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?
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.
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?
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.
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..
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…
Add me to the list of confused and disappointed. The value is just not there anymore and there are so many alternatives.
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”.
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.
anyone gone over to fstorm? thoughts?
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.
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.
+1
Honestly, I’m also disappointed with the price increase. V11 wasn’t a great release from a user perspective (I understand that there may be much work done under the hood which we users can’t see)
And if I assume, that we will get Vantage support in the future, that would result in additional €600, together almost €1000, and even more if you have a premium subscription.
That’s just too much for a yearly subscription. Corona/Chaos team should really offer its users a more attractive deal, otherwise some will be forced to look somewhere else.
A few small points: one person mentioned dropping Corona last price increase to move to V-Ray - V-Ray has a price increase right now too, as an fyi. Another noted about AI, commenting there’s nothing listed on the Corona map compared to “other software”, but that’s because it’s an overall Chaos initiative - see Chaos Innovation Lab for the things that are being investigated or actively worked on (and Corona will benefit from these too of course). And of course we are attentive to your feedback and comments here as well.
I’m disapointed here too. Like every commercial software just keeps increasing in price. Some add features people want, some don’t, and people want different things. However, the landscape is shifting towards open source and real time for many people, and the timing is just feels way off.
When the price was increased before we also got Phoenix etc, and Chaos could cash in on many more users by bundeling software and charging for something they were producing anyway.
If this increase was timed with “now Anima is included” I would’ve jumped out of my chair screaming hooray! Now the feeling is just “what? why? Is it an indication of a new direction and is going to keep happening every year? And has Corona usage decreased so much they have to charge more to break even or what is this?”
And to everyone working at Chaos/Corona I really like using the product. It’s really great at what it does. For me it’s the best and most fun to use CPU-renderer.
No mention in the email about what happens with long term, legacy FairSaaS users with render nodes. If I recall from the last price increase, those on the ‘Premium’ plan got to keep the nodes. What is happening this time? We’re in for a €2000 increase that wasn’t budgeted for if this changes. Not the best timing to release this increase after annual budgets are submitted.
There’s no change there, if you have historical “+3 render nodes”, as long as that subscription renews and remains unbroken, it remains “+3 render nodes”. Just it renews at the new price for a Premium subscription of course. (If that had been changing, details would have been in the email)
Oh! That was the other thing I was going to mention - the Academy videos. Next one is out next week. Releases always put these on hold as we have to focus on making tutorials for the new features to go on YT, and then we were right into the vacation period, which is why there is a longer delay than usual there. But we’re getting back into the swing of those, with them top priority again and YT videos moving back to second place 
It is not too bad assuming that I was sent the increase in AUD dollars.
My first impression was emotional, and I saw the new prizes. I stopped my subscription. After some days, I calmed down and watched it with fresh eyes. I looked at it differently and activated my subscription again.
The increase is just a few dollars using the yearly subscription, and a library of 1000’s ready-to-use assets and materials are also included. Alone this Asset LIB that grows constantly is worth the extra costs.
On the other hand, Corona Renderer in Cinema 4D and Max is the most stable combination compared to other Renderers. In conclusion, I will stay with Chaos Corona.