9 Chaos Corona

Realism without the headaches.

Set your inner artist free with Chaos Corona! Forge stunning 3D renders with the power of cutting-edge computer-generated imagery, and use physical based shading to achieve maximum realism. Easy enough for beginners yet still comprehensive enough for professionals – get all you need in one package at an affordable price. Spark creativity and elevate production quality today.

New in version 9: One license now covers both 3ds Max and Cinema 4D.

Corona also now 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.

What’s new in Corona 9

The next level of realism awaits, with animatable procedural clouds and airplane trails, the ability to tile geometry as easily as a texture, neaten up those scatters with Edge Trimming, and much more.

Procedural Clouds

Procedural Clouds let you control and type of cloud cover, and they are easy to animate. They respond to Sun color and position so work at dawn or at noon, and all with minimal effect on render times.

Corona Pattern

Tile real geometry over a surface with the same ease as you’d tile a texture, for the ultimate in realism all while saving memory. Use it to create fabrics, wire fences, jewelry, and much more.

Edge Trimming (Chaos Scatter)

Now you can have control over the edges of your scatters, for keeping those lawns neat and tidy.

Chaos Scans, Player, and Phoenix included in Premium

Included in Premium are three powerful tools from Chaos. Phoenix will let you create realistic simulations of fire, smoke, water, and more.

Chaos Scans will give you access to hundreds of realistic materials that are too complex to simulate with regular materials.

While Chaos Player will give you the ability to edit and post-process your image sequences.

Shutter Curve for Motion Blur

Control the amount of blur at the start, middle, and end of the motion blur effect, replicating how it looks from a real camera.

Depth of Field for Fisheye Cameras

For artistic purposes (since real-world fisheye lenses do not show this effect), you can now add depth of field blurring to scenes rendered from fisheye cameras.

Under the hood improvements

As mentioned when we released Corona 8, we have been working on some changes under the hood to improve the user experience, such as new preservation options for Material Overrides, reduced memory required by Corona Bitmaps, improved material previews in the High-Quality viewport, and more.

Chaos Corona 9 Quick Facts

• Corona Pattern. Tile geometry across a surface as easily as you’d tile a texture.
• Procedural Clouds. Add detail to your Corona Sky, with animatable procedural clouds and airplane trails. You may never need an HDRI again.
• Edge Trimming in Chaos Scatter, a much-requested feature, is implemented in this update to Scatter.
• Chaos Scans. The ultimate realism for your materials has been cleverly scanned so that each material responds in its own unique way to lighting. Leathers, fabrics, and even foils can now be added to your scene, guaranteed to match the real world in both looks and in scale. Included in your Premium subscription.
• Chaos Player. An easy way to turn your image sequences into a video format. Now you won’t have to use a complex video editor that is overkill for your everyday needs. Included in the Premium subscription.
• Chaos Phoenix. Corona has supported Phoenix for some years, but only a few users had it added to their toolset due to the significant extra cost. Now the perfect tool for making fire, smoke, water, and more are included in your Premium subscription.
• Lots of smaller improvements. Depth of Field from the fisheye camera, new Material Override settings to preserve slicers, out-of-core texture rendering to save some memory at render time, and more.

There has also been a lot of work under the hood for code maintenance, laying the groundwork for future features and improvements after the huge update in features added in Corona 8.

Overview

All features are tightly integrated into Autodesk 3ds Max and Maxon Cinema 4D. If you are already familiar with Corona, then check out the ‘what’s new’ link below for a summary of the new things you can achieve with the latest release.

Ease of use

Usability is our most powerful feature. Render setup is really as simple as pressing “Render”. Most new users learn Corona in just one day — and fall in love with it in two.

Rendering

Chaos Corona delivers predictable, reliable, and physically plausible results with no compromises in quality. Realistic lighting and materials, including caustics, are yours right out of the box. The Corona Forum and Gallery section provide great examples of this.

Powerful workflow tools

The output quality and speed are not the only things that make a great renderer. That is why Corona comes with many “little” workflow tweaks that will make your life much easier.

Render-ready content

Time is money, so you need to create your scenes quickly and easily. Corona comes with a substantial collection of premade content – from models and assets to skies and materials – which will help you build your world in record-quick time.

Materials

Our design goal for Corona materials is to make them physically based, yet intuitive, flexible, and easy to set up.

Lights

The whole process of creating lights is designed to give artists complete control over their scene while being fast and intuitive.

Speed & interactivity

A usable renderer must always deliver final results as fast as possible and react to the user’s actions in a split second. And that is what we are always looking for.

Affordability

As a relatively young company, we have the luxury of being able to do things differently right from the start. We have taken a different approach not only in development but also when creating our pricing options.

Flexibility

We understand how important it is to be able to “bend” physical laws to deliver the results your clients expect. So Corona supports numerous reality hacks which allow you to get exactly the effect you desire.

Ecosystem

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?