12 Chaos Corona

Basic Facts

• Corona Renderer is entirely CPU-based (with optional GPU denoising which requires a compatible NVIDIA GPU)
• Offers unbiased and biased rendering
• The two commercially available plugins work with 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 Preview Denoisers during interactive rendering, you need:
  • For the NVIDIA GPU AI denoiser: an NVIDIA GPU with Maxwell or newer architecture and the newest GPU driver. Not all mobile GPUs are supported.
  • For the Intel CPU / GPU AI denoiser: an NVIDIA GPU with Volta, Turing, Ampere, Ada Lovelace, Hopper, or newer architecture or an AMD GPU with RDNA2 (Navi 21 only), RDNA3 (Navi 3x), or newer architecture.
    Note: these denoisers are optional, and Corona works fine even if they are not installed. 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 -2025
• 64-bit Microsoft Windows (10 or newer)
• Installation requires administrator privileges
• Distributed rendering also requires Autodesk Backburner, available for free from Autodesk

Cinema 4D version

• 64-bit MAXON Cinema 4D R17-2024
• 64-bit Microsoft Windows (10 or newer) or macOS (10.14 or newer)
• Installation requires administrator privileges

AI Denoiser

• To ensure smooth operation and best performance for interactive denoisers (NVIDIA OptiX and Intel OIDN), 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, it’s only needed for good viewport performance in your host software (3ds Max or Cinema 4D). Rendering in Corona is purely CPU-based

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 some specific hardware manufacturers and models: https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php?board=32.0

Corona 12

Corona to Vantage scene export

Corona 12 supports scene export to Vantage, a high-quality visualization environment enabling 3D artists to swiftly explore and showcase their work in a fully ray-traced setting. This integration empowers Corona users with active Vantage licenses to flexibly choose between CPU and GPU rendering workflows based on their hardware and project requirements, significantly accelerating scene exploration and rendering.

With this initial integration, you can export your Corona scenes in .vrscene format and open them in Vantage.

Once in Vantage, you can explore your scenes by navigating them in real-time and rendering images in seconds. This is ideal for faster scene exploration, test renders, and even final renders when full photorealism is not required. For full realism, you can switch back to Corona and render those scenes on the CPU by replicating the camera angles you discovered in Vantage.

It’s also possible to import your Corona scenes into Vantage to create animations using Vantage’s animation features, benefiting from the lightning-fast speed of GPU rendering.

The second stage of the Corona and Vantage integration will enable a live link between the tools, allowing you to render animations created in 3ds Max and Cinema 4D in Vantage. This is expected with Corona 13 towards the end of 2024, so stay tuned!

Curved Decals

Curved Decals allow you to perfectly bend labels to round or curved objects such as bottles and cups without any distortions and with incredible ease. Labels can be bent up to 360 degrees to map a pattern around an object. In addition, decals can now be bent around a second axis, allowing you to add decals to spherical objects like balls, balloons, and more.

Additionally, a toggleable lock button has been added that locks the width-to-height aspect ratio for the Decal.

New Virtual Frame Buffer (VFB 2)

With Corona 12, we are introducing an improved version of the Virtual Frame Buffer (VFB) with a more intuitive UI and many new features.

With VFB 2, you can:

• Drag and drop a Corona EXR (CXR) file into the VFB itself and immediately continue editing it, even without the original scene being loaded in 3ds Max or Cinema 4D.
• Easily compare images with different resolutions and aspect ratios using the new A/B comparison option.
• Enjoy a smoother workflow by having multiple LightMix elements where each one has its own settings. This allows you to save different lighting setups (e.g., night and day) in one image instead of having separate configuration files for each LightMix setup. You get more information in one file and keep things tidier.
• Speed up the iteration process and save valuable processing time by choosing to defer the calculation of bloom and glare until the end of the render.
• Use new Gamma, Lift, and Gain parameters for tone mapping.
• Enjoy a more polished look and a snappier performance of the UI.
• And more!

VFB 2 also brings history management improvements and other smaller enhancements that make it more intuitive and easy to navigate.

Corona Pattern improvements

With the new Corona Pattern improvements, you can now use a geometric object as a helper to define the crop box, letting you use vertex editing and snapping tools to easily cut out the pattern geometry without any resulting glitches, holes, seams, etc. Also, in Corona for 3ds Max (and as soon as we can for Cinema 4D), you can create materials that were previously impossible. You get the flexibility of choosing whether the maps follow the base object UV, the pattern object UV, or both.

For example, if you are working on a blanket or other textile material, you can have one bump map for wrinkles mapped across the entire base UV of the blanket while the individual pattern segments repeat a diffuse pattern. Or you can repeat the color by pattern and mix it with an overall color across the base object, such as an image of a blanket mixed with various colored fibers.

Additionally, in both 3ds Max and Cinema 4D, you can now define the visibility of the pattern using a shader to create holes or gaps in the applied pattern, automatically generate caps over holes created by the slicing of the Pattern Crop Box, and more easily see the direction that the pattern will be applied thanks to a normal direction indicator on the Crop Box which shows the direction that will face “outward” when applied to the base object.

