Price Increase

[hurrycat]

Being a paying Corona User for years, I got to keep my Render nodes when the price increased last year by switching to a Premium subscription. This year I realized i don't need Phoenix so I decided to switch to Solo, which as we all painfully realized you could not do in the last month of your annual subscription (?). I had to contact support who cancelled my subscription for me, so I could switch to Solo and with that, gone are the Render nodes (that's what I was reffering to earlier when I talked about Chaos shady practices).

I am happy to see long-term active users commenting in this thread and I really hope this paints a good picture of the frustation we are all feeling. It's baffling to me that a rendering plugin ends up costing more than the actual program itself, if you're paying for indie.

[dj_buckley]

Yup, the render nodes and the floating licence is the only reason I'm on Premium.  I would like to see a cheaper option without Cosmos/Phoenix etc.  I'm effectively paying for stuff I don't want or need.  I've literally never even opened Cosmos.  I don't mind paying annually but I do mind paying for stuff I didn't want or ask for.

[hurrycat]

For anyone dissatisfied with the lack of reasoning behind the latest price increase, here is the response I got from support:

After careful consideration, we have decided to increase the price of Chaos V-Ray and Chaos Corona commercial licenses, marking the first adjustment in over 12 months. Price increases are a regular course of business, especially in an environment with relatively high inflation and rising prices from suppliers.

[dj_buckley]

Lol that suggests we're lucky they haven't increased it multiple times over the last 12 months.

[Peter A.]

Yes, they're indeed doing favour to us...

[babumbol]

When they got aquired by chaos and soon afterwards upped the prices by 100% while bugging the licensing system to an alsmost unusable point on the c4d side, we as a company started a slow switch towards octane + a double switch from Maxon to Blender (Maxon aint fun anymore either). And guess what: It's the same green on the other side.

We'll keep the premium with it's 3 render nodes for the sake of backwards compatibility as long as it stays this way. But an upredictable pricing policy with increases of over 100% in a year is just not relatable. Who knows, when the price increases again? Maybe even next year, when they need to compensate for the loss of subscription customers?

I don't want to be at the mercy of companies like these.

[dj_buckley]

I did some digging into the top dogs at Chaos.  It comes as no surprise that the very top dog is ex Autodesk. Sigh.

[Jpjapers]

I agree with the sentiments here. The prices go up and yet there seems to be very little focus on major new features and more focus on giving up asset 'freebies' or software we MIGHT have a use for. The last big update that made any kind of difference to my productivity was whenever decals came to be. Aside from that it feels very much like small incremental changes or changes to potentially unnecessary things that are clearly meant to add additional value to corona such as scatter and cosmos.

[dj_buckley]

The last big update that made any kind of difference to my productivity was whenever decals came to be.

Yikes, that was Corona 8, must admit, considering the next release is scheduled for May/June this year, it doesn't look very exciting at all as far as the roadmap is concerned ... New VFB skin and Cosmos/Mat Library updates.  For me the last really beneficial update was Corona 9.  With Clouds, Out of Core Textures and Pattern, but again nothing groundbreaking.  I'd call them improvements more than anything.  Clouds and Pattern already existed in VRay by that point.

[John.McWaters]

I would like for Chaos and Corona to start investing time into creating some sort of real time rendering solution to compete with UE and Enscape, because inevitably, that’s where the market is heading.

With Corona, we can create the best quality still images. But what if the team could use this knowledge in a real time rendering product that could avoid the current drawbacks from software like Enscape, UE, etc?

I’ve thought about making the jump to UE to see how close I could get it to a Corona rendering, but from my understanding, it doesn’t have a lot of the tools like UVW Randomizer that really make a difference for me in Corona. But if Corona could offer its toolset in a real time rendering engine, then that would be a product I’d be interested in continuing to pay for.

[Tom]

Being a paying Corona User for years, I got to keep my Render nodes when the price increased last year by switching to a Premium subscription. This year I realized i don't need Phoenix so I decided to switch to Solo, which as we all painfully realized you could not do in the last month of your annual subscription (?). I had to contact support who cancelled my subscription for me, so I could switch to Solo and with that, gone are the Render nodes (that's what I was reffering to earlier when I talked about Chaos shady practices).

I am happy to see long-term active users commenting in this thread and I really hope this paints a good picture of the frustation we are all feeling. It's baffling to me that a rendering plugin ends up costing more than the actual program itself, if you're paying for indie.

So true, I'm in the exact same situation: I went for the Premium subscription just to keep my render nodes licences active, and ending up paying more for a plugin than for the host program itself is frustrating.

[Basshunter]

We had to move back to V-Ray which although far from perfect, has a MUCH faster development. GPU speed is awesome and we have Vantage compatibility. Gone are the days when Corona devs really listened to the community and gave us significant releases. I guess they found a comfortable spot and decided to settle.

[dj_buckley]

I would like for Chaos and Corona to start investing time into creating some sort of real time rendering solution to compete with UE and Enscape, because inevitably, that’s where the market is heading.

With Corona, we can create the best quality still images. But what if the team could use this knowledge in a real time rendering product that could avoid the current drawbacks from software like Enscape, UE, etc?

I’ve thought about making the jump to UE to see how close I could get it to a Corona rendering, but from my understanding, it doesn’t have a lot of the tools like UVW Randomizer that really make a difference for me in Corona. But if Corona could offer its toolset in a real time rendering engine, then that would be a product I’d be interested in continuing to pay for.

Enscape and Chaos are now the same thing, they merged a while back so I doubt that will happen any time soon.

[Artisticpixel]

I can't even use the latest corona due to a sudden influx on NaN issues, and they had the cheek to say it must be something I am doing wrong or using something different ( only difference is using the latest version ), I have gone back to 10 as its the most stable for me now and will be looking at alternatives in the near future as the price increase with a huge increase in errors is the tipping point for me.  I guess what did we expect once it was sold to a corp.

[Jpjapers]

Yikes, that was Corona 8, must admit, considering the next release is scheduled for May/June this year, it doesn't look very exciting at all as far as the roadmap is concerned ... New VFB skin and Cosmos/Mat Library updates.  For me the last really beneficial update was Corona 9.  With Clouds, Out of Core Textures and Pattern, but again nothing groundbreaking.  I'd call them improvements more than anything.  Clouds and Pattern already existed in VRay by that point.

Most of my work is interiors so clouds didnt make much difference for me personally so its sort of the push and pull of releases benefitting some more than others and i get that completely. But i remember when lightmix came to be and it was just an instant gamechanger for everybody.