10 Chaos Corona
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Realism without the headaches.
Corona is the only render engine built from the ground up with a specific focus on the needs of the archviz community. While capable and well-liked in the fields of automotive and product visualization, its UI, feature set, pricing, and ease of use are primarily driven by what architectural visualizers require.
While remaining unique with its own development team, code, and community, Corona now also benefits from being part of the Chaos platform, giving its users access to many of the industry-standard tools created by Chaos.

Corona At a Glance
Realism without the headaches.
- What it is: Intuitive, easy-to-use rendering engine optimized for designing high-quality, ultra-realistic projects that can be used for still images and animations.
- Who uses Corona? Architectural visualization, Automotive and product design, Television ads, and title sequences.
- Why Corona? Usability is Chaos Corona’s most powerful feature. Render setup is as simple as pressing “Render”.
What is the difference between Chaos’ Renderers?
Chaos V-Ray, Corona, Enscape, and Vantage are all rendering and simulation software products, but they differ in their features, industry, and user needs. Learn which renderer is right for you!




Corona comes in 2 tiers: Solo and Premium.
Solo is for artists who want to render on a single computer. Premium is ideal for customers who want access to floating licenses so they can move from computer to computer, and also have access to Chaos® companion products such as Phoenix, Player, and Scans.
Easy to use
Usability is Chaos Corona’s most powerful feature. Render setup is as simple as pressing “Render”. Most new users learn Corona in just one day — and fall in love with it in two.
Affordable
We aim to keep Chaos Corona affordable and accessible to as many people as possible, without compromising on its development and features.
Part of an ecosystem
As a Corona user, you are backed by the award-winning Chaos family. Expand your capabilities with Chaos tools guaranteed to integrate smoothly with your favorite render engine.
What’s new in Corona 10
Corona 10 is focused on giving users new creative options and streamlining their workflow, so that they can create whatever they imagine, faster than ever.
More powerful detailing of scenes
Easily add cracks, dirt, stickers, etching, embossing, and more thanks to individual control over the material channels (Diffuse, Displacement, Metalness, etc.) affected by a Corona Decal
Improved workflow
Easily find and adjust scatters, lights, proxies, displacement, and camera using the new Listers
Lighting and Environments
- Procedural Clouds now work when the Corona Sun uses a Direct Color for its lighting, allowing more flexible end results such as moonlight
- Brighter, more accurate Caustics when rendering to large resolutions
Materials
Chaos Scans gets easier to use with a variety of improvements, such as custom Bump and Displacement slots, support for Triplanar mapping, material previews showing the viewport, and more
Camera
- Fly cameras through smoke and clouds, or have them half-submerged in water with accurate rendering from Cameras inside volumetric materials such as those from Phoenix simulations
- Greatly improved highlight blurring when using Depth of Field
3ds Max workflow tweaks
Apply the same Triplanar, Color Correction, or Mapping Randomizer to multiple maps at once with new multi-input and output options. No longer will you have to edit multiple nodes or spend time setting up control nodes to keep different maps in sync
Chaos Corona 10 Overview
Rendering

Corona’s powerful CPU-only rendering delivers maximum realism with minimum effort from the user. Corona adaptively uses processing power where it is needed the most to optimize speed without compromising on quality.
- CPU rendering
- Resumable rendering
- Denoising
- Caustics
Lighting & illumination

Corona pioneered the most modern procedural Sky in any render engine, creating everything from dawn/dusk to full noon. A variety of other light types and support for many native 3ds Max and Cinema 4D lights give users all the options they need, while LightMix lets them adjust the color and intensity of lights before, during, and after rendering.
- Accurate lights
- Global Illumination
- Procedural sun and sky
- Adaptive light sampling
- LightMix
Cameras & optical effects
The Corona camera acts like a modern real-world camera and can be controlled through simple Exposure stops, through to full shutter speed, f-stop, and other controls. These are completed with advanced controls for camera effects such as Motion Blur and Bloom & Glare.
- Lens effects
- Photorealistic camera
- VR
- Fisheye
- Panoramic
Materials

The Corona Physical Material is built from the ground up to be physically realistic, while there is the option to use specialized shaders for skin, hair, and others. Many V-Ray materials can be rendered without conversion. Presets within the Physical Material and complete materials in the Corona Material Library, Chaos Cosmos, and Chaos Scans mean users never have to start from scratch.
- Physically based materials
- Corona Hair material
- Metalness
- Displacement
- Corona Converter
- Corona Material Library
- Chaos Cosmos
- Chaos Scans
Textures
Corona is compatible with almost all native 3ds Max and Cinema 4D shaders and has its own memory-efficient Corona Bitmap shader for loading images. A collection of utility texture maps allow textures to be layered, mixed, color corrected, and more.
- Memory-efficient textures
- Triplanar mapping
- Rounded corners
- UVW Randomizer
Geometry
Corona works with any native geometry, and also includes proxies, volume grids, scattering, patterning, slicing, etc.
- Proxy geometry
- Corona Slicer for render-time booleans
- Hair and Fur
- Scatters
- Patterns
Atmospheric & volumetric effects