With the help of Corona Pattern, you can achieve much more realistic results with just a few simple clicks.

Scatter Instance Brush (Corona for 3ds Max)

Another great new feature in Corona 12 for 3ds Max is Scatter Instance Brush, which gives you further creative control over the scattering process. It allows you to refine a procedural scatter to get the exact results you want.

Using a brush, you can now delete procedural instances or paint in new ones to achieve maximum realism. At the time of painting in instances, you can choose whether those instances are affected by the scatter rules of altitude, slope, and spline include/excludes – or not! Scatter Instance Brush will be implemented in Corona for Cinema 4D as soon as we can.

Corona Sky improvements

Fading in from day to night has never been better. The improved Corona Sky supports even lower angles for sun below the horizon (down to -12 degrees, compared to the previous -4.2 degrees), which makes day/night animations and still images more realistic and immersive.

Corona Sky also now includes a Density parameter — lower it to make your clouds thin and wispy all the way down to invisible, or raise it to make them dense and thunderously heavy.

Smaller improvements in Corona 12

• Cryptomatte sees a couple of improvements, allowing you to set up Cryptomatte by material, and additionally the Cryptomatte render element now works correctly in Distributed Rendering (3ds Max) and Team Render (Cinema 4D), and when using Resume Render.
• Material conversions have been improved, in particular the conversion from VRayMaterial to the Corona Physical material (especially for metals and materials with colored reflections), and this change also influences imports from Chaos Cosmos. In Cinema 4D, the Scene Converter has also been improved to convert between Corona and C4D bitmaps, and now supports conversion of V-Ray lights.
• The Corona Material library is now also available on Chaos Cosmos which can save you time when switching between the two asset libraries.

Additional smaller improvements

Scatter

(Cinema 4D)

• Added option to enable edge trimming via checkbox (removing the need to modify individual materials used on scattered objects).
• Added spline UI for additional control of Look At in Chaos Scatter.

(3ds Max)

• Improved performance of surface scattering when using a density map.
• Introduced on-demand mesh optimization/simplification (controlled by the polygon limit) to ease the viewport load in full mesh preview mode.
• Extended the UI, so translate, rotate, scale and density control maps could be disabled/enabled more easily.
• Introduced hit-testing optimization, which overcomes a very noticeable lag on hovering/selecting scatter with many visible instances.
• Improved viewport draw performance in Full and Box preview modes.
  • Introduced adaptive previz for these two modes, which improves the responsiveness in case of frequent viewport redraws and large number of instances.

Lister

(3ds Max and Cinema 4D)

• Lister – added option to reorder tabs by mouse dragging.

(Cinema 4D)

• Lister now shows instance count also for Chaos Scatter and Cinema 4D Cloner and Array.
• Lister dialog numeric widgets now use the same step size as standard C4D UI.
• Removed instance count column in scatter lister tab as it was confused with scatter instance count.

Material Editor (Cinema 4D)

• Added option to select connected nodes (incoming and/or outgoing). Incoming nodes can also be selected by Alt + left click.
• When a new material/shader is added, all newly added nodes are selected.
• Added option to Solo nodes, which uses self-illumination.
• Flattened plugins submenu when creating a shader.
• Avoid node stacking in the UI when adding multiple bitmaps via drag&drop.

Standalone Export (Cinema 4D)

• Fixed incorrect custom gamma when exporting C4D bitmap to Standalone.
• Export to Standalone now supports:
  • C4D filter shader
  • Checkerboard
  • Normal direction
  • Fresnel
  • Gradient
  • Falloff
  • Fusion
  • Layer

General

(3ds Max and Cinema 4D)

• Improved performance of Corona renderer with bucket rendering on high-core count machines.
• Improved rendering speed up to 25% on DUAL CPUs.
• Added accurate sampling mode for environment maps that is slower but delivers more accurate results, especially for large environment maps.
• Optimized cloud generation.
• Added the ability to zoom and navigate in the curve editor.
• Added the option to apply a LUT in linear color space instead of a gamma-mapped one.
• Added the option to have the Corona Curvature map unaffected by Bump.
• Added option to distinguish media based on their material (e.g., two intersecting objects with the same material will be now considered as a single volume). This is automatically active for new scenes.
• A warning is shown when old sky data is installed on the system and Sun elevation is set below 4.2 degrees.
• Added warning about deprecating Corona Material Library and moving it to Cosmos.
• Added 3 toggleable locks to the tilemap UI, which constrain tile size & offset & shrinking.
• Added option to generate tiles bump in Tile shader.
• Added the Alpha interaction option in Scanned material.

(Cinema 4D)

• Added rotation parameter in Corona bitmap.
• Added tooltips in Corona Sun.
• Bump UI in Physical material is now enabled by default for new materials.
• Extended the maximum shutter speed in Corona camera to 10’000.
• Extended the maximum time limit of render from 24 hours to 240 hours.
• The Legacy options in the Development/Experimental section in render settings were organized into a single section.
• Fixed problem with “Save selected objects as…” resetting materials and not saving connected sub-materials in C4D 2024.
• Removed “Ignore missing tiles” option in Corona Bitmap as it was only used for error reporting; instead, the number of loaded tiles is now directly included in the image description.

