Corona Renderer 1.5 Released

Reduced need for post-production software, increased compatibility with materials from third party software, increased stability and workflow improvements.

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Corona Renderer 1.5 has been unveiled for Autodesk 3ds Max. The second update to Corona this year focuses on significantly reducing the need for post-production software, increasing compatibility with materials from third party software. What is more, it increases stability and workflow improvements.

Quick Facts

Interactive LightMix is unique to Corona Renderer and lets you adjust intensity and color of your lights and light emitting materials during and after render – perfect for anything from subtle adjustments through to turning day into night.
Corona Materials have been updated to match evolving industry standards. This means they will work more like you expect if you are familiar with working in other engines, and gives increased compatibility when importing materials from third party software such as Allegorithmic’s Substance tools, Quixel’s Megascans, etc. Existing scenes will load with the new PBR mode disabled, and with Legacy mode enabled if necessary, to ensure they render without any changes to the materials. Also, textured Corona materials can now be previewed directly in the 3ds Max viewport.
VFB features such as bloom, glare, filmic tone mapping, vignette, and saturation give you much more creative control over the end result, reducing your need to rely on post-production software.
LUTs have been added to the VFB so that you can load .cube and .3dl LUT files to apply to your renders. The CoronaOutput map now also supports LUT processing, which can be used to apply LUTs to a bitmap or procedural map for use in your materials.
Corona Distance Map lets you create “smart” materials that know how far away they are from objects in the scene. Use this to add waves around a coastline, wear-and-tear where objects meet, dirt and noise under window sills, and more.
Corona Renderer 1.5 is freely available to all our customers on FairSaaS (monthly, yearly), Box with Subscription and Educational/Student license.
Supports Autodesk 3ds Max versions 2012-2017.

New Features

Interactive LightMix

No other renderer offers anything with this range of functionality. Interactive LightMixlets you adjust the intensity and the color of your lights, groups of lights and light-emitting materials during interactive rendering, regular rendering, or after rendering is complete, with almost negligible computing costs.

It allows for subtle adjustments, but also lets you make more extreme changes such as turning night into day, and all with an intuitive interface. Now you can render just once, and get a whole range of lighting setups!

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The individual Render Elements for each light or group of lights can also be saved separately, allowing you to recombine and adjust those in post-production, opening up a range of possibilities – not only can you tweak and adjust your lighting without the need for re-rendering (including animation sequences), you could also animate the blending in your post-production software to allow for lights to be turned on and off, night to turn into day, all from rendering just once.

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You can also save and load your LightMix setups so that the same settings can be quickly applied to different renders from the same scene. And we will monitor user feedback to push this workflow even further in the next 1.6 release with additional improvements and optimizations.

CoronaMtl Improvements

The GGX BRDF was modified in the CoronaMtl to offer the full glossiness range, bringing it in line with emerging industry standards and removing any physically incorrect dark or light “halo” at the edges of rough objects. This means it now gives expected results for all Glossiness and Fresnel values.

For compatibility, any existing scenes will load with materials that have the new PBR mode disabled, and Legacy mode enabled if necessary, to ensure they render without any changes to the look of the materials.

As well as making the behavior of materials more predictable and expected for those familiar with other software, this also gives increased compatibility with materials imported from third-party software such as Allegorithmic’s Substance tools, and Quixel’s Megascans.

In the example below, Substance Painter was used to create some materials. Notice how the render from 1.4 has particularly bright reflections at grazing angles, which was not like the material created in Painter – the changes to the CoronaMtl in 1.5 mean that Glossiness and Fresnel give the expected results.

wornmetal_painter

The same Worn Metal material exported to Corona

New VFB Image Processing

The post-processing options in the VFB have been greatly improved, reducing the need to use third-party software to carry out the most common post-processing tasks, and all the parameters can be adjusted during rendering, interactive rendering, or after rendering.

You can also save the post-processing settings to easily load and apply those to any image.Each new item is detailed below:

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Bloom

Bloom creates a large, soft glow around bright areas in the image, ideal for adding softness to windows as an example, or giving a soft glow around a candle flame. Hue Power and Shift let you adjust the hue of the effect rather than have it purely dependent on the color of the light source.

Glare

Glare creates a sharper, more-focused glow with rays from bright areas in the image. This is ideal for creating a “starburst” effect around bright highlights on cars, from bright light sources, on gemstones, etc. The Hue Power and Shift parameters affect Glare in the same way as Bloom.

Bloom & Glare Render Elements

A separate beauty pass can be created without bloom & glare applied. Also, bloom & glare can be saved to their own render element. In the Beauty pass, Bloom and Glare can be turned on or off via a single checkbox.

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Filmic Tone Mapping

Gives you control over highlights and shadows using the new filmic tone mapping. This can give more pleasing results with more ease than adjusting with the previous tools alone. Exposure, White Balance and Contrast still work alongside the Filmic highlights and shadows options.

It’s just a small piece of information on the features of the newest version. You can check out other details here.