In a surprise move, Chaos Group has announced at the 2017 D2 Conference that they have acquired Render Legion. Corona Renderer will continue to be developed as a separate product, maintaining the same personnel.
Technology and IPs will be shared between the two popular renderers. According to the announcement this has already started to happen, revealing that V-Ray’s DMC sampler is responsible for the 2x speed increases seen in Corona 1.6 hotfix 2. Short-term plans also include the inclusion of VFX features in Corona 1.7 which were co-developed with Chaos Group, and compatibility between assets so that materials, proxies, lights etc. will work in either engine.
You can see the announcement in a recording of the D2 livestream on Facebook and read more on Render Legion’s blog and Chaos Group’s website.
Clever.
Would i have the same financial capacities, business objectivites and a potential disturbing competitor, i would do exactly the same. Problems solved.
This is for me a news of the year 🙂
It does make my life more exciting, but I’m not sure any problems would be magically resolved 🙂
Why would it be news of the year?
Best regards,
Vlado
Hi Vlado,
The reason this is big news, is a lot of people in archviz sees corona as the new best thing, the vray killer, the easier to use with better results, exactly how vray took over the arch viz scene about 10-12 years ago.
Most people don’t realize that you and the corona guys seems to be quite good friends, they also dont realize that a lot of what makes corona so good, and what makes vray improve the way it has, all comes from the same technical papers or internal developments which are being passed around.
Autodesk has shown us how to acquire companies or competition, to then just completely ruin the potential and barely either break the new company everyone loved before it was AD, or they make some half baked implementation into max or maya. It makes people sad.
So hopefully, both products gets to run like they have, but personally I also hope there still will be a little competition in development between the teams, even though I know most renders today are basically the same from a raytracing point of view, I hope we dont just end up with identical renders with 2 different interfaces.
Anyway good luck with it! I am excited to see where this leads to.
/Thomas
Hi Vlado! Thanks for feedback – i mean actually positiv : It is for me the most valuable “fusion” of the year because it unites instead of separating the max render engine market. And i hope we can soon unify our code in Flatiron, supporting in one pass both renderes ? (yes i am egoistic – for me it would be one problem less ?
Maybe not news of the year but I appreciate the idea that two small companies can merge for the better. I know Chaos group isn’t small anymore but compared to Autodesk it is.
I feel like the user will win in this merge when he looses when brainless Autodesk buys another company…
Vlado you know for sure that the shadow of mordor (aka Autodesk behaivor) is the mind of a lot of people when they read the news. Big fish eat small fish, Autodesk buy maya… 3dsmax almost dead…
I’m pretty sure this is a very smart move to fight against Autodesk Arnold but time will tell if that’s good news for Corona Customers or not.
Sad. Competition between products always favored the users.Corona, while relatively much younger, still managed to do certain things better. Most impressive for me is the speed and functionality of it’s interactive rendering modes while running solely on CPU.
Chaos Group may try to keep both renderers for a while,but it’s obvious what happens eventually. Anyways, better Chaos Group than Autodesk, right?
This is great news!
My 2 favourite render engines joining forces, I cant wait to see what is in store for us archviz guys!
Yes, given the track record in our industry we were expecting some of those reactions. Ultimately it depends on the intentions and the will of the developers; and we are determined to make things work. I don’t really think that there can be one engine to rule them all; from an engineering point of view it’s just difficult to come up with a software architecture that is able to fulfill every single user requirement. It’s not like in sports, where there has to be one winner. I do think that collaboration is a better strategy.
Best regards,
Vlado
I do hope you can show everyone that how Autodesk does things isn’t the only way.
And since Vray is available on more platforms, hope to see Corona get more ports too!
I don’t believe economic competition is pushing for innovation, the same way democracy isn’t these days. I really think it is a matter of exceptional individuals, not brainless corporation. These two companies have the most brilliant individuals driving them. That’s why I really trust that this merger is going to bring things the users don’t even know they need yet!
It’s not even a track-record in this industry. It happens anywhere where a company buys a competing product. Even if the owners, CEOs don’t want to they will somehow stiffle the recently bought product… it always happens even through all that nice-talk about how things won’t change.. they will.
I know it’s futile to argue; but let’s actually see what happens before declaring doom and gloom… I think things will be all right in the end.
Best regards,
Vlado
I like this news. Both render engines have the strengths and weaknesses. That’s why I use both at the moment depending on the task. Being able to share assets will be a huge help. I also hope seeing both engines gain from each other. And if at some point you have to merge both into one, hey… then be it. If we get a better tool for the job, I am happy. Just don’t do it the Autodesk style!
I have mixed feeling regarding this, on one side I’m happy because this gives render legion a much bigger space for work, Corona a faster pace in development and the support of Chaos Group and their knwoledge, on the other side there are several fears, first of all the price tag of Corona, Corona is much more accesible than Vray, will this still survive? will maybe this affect Vray and become more accesible too or will Vray price scheme affect Corona and make it less accesible?
Maybe both products could live together for some time, but I’m also unsure about the possibility that in the future Corona will become part of Vray and just left in the dust to die, not today, and not in one or two months, but in two years or so.
In general I trust Vlado A LOT, he’s always been communicative, transparent and sincere, so I fully trust in his words, Ondra has also been communicative, open and sincere, so I don’t have reasons to not trust them, the concern is just pure speculation based on other companies behaviour, but Chaos Group and Render Legion both have a history on being faithful to their words, even when their words are not liked by everyone.
