Monday, February 5th, 2018 Posted by Jim Thacker

Render Legion scraps Corona Renderer for SketchUp


Render Legion has discontinued the work-in-progress SketchUp version of Corona Renderer, its production render engine for 3ds Max and Cinema 4D.

Existing alpha builds will remain usable, but the company will not develop the plugin further.

Discontinued in favour of work on the Cinema 4D edition
Development of the a SketchUp edition of Corona began in 2015, prompted by widespread support from SketchUp users.

New builds initially appeared regularly throughout 2016, but the pace of change slowed during 2017, with the only two new features being added.

In its blog post announcing the decision to scrap the plugin, the firm attributes the problems to staff turnover.

“We had two developers who came, did a small amount of work, and then left,” it wrote. “For the past few months, there has been virtually no progress on the plugin.”

Render Legion has now decided to stop work in order to refocus resources on Corona Renderer for Cinema 4D, which officially moved into beta this week.

‘Chaos Group did a far better job than us’
Render Legion recommends that users of test builds switch to V-Ray 3.6 for SketchUp – which became the software’s sister product last year, following Chaos Group’s acquisition of the company.

According to Render Legion’s blog post: “If we compare what V-Ray offers for SketchUp and what we have now, we have to be realistic and admit that [Chaos Group] did a far better job than us.”

However, the firm was keen to stress that it is still actively recruiting developers for other projects and plans ‘test integrations’ of Corona with other – as yet unnamed – applications, “mostly from the AEC industry”.

Test builds remain usable for now
Existing alpha builds of Corona Renderer for SketchUp will remain usable, at least for the immediate future.

“We will hold the current state of the plugin as long as it is not [a] technical burden for us,” wrote Render Legion co-founder Ondřej Karlík in a post on the company’s forum.

Read Render Legion’s announcement of its decision to scrap Corona Renderer for SketchUp