I finally returned from D2, caught some sleep, and read the entire topic. Thanks to vlado for responding to a lot of concerns. I will respond to some more posts I picked where I have something to add - most fears were already touched upon in our announcement and by people here. It all comes down down to single thing: some users not trusting us. And I mean trusting me and rest of Corona team, not Chaosgroup, as this was not a hostile takeover, and we even initiated the deal. It is pretty clear that nothing we say will convince some people, so I am asking you:
Come check with us in 6 months, or a year, and see what the situation is then. Hopefully you will be convinced by then. I understand that you have seen some bad things happen to
other companies, but there was not a single instance of Chaosgroup killing off a competitor. This is like refusing to ever date and get married, because 2 of your friends got divorces...
The implication was made on the blog that users of corona and vray aren't the same, so the render engines are flexible(vray) and simple to use(corona)
Does this mean, that in the future a request of a feature (existing in vray) might come from corona users, and corona devs would simply say: well, there's vray for that..? Since, you might not want to compete...?
Yes, this will happen, but it has been happening already. We were rejecting feature requests because of extremely low value to work/complications ratio, but because they just flat out contradicted the corona philosophy (for example: support for obscure little-known VFX plugins, support for fakes such as disabling backside reflection, specular reflections instead of full GI glossy reflection, fake AO rendering modes, ...). But still we were forced to make Corona closer to VRay that we would have wanted, and it already shown negatively with some people leaving Corona because it became "too complex" for them. Now it will be easier for us to realize our vision of high-quality, fast, zero-hassle renderer without having to think of bottom line (keeping up with VRay in every aspect). Do you need a very special legacy feature for 1 in 10 projects? Switch to VRay for it! You assets will work out of the box with no converters, and your subscription will give you license.
Note that this does not actually mean "archviz only" or "no VFX allowed" - our vision is actually to make these markets as hassle-free as we made archviz ;)
cut the sunny salesmen talk
We tried that for the D2 announcement, and some called it "wildly unproffesional" ;)
Already one presence of DMC sampler adds in render settings at least 5 new positions and switches/////////////
If there is a new tab in 1.6.2 or latest daily, please report it on mantis as a bug, because new switches for DMC are not necessary and we did not add them ;)
The only thing I don´t like is the way, how RL /Vlado encircle the price tag question. It is affronting their customers intelligence. By overemphasising, corona will be continued, they spare out the 2nd common question. "We have decided not to disclose transaction details.Let’s not make it all about the money. "
Do you mean the price of product or price of acquisition? The first one was already answered - it will not change. The second one does not influence the customers in any way, so we have decided to not publish it.
It might be okay if RL thinks it is indispensable these days, but hey, we all know at the end it is all about the money
If we were really after money, both I and vlado would be working for google or facebook, making more people click on ads. Rendering is not really lucrative business; render farms make probably more money on Corona than we do. We enjoy doing what we do, and that is why we survived in this business - over the years we have seen other renderers trying to do the cash grab that came and went. Corona wouldnt be successful if i was not willing to invest my last student money into it to keep it free as long as possible. It was not about the money back then, and it is not now ;).
Anyone in business knows what this leads to. This is the end of corona, might take years but development will stop and eventually be phased out. Look at the Macintosh and the Lisa products from Apple....cant have two competing products that do the same thing from the same company thats to much $$$ R&D costs. Vray is the flagship from Chaos, so it will always win.
Actually, if this was about money, then it would make perfect sense to kill off V-Ray now, as its development team is 10 times bigger, and hence costs 10 times more money, and keep only Corona, which most people here would agree is "better" ;)