Now on other topic, I hope this could give Corona’s Blender integration a full impulse due to the Chaos Group support to Blender and Vray for Blender, will we probably will acquire rather sooner than later, Cycles is awesome but we need also faster renders and different features sometimes, so Vray is the most logical option 🙂
Cheers!
Verona? 🙂
All kidding aside.. I would like to see some of Corona’s features in Vray to Maya. (Max is given)
Capulets and Montagues lived in Verona
V-Rona
is that lawsuit between octane and fstorm over yet?
if not i wonder if it will take a turn now.
looks like vlado is now in charge of the luck he once wished him back then in the comments here 😉
Nice to see the two nicest devs in the industry working together. Good luck to all. Remember that these are not publicly traded companies (AFAIK), and the decisions are not made by uninterested stock holders who do not care about the industry, so equating it with Autodesk buyouts is not that appropriate IMO.
Yeah, that is one of the reasons because I trust in this agreement 🙂
Cheers
Vray is currently growing in the movie industry. I really think that Vray will not be the king of arch viz for much longer but corona will so I believe Vray will be focusing on the movies market where you need versatility and corona will be focusing on bussines where you just need to render and put technicallity aside
With the help of chaosgroup’s experience, corona will grow very rapidly and it will take over the arch viz industry for sure while vray focuses entirely in the way Vray needs to evolve to satisfy the movie market where mostly renderman and arnold dominate.
So vray for vfx and corona for archviz? In this terms it sounds really as a bad news!
Both engines will continue to be developed based on user feedback; we don’t plan to restrict any specific features to one engine or the other. However, writing a renderer that does absolutely everything very well is impossible. The renderers have different architectures, and some things will be more efficient in one renderer than another.
Best regards,
Vlado
Jose – – possibly, but I sure hope not…this makes it VERY analogous to what happened with Autodesk (and which Autodesk to this day tries to deny).
Before the Maya and Softimage acquisitions, Max got development in ALL areas. After, it seems more and more like Maya gets the Vfx tools, and Max gets Design Viz and games…sure there’s crossover, but Autodesk clearly doesn’t care about giving Max quality Vfx tools.
Unless Vray/Corona allow crossover licensing, we may find some people get stranded when they bought a product that does Function A and Function B specifically to do Function A, and then the two companies decide to devote the renderer they bought to Function B and the OTHER to A.
Could be a big problem for existing owners.
I guess everyone has an opinion. But on the last 2 years we had a LOT of tools focused mostly for VFX in max. MCG? Bullet implementation? Datachannels? Arnold?
And they are fast to write, but they are huge beast each of this ones.
Vray/corona. I think its great, I use vray at work, and played with corono on his initial beta and really impress with his speed. But now that I tried Arnold at home, and being integrated inside max (yes, one license, but is the default), being so easy to use and create so stunning images without worring at all for settings, Vray needed a huge boost.
Jim Todd- Well, you pretty much explained the whole thing and it totally makes sense. It will not probably happen overnight but there are features that Vray currently has that you do not really need for arch viz but on the other hand , you really need a good displacement algorithm for arch viz and corona does not have but it will soon and as you said Maya for vfx and max for arch viz. I also believe that the development of vray for Maya has become faster in the past few years so now you get the same version in a month or two after max release and corona only work for max… To make story short star with corona and if you make to the big leagues just use vray and look, they both a very similar and what a coincidence the are fully compatible
What was the “Viz” tool???
maybe a GPU version of Corona? cpu rendering is slowly becoming the VHS tape of the rendering world
I’m not sure why people are so pissed off. I’m just dumbfounded by the negativity of some commenters here and in other places on the internet! For me this is awesome news! Two of the greatest render engine developers joining forces. What could be better?
The Corona guys couldn’t have gotten a better deal in their life if they wished! Chaos Group are one of the best (if not the best) software companies I’ve had the privilege to work with. I’m sure Corona will be in good hands. Most importantly, Chaos actually know their sh*t and can offer them more than just money. They can offer them opportunities and share their priceless technical knowledge accumulated in more than 15 years of development and research.
Would you have preferred Render Legion to end up in Autodesk’s hands? Or some financial entity that may offer them some money but have ZERO knowledge and passion in 3D? Just imagine for a second.
You should check out this podcast with Ondrej and Vlado: https://labs.chaosgroup.com/index.php/rendering-rd/cg-garage-podcast-137-ondrej-and-vlado-corona-and-v-ray/
Any chance Corona will become GPU accelerated?
in the podcast they mentioned they might offload some functions to GPU like the denoiser.
I’m happy with this news. We all know this is a far from ideal world, so for these devs to join forces and share knowledge, I can only see it as a positive move. Who knows what business forces are at play behind the scenes here, and what alternative scenarios might have played out in the mid-term. Anyway, perhaps there will remain an element of healthy competition between the teams, a kind of positive sibling rivalry.. I hope that will be the case. Nobody knows where the industry will take us in the mid to long term. Maybe Autodesk with Arnold will be more of a disrupter to the render market than we realize. Perhaps way down the line the Vray and Corona will naturally merge into a single product. In the meantime I’m sure things will only improve for users of both renderers. Good luck guys..
…well, if you don’t like this development, but you LOVE rental, switch to FinalRender!
Apparently the new version of FR is ‘subscription-based’ – – so MR is gone from Max, true, but now you just need to figure out which rendering engine you want to rent to plug into your rented package.
Do you know that 90% of Corona users chose rental?
@Anon I did not…the main issue I have (2nd paragraph) remains: fewer and fewer OPTIONS to license beyond rental. Max has become a rented core where key components now need to be rented to make it worth having.