long avaited feature, I know, but in archviz (main platform I think most of the guys here from that field) in 99% of the projects good for nothing.

- Vray compatibility - Nice to have that but overall its good for nothing, not an important thing to have. We have a nice converter, I never use Vray stuff in my Corona scene I always convert them from Vray before I merge. Probably it was a "request" from Chaos Group so we can understand that. But again, nothing new, doesn't speed up your render, adds nothing to the overall quality.

- Corona Material Library Update 2 - see as above. (not a new feature, adds nothing to the overall quality or speed. (OK, not completely true but if you are not a newbie you know how to create nice shaders).

- Bugfixes - Always nice to have those.

- Displacement optimization - Cool.


For me, that was the point, after Corona 2 has been released when I cancelled my personal subscription because the reasons I've mentioned above.

Now you guys have released Corona 3 and the main new feature is the denoiser what is a generic thing (I mean it's the implementation of nVidia's technology, it's a common thing these days, if you have it cool, if you don't it's a shame), the rest (according to quality or speed) nothing too special. Autombump is nice anyways.

A like to work with the real time denoiser in the office so I have decided to renew my personal subscription as well but for me, thats the only real advantage of Corona 3, the other things, like the new multimap feature or the another Corona lister are nice to have but with a little bit of more work or with 3rd party thingies you were able to do those before Corona 3 as well.

I can only hope we can see something really cool in Corona 4 what finally would add some real thing to the overall quality. (like PBR thingies, caustics, tonemapping, or things like Geopattern)

I would love to hear some response from you.

Peace and I love everybody.



« Last Edit: 2019-01-05, 03:17:57 by zokni »

2019-01-05, 17:29:39
Reply #598

lupaz

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You forgot the improvements of SSS. It got much better and is a major plus for realism.

I have the impression that the vray compatibility and all the openvdb and Inside volume has to do with Chaos Group wanting to sell PhoenixFD.

« Last Edit: 2019-01-05, 20:07:04 by lupaz »

2019-01-05, 23:38:15
Reply #599

zokni

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You forgot the improvements of SSS. It got much better and is a major plus for realism.

I have the impression that the vray compatibility and all the openvdb and Inside volume has to do with Chaos Group wanting to sell PhoenixFD.

Your comment was a little bit different before you've modified it. If you don't share your opinion things will never change, thats why I did it as well. I would like to find out if I am the only one out there with that opinion or not.
Nothing bad will happen if you tell them the things, nobody will ban you or cancel your subscription. I would like to make Corona better, thats all what I want.
Life is pretty simple, they sell something, we buy something.

Who else share their opinion with them if not us?
« Last Edit: 2019-01-05, 23:42:42 by zokni »