(3ds Max)

• Significantly improved speed of loading of Corona and Scatter plugins.
• Considerably sped up saving in 3ds Max (up to 10 times in some scenes), when the scene contains Corona Bitmaps.
• Added “Additional outputs” to MultiMap.
• Added possibility to use batch loading together with additional inputs of MultiMap.
• Viewport display of camera’s focal plane was enabled in the camera view and parameters to enable it and change its opacity were added.
• Added option to select objects in the scene that will be included in/excluded from environment illumination.
• Added rollout in CoronaCamera to define Environment Overrides.
• Added the option to override the environment map in Corona Camera.
• Corona VFB now displays the rendered image with the correct display/view transform when OCIO color management is used.
• Added information about Corona EXR color space in the history item tooltip.
• Corona Bitmap will now use the Color space selected in the Open file dialog.
• Added message box with confirmation of deletion of animation keys/layers in SceneCleaner Power Tool.
• Added glossiness mapping for clear-coat in CoronaScannedMtl.

Corona 11 (Hotfix 2) for Cinema 4D

April 17, 2024

• Fixed rare NAN in Caustics solver.
• Fixed rare NAN caused by an error in VFB.
• Fixed issue with all Scanned materials having the same color in ID pass.
• Fixed issue with visibility, masks propagation, and Material ID not working for Scanned material.
• Fixed issue where changing tone mapping after rendering finishes would reset the color profile of an image in Picture viewer.
• Updated distributed Chaos Cosmos installer to the latest version.

Corona 11 (Hotfix 2) for 3ds Max

April 15, 2024

• Compatibility with Autodesk 3ds Max 2025 version. (Improvement)
• Added a warning about Corona not fully supporting OCIO color management workflow. (Improvement)
• Fixed rare NAN in Caustics solver.
• Fixed rare NAN caused by an error in VFB.
• Fixed issue where some scenes with Chaos Scatter might never complete loading.
• Fixed issue where using Isolate would lead Scatter to recompute and thus slow down viewport interaction.
• Fixed an issue with improper display of the edge trimming tooltip.
• Fixed incorrect edge trimming for instances of hierarchical/group models.
• Fixed edge trimming map usage detection for the hierarchical/group models.
• Fixed include/exclude areas filtering for on-spline scattering.
• The Gamma Correction operator, added during the previous hotfix, is now removed. Corona will automatically apply the needed correction depending on 3ds Max color management settings.

Corona 11 (Hotfix 1) for 3ds Max

This hotfix addresses some specific issues and all Corona 11 users for 3ds Max are recommended to download it.
Download now: https://corona-renderer.com/download

The issues are:

• Fixed a crash with the nodes group replacement in ObjectReplacer.
• Fixed issue where sun is disconnected from its target after loading a scene.
• Fixed DrServer crashing, when passing `–noGui` switch.
• Fixed color picker stuttering when changing values via HWB.
• Fixed crash when Chaos Scatter distributes empty Corona Proxy.
• Fixed issue where color picker was causing infinite restarts of IR and could display value with alpha < 1, when alpha was not being modified.
• Fixed rare crash in Scanned Material.
• Fixed issue where switching from one color swatch to another would change to color of the original color swatch.
• Fixed issue in DR where the values for 3ds Max version and maximum directory size were not remembered between sessions.
• (Scatter) Fixed issue where using Isolate would lead Scatter to recompute and thus slow down viewport interaction.
• (Scatter) Fixed an issue with the improper display of the edge trimming tip.
• (Scatter) Fixed incorrect edge trimming for instances of hierarchical/group models.
• (Scatter) Fixed edge trimming map usage detection for the hierarchical/group models.
• (Improvement) Added Gamma Correction tone mapping operator.

There are no other changes.

New in Corona 11

• Easily create stunning bathrooms, kitchens, walls, and floors with procedural tiles thanks to Corona Tile Map
• Define upper and lower limits for scattering, creating more realistic nature scenes with Scatter Altitude (i.e. treeline, waterline, cloudy mountaintops)
• Fast and easy way to have scattered items look in the same direction using Scatter Look At (i.e. people watching a movie screen, fish swimming in a tank)
• Easily apply effects like weathering and staining to the edges of objects with Edge Map/Edge shader
• Enhance your scenes with smoke, fire, and other Pyro simulations directly in Corona for Cinema 4D
• Take advantage of our new Corona Power Tools in Corona for 3ds Max allowing you to speed up the design process, including Object Replacer, Selection Randomizer, and adjusting of pivot points
• Reduce the loss of detail in those channels that can come with using a smaller render resolution or moving an object further away from the camera by using the Improved Normal / Bump filtering
• Enjoy improved results with the new Intel Denoiser which can run on CPU or NVIDIA GPU.
• Take advantage of the color management options offered by the latest version of 3ds Max and Cinema 4D

Full Release Notes

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

Which 3D renderer should I choose?