Corona Renderer Install

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Withgreat pleasure, we announce the release of Corona Renderer 1.7 for Autodesk 3ds Max! In this release we focus on massive rendering speedups, accelerating your workflow, and making your 3D people look amazingly realistic!

Demo Refresh: If you have tried Corona Renderer before and your 45-day trial expired, you will be glad to know we have automatically refreshed the demo period to give everyone an extra 14 days! Simply download and install 1.7 from the link above, and you can activate the refreshed demo period right from within Max, so you can try out all the new features for yourself! Enjoy!

As most of you already know, on August 25th 2017 we announced the merger with Chaos Group, the makers of V-Ray. Corona Renderer 1.7 brings the first fruits of the union with new technology integrated into Corona Renderer from V-Ray. You can learn more on our announcement blog post.

This is capable of speeding up your render by 2 times, and is on by default for all new and old scenes. The sampler is in fact the DMC sampler from V-Ray, one of the first benefits for Corona Renderer users arising from the merger with Chaos Group! (Note: The sample images here did not take advantage of the new optional Adaptive Direct Light Sampling, to isolate the changes from the DMC sampler alone!)

This optional new algorithm can speed up your renders by up to 6 times by learning which scene lights are important at a particular location. Those lights then receive more rays than the others, resulting in a lower noise level.

The new algorithm can give benefits whenever there are at least two lights in the scene, and it has no parameters that you need to set. The biggest benefits will be seen when there are many lights, or where the lights have complex emission profiles, or in scenes with high occlusion (where a lot of the lighting is blocked by obstacles).

Hair has particular unique qualities that need a dedicated shader. The CoronaHairMtl shader is physically accurate, and handles the unique highlights and transmission properties that hair requires, while still rendering quickly and giving you the ease of use in controlling the material that you expect from Corona Renderer.

The new SSS Mode in the CoronaMtl is ideal for creating solid materials with SSS effects, such as marble, wax, food and others with easier control and more realistic results than before. Now you do not need to use Opacity, Refraction or Translucency and can control the effect purely from the Subsurface Scattering Amount, Radius and Scatter Color.

The previous Volumetric mode has been retained for creating liquids, glass, clouds, fog and similar materials that include translucency or refraction, and for backwards compatibility with existing materials.

Some refractive materials bend light by a different amount depending on the wavelength of the light. This is called dispersion and creates a rainbow effect in the refracted light. Dispersion can be enabled in the standard Corona Material, and is controlled by the single Abbe number parameter. Enabling it adds realism to gemstones, glass, liquids and other materials.

Rather than apply a modifier to a native 3ds Max camera, you can now use the dedicated CoronaCam! You add this object to your scene right from the Command Panel > Cameras > Standard. It features all the controls you get from a native 3ds Max Physical Camera, plus all the Corona post-processing options, panorama / VR options, and more, making it easy to save unique settings of these parameters for different cameras.

By default, 3ds Max treats bump maps differently, so that some maps do not work as inputs to bump mapping. The Corona Bump Converter resolves this, allowing you to use any map as an input to the bump map channel in a shader.

The Corona UVW Randomizer map allows applying random offset / rotation / scale to textures and maps applied to different objects. For example, you can randomize a wood texture applied to a set of planks so that each has a different look in your final render.

As always after a release, we will be starting work right away on the next version. Detailed plans for Corona Renderer 2 and preliminary plans for 3 are already laid out and work has begun! Version 2 will be more focused on optimizations, tweaks, debugging, and quality of life improvements, to solidify all the major changes made in the last few versions.

If you have an active FairSaaS subscription (monthly or yearly), or you have Box with an active subscription, then simply download the new installer from -renderer.com/download and run it, and you will be upgraded! Thanks! Tom

Demo Refresh: If you have tried Corona Renderer before and your 45-day trial expired, you will be glad to know we have automatically refreshed the demo period to give everyone extra 14 days! Simply download and install Corona Renderer 2 from the link above, and activate the demo license right from within Max, so you can try out all the new features for yourself! Enjoy!