Users can choose between simple and fast-rendering volume effect in the Corona Sky to simulate atmospheric haze or the full control of a volumetric material for more complex results.
- Volume rendering
- Aerial Perspective
- Crepuscular rays
- fog
- mist
Render Elements
For adjusting images in video or image editing software, Corona offers many Render Elements (3ds Max) and Multipasses (Cinema 4D), including Virtual Beauty, matte passes, separation of scene illumination, depth information, and more.
- Render Elements
- Cryptomatte
- Normals
- Depth
- Direct
- Indirect
Distributed rendering
Rendering with multiple computers at once is essential for any real production. Corona facilitates this in multiple ways – for example, it has its own distributed rendering system, and it is compatible with the Backburner and Thinkbox’s Deadline render farm management systems.
Proudly CPU based
Chaos Corona does not need any special hardware to run. It uses the CPU and you can run it on any processor from Intel or AMD released in the past decade.
Note: See the Details page for more information on the 3ds Max version and the Cinema 4D Version.
Corona – Which tier is right for you?
Corona Solo
$358.80 / Year
✓ Fixed license on one computer
✓ All Corona integrations
✓ Support
✓ Chaos Cosmos content library
✕ Chaos Phoenix
✕ Chaos Player
✕ Chaos Scans
Corona Premium
$478.80 / Year
✓ Floating license on any computer
✓ All Corona integrations
✓ Support
✓ Chaos Cosmos content library
✓ Chaos Phoenix
✓ Chaos Player
✓ Chaos Scans
Description
System Requirements
Basic Facts
- Corona Renderer is entirely CPU-based (with optional GPU denoising which requires a compatible NVIDIA GPU)
- Offers unbiased and biased rendering
- One license works with both 3ds Max and Cinema 4D
Hardware Requirements
- Corona requires a CPU that supports the SSE 4.1 instruction set.
Only very old CPUs don’t support it: Here is a list of compatible CPUs. - To use our optional Fast Preview Denoiser (NVIDIA OptiX), you need an NVIDIA GPU with Maxwell or newer architecture and the newest GPU driver. Not all mobile GPUs are supported.
Note: this denoiser type is optional, and Corona works fine even if it’s not installed (for example if you are using an AMD or integrated GPU). We also offer a High Quality denoiser, which utilizes purely the CPU, and this denoiser can be used on any computer which can run Corona. - There are no further specific hardware requirements.
Software Requirements
3dsMax version
- Autodesk 3ds Max x64 version 2016 -2024
- 64-bit Microsoft Windows (8, 8.1, 10, 11)
- Installation requires administrator privileges
- Distributed rendering also requires Autodesk Backburner, available for free from Autodesk
Cinema 4D version
- 64-bit MAXON Cinema 4D R17-2023
- 64-bit Microsoft Windows (8, 8.1, 10, 11) or macOS (10.14 or newer)
- Installation requires administrator privileges
GPU Denoiser
- To ensure smooth operation and best performance of our Fast Preview Denoiser (NVIDIA OptiX), please make sure you are using the newest driver available for your graphics card. The drivers can be downloaded from nvidia.com.
What hardware do you recommend?
Corona is a CPU-only renderer, so the more powerful CPU you use, the faster renders you get. You can compare the performance of various CPU models here: https://corona-renderer.com/benchmark/results
Another well-known website with various CPU benchmarks is https://www.cpubenchmark.net/
The above benchmark results are proportional to the rendering performance in Corona, so you can define your budget and pick a CPU with the highest score within that budget.
You will also need a decent graphics card, however, that is only needed for good viewport performance in your host software (3ds Max or C4D). To use the Nvidia Optix denoiser, which is integrated into Corona (but optional), you will need an Nvidia graphics card.
You will also need as much RAM as possible. Nowadays, 32 GB is the bare minimum and 64 is the standard. If you can get even more, you will be able to render even more complex scenes without running into any issues.
We do not really have any recommended hardware manufacturers or partners. You are however welcome to post on our forum, where our users can suggest you some specific hardware manufacturers and models: https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php?board=32.0
Change Log
Corona 10
- Easily add cracks, dirt, stickers, etching, embossing, and more thanks to individual control over the material channels (Diffuse, Displacement, Metalness, etc.) affected by a Corona Decal.
- Fly cameras through smoke and clouds, or have them half-submerged in water with accurate rendering from Cameras inside volumetric materials such as those from Phoenix simulations.
- Brighter, more accurate Caustics when rendering to large resolutions.
- Greatly improved highlight blurring when using Depth of Field.
- Easily find and adjust scatters, lights, proxies, displacement, and cameras using the new Listers.
- Apply the same Triplanar, Color Correction, or Mapping Randomizer to multiple maps at once with new multi input and output options. No longer will you have to edit multiple nodes or spend time setting up control nodes to keep different maps in sync.
Tutorials
When to use Corona Scatter, Pattern, & Displacement
Jake from the Corona team talks about Scatter, Pattern, and Displacement in Chaos Corona for 3ds Max.
More...