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10 Chaos Corona

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Chaos Corona
  

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Chaos Corona 10

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

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!

V-Ray
Corona
Enscape
Vantage

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 10 lighting

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

corona atmospheric

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

Ecosystem – Chaos Corona Premium subscription

Your Chaos Corona Premium subscription includes several powerful Chaos tools that will expand what you can tackle in your projects and help with your workflow.

The following three Chaos tools are included in your Corona Premium subscription, though they are also still available to purchase separately too.

Chaos Phoenix (3ds Max only)

Add drama and interest to your scenes with realistic simulations of fire, water, oceans, and more. Chaos Phoenix is an artist-friendly tool for creating all types of dynamic effects.

And it’s not just for VFX. In arch-viz, it’s perfect for creating pools, fountains, and fireplaces. For automotive specialists, it can help you burn some rubber in your next car animation. There are a million ways to use the power of the Phoenix!

Chaos Scans

There are some materials that are impossible to recreate with any number of parameters and maps in a generalized material, as they have a unique way of responding to light. This is where Chaos Scans comes in. Each material in the library is meticulously scanned to capture how it interacts with light so that you can drag and drop it into your scene for 100% accuracy in both look and scale.

This comes into its own with materials such as leather, clothing fabrics, car paints, and reflective and holographic materials. With just a click you can add these materials to your scene, confident that you are recreating reality without spending hours trying to build the material for yourself.

Chaos Player

Your frames just finished rendering. Now you want a fast and easy way to review your animation. That’s what Chaos Player is built for. Simply load your rendered sequence and hit play.

In addition to its smooth and fast playback, Chaos Player includes tools for quick compositing, color corrections, and collaboration. It’s perfect for reviews and approvals.

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

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

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.

Full release notes

 

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...


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