Corona Renderer 1.6 – New Features and Improvements
DOWNLOAD
If you want to just download and install while you read, you will find the latest version at:
https://corona-renderer.com/download/
Demo Refresh: If you have tried Corona 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 1.6 from the link above, and you can activate the refreshed demo period right from within Max. Enjoy!
QUICK FACTS
MORE SPEED AND FREE MEMORY
- We’re giving you up to 200% speed boost in scenes where direct lighting from HDRI environment is dominant, compared to Corona 1.5.2
- 5x faster LUT parsing
- New stratified random sampler makes noise disappear faster
- Glare is rendered 33% faster
- Interactive rendering is virtually a real-time experience now thanks to subsampling; refresh rate was also improved, and unnecessary restarts fixed
- Support for the latest Embree provides an additional 2-3% speed boost
- Memory usage is lower when using deformable motion blur
REWORKED DISTRIBUTED RENDERING
- New improved UI on master and slaves
- No more missing assets, as they are sent automatically to each render node
- Memory usage is reported by the slaves
- Adaptivity now works with DR…
- …which means faster rendering
- …and that noise limit can be used with DR
NEW FUNCTIONALITY
- Introducing the Corona Image Editor (CIE) – a portable application which loads Corona EXR files and supports all Corona VFB features, including adjusting LightMix and Denoising without re-rendering, and without running your 3D software
- LightMix has been given a generous UI upgrade, and you can now bake its properties directly into the scene
- The Corona VFB now features curves, sharpening/blurring, and various UI improvements
- Shift-click to add new render regions, and Ctrl-click and drag their borders to make them fuzzy; regions’ size and position are also saved within the file
- Corona Scatter can now scatter in regular patterns, and on splines
- Triplanar map lets you forget about seams and stretching on complex organic and geometric forms
- Multimap UI has been enhanced with frequency spinners and random gamma
- Round Edges is now virtually impossible to distinguish from real chamfered geometry, and it renders faster
- Corona Lights with directionality enabled are not rendered black anymore
- Bloom and glare now works with spherical VR renders, without seams or distortion
- Stereo images without the spherical projection can be used to create classic side-by-side stereo images and animations
- Corona Bitmaps can now be rotated using degrees when used in the Environment slot
ADDITIONAL GOODIES
- The long awaited terminator shading fix is finally here! The faceted shading on low poly objects, visible especially when bump mapping was used, is a thing of the past!
- A free set of IES profiles is now included in the installation (thanks Real-IES for providing these!)
- New photographic LUTs have been included (thanks to Kim Amland, known as Dubcat on the forums, for providing these!)
- Rendering progress on Windows taskbar lets you see progress while using other applications
- 3ds Max 2018 is supported
…AND MORE!
Full details and examples are further down the page – but first:
COMPANY NEWS
Just before we delve into the 1.6 features in detail, we want to share the latest company news.
Corona for SketchUp
We’re pleased to welcome Standa to the Corona team! He’ll be working on the integration of Corona into SketchUp, so that development can start in earnest. It’s important to us that we handle development for any platform completely in-house – while that means it takes time to find quality developers like Standa, it pays off in the long run by assuring the quality of the integration, and ensuring we can give you the same level of support, communication, and feedback no matter what 3D software you use.
Track progress and talk about the development with us at https://corona-renderer.com/forum/index.php/board,34.0.html
Corona for C4D
Development here is picking up too! The integration has been keeping pace with the development of 1.6, with the features from the 1.6 daily builds making their way into the C4D daily builds.
The long-awaited Interactive Rendering will be coming soon, based of course on the latest and improved IR in Corona 1.6. Follow the latest developments and give us your feedback at https://corona-renderer.com/forum/index.php#c4
Corona Academy
The first Corona Academy session took place in November of last year (see snapshots from the event!), and the next will be happening at the end of April – already fully booked of course! You can read more about Corona Academy, and register your interest in future Academy courses here.
We’re also seeing the first courses from Corona Primary Certified Instructors, such as State of Art Academy – we’ll also be posting those on the main Corona Academy website too.