Chaos releases Corona 10 for 3ds Max and Cinema 4D
Chaos Czech has released Corona 10, the latest version of its renderer for 3ds Max and Cinema 4D, extending Corona Decal and support for volumes in the Corona Camera, and improving highlight blurring.
Corona Decal now works per-channel for displacement effects
Corona 10 features updates to several of the software’s existing features, including decals, volume rendering, depth of field and procedural clouds.
Texture projection system Corona Decal can now be used to control individual material channels, making it possible to use it to control displacement-based effects like cracks, or footprints in sand.
Full support for volumes in the Corona Camera
The Corona Camera now properly supports volumes, including the Volume material, simulations created in Chaos’s Phoenix software, and VolumeGrids for OpenVDB objects.
The change makes it possible to position the render camera half inside a volume – for example, at water level in a swimming pool – without having to position a Slicer around the camera to cut a hole in the volume.
Corona 10 provides more control over the form of highlights in when rendering with depth of field.
Improvements to depth of field, procedural clouds and caustics
Other rendering improvements include a new DOF Highlight Solver, intended to generate better-defined highlights in parts of an image blurred by depth of field. It supports custom aperture shapes.
The new procedural clouds system added in Corona 9 is now affected by the Direct Color property of the Corona Sun, making it easier to create time-of-day effects.
In addition, caustics are now brighter and more detailed when rendering at 4K resolution and above.
Listers reworked to make it easier to navigate complex scenes
Workflow improvements include updates to the software’s listers for viewing and editing scene objects, with the unified Corona Lister now listing all of the lights, proxies, displacement materials and cameras in a scene.
In the Cinema 4D edition, the Scatter Lister has been added to the main lister; in 3ds Max, it remains a separate interface elements, but has been “totally reworked”.
Easier material randomisation in 3ds Max, and support for nested scatters in Cinema 4D
Changes unique to the 3ds Max edition include the option to apply the same Triplanar, Color Correction or Mapping Randomizer to multiple maps.
The material editor also now caches rendered previews, making it “up to 22 times faster”.
Changes unique to the Cinema 4D edition include the option to nest scatters when using the Chaos Scatter plugin: for example, to instance a set of cans, then instance condensation droplets over their surfaces.
Outside the software itself, the Corona Benchmark has been updated to the Corona 10 rendering core.
There is also a long list of smaller changes: you can find a full list via the link at the foot of this story.
Support for online rendering system Chaos Cloud and the unification of the Corona Material Library with Chaos Cosmos, both initially scheduled for Corona 10, have now been moved back to Corona 11.
Price and system requirements
Corona 10 is compatible with 3ds Max 2016+ and Cinema 4D R17+.
The software is sold subscription-only online. Corona Solo subscriptions cost $53.90/month or $358.80/year. Corona Premium subscriptions cost $67.90/month or $478.80/year.
Read a full list of new features in Corona 10 on Chaos Czech’s blog