That means this release is Corona Renderer 2, and not Corona Renderer 1.8. Our next release will be Corona Renderer 3. We will continue to release smaller fixes and vital updates as hotfixes in between main versions, if necessary.

Just a few weeks ago, Corona Academy 07 set a record for the number of attendees, with 14 Corona experts sharpening their Corona knowledge. In fact, it was so many that while setting up the room, we tripped the power breakers due to having so many computers up and running in one room!

Support has been added for heterogeneous volumes, which means Corona Renderer now supports Phoenix FD, FumeFX, OpenVDB, and 3ds Max texture maps. This includes full support for multi-bounce GI inside the volumes and motion blur, so now you can render smoke, fire, liquids and more in your favourite render engine!

OpenVDB files can be created in a variety of software, for example SideFX Houdini, Phoenix FD, Blender, etc. These can be loaded and rendered using the CoronaVolumeGrid object, which then allows you to set Absorption, Scattering and Emission properties for the VolumeGrid. These properties can be driven by the density, velocity, temperature, and other extra data contained within the OpenVDB file.

This new mode allows the CoronaVolume material to render actual volumes inside objects, rather than just calculating the result at the surface of the object. It can work with native 3ds Max noise maps, in Object or World XYZ mode, which calculate noise in 3D space.

Positive values of Center Bias expand the bokeh into rings, while negative values compress the bokeh highlights. Positive values of Vignetting give a harder edge to the Bokeh toward the outside of the image, while negative values create a harder edge to the Bokeh highlights toward the center of the image:

Bladed bokeh now has the same area as the circular bokeh

In earlier versions of Corona Renderer, the Bladed bokeh option had a different area than the default Circular bokeh, and this has been corrected. Also, the rotation of Bladed bokeh is now consistent, independent of the camera view.

Previously, adaptivity could over-sample darker areas, at the expense of processing lighter areas of the image. Adaptivity has been improved to avoid this, so that lighter areas of the image now show less noise, which results in faster rendering:

If you need to use these two functions at the same time (as formerly with the Output map), it is also possible to use both of the maps (ColorCorrect plugged into TonemapControl) to both adjust the appearance of the texture and exclude it from the VFB post-processing.

Providing support and compatibility for older versions of 3ds Max takes extra development time and manpower. Due to the very small number of users still using this version of 3ds Max, and in order to move forward with all the new features, functionality and software that we have planned as quickly as possible, we are discontinuing support for 3ds Max 2012.

Corona is still provided for these versions of Max, but due to the nature of 3ds Max licensing, we do not have access to these versions for testing. This means these versions are not officially supported as we cannot guarantee that they will work correctly, nor can we guarantee any bug fixes for those versions (unless the problem also happens in the newer versions).

Legacy version of Corona Renderer plugin was removed from the installer:

Today, around 98% of all installations are on machines capable of running the Full Speed version, and we feel that this is the right time to discontinue the Legacy version.

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I read Hair rendering is now supported on the standalone version, does it means native 3ds max Hair & fur only or also other solutions like Hair farm and Ornatrix?

Great news for volumetric shaders!

Hi! Certainly is, there would be various ways to achieve the look depending on your scene / needs. A great way to get some suggestions would be to post over on the forums, where users will be able to discuss how they have achieved the effect ? -renderer.com/forum/ is the link. Thanks! Tom

That is really cool that you can render V-Ray assets now. It would be nice to have an FD 3DS max V-Ray. Maybe that is something that I would want to look into sometime soon to have a little bit more insight.

To install Chaos Corona, simply run the universal installer. The installer will then guide you through the rest of the process. For more details on the installation process, please see -us/articles/4834983860241-Basic-Information-on-Corona-9-and-the-Chaos-License-Server

You can contact us for support via "Submit a request" at support.chaos.com, or by emailing sup...@corona-renderer.com. Our offices are located in the Central European Time Zone, and our office hours are Mo-Fri 10-18 CET.

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