Tuesday, June 17th, 2025 Posted by Jim Thacker

Chaos releases Corona 13 for 3ds Max and Cinema 4D


Chaos has released Corona 13, the latest version of its production renderer for architectural visualization and portfolio rendering in 3ds Max and Cinema 4D.

The update adds a new toon shading system for creating stylized renders, adds support for rendering animation with Vantage Live Link, and integrates the Chaos AI Enhancer into Corona.

New toon shading system for stylized renders
Key changes in Corona 13 include the new toon shading system, for creating non-photorealistic renders of scenes, either for early design exploration, or for stylized final-quality work.

It includes new Toon and Outline materials, which provide a standard range of controls for shading the faces of objects and the outlines rendered around them.

The settings can be applied to an entire scene, or on a per-object basis.

Chaos AI Enhancer integrated into Corona as well as Enscape
The update also integrates the Chaos AI Enhancer within Corona.

First introduced in Enscape, Chaos’s real-time rendering software, it uses AI to add visual detail to rendered images, but solely to people and plants from the accompanying asset library.

Processing is done online, and requires the image to be uploaded to Chaos Cloud.

Vantage Live Link now supports animation
In addition, Vantage Live Link, Corona’s live link to Vantage, Chaos’s GPU-based ray tracing renderer, now supports animation as well as still images.

Introduced last year, the live link applies changes made to a scene in 3ds Max or Cinema 4D to a Vantage viewport, providing a GPU-based alternative to Corona’s native interactive rendering.

New Clusters controls in Chaos Scatter
Chaos Scatter, Corona’s object scattering system, gets new options for creating clusters of objects, with users able to control clustering using parametric controls or with texture maps.

The 3ds Max edition also gets a new Layer Paint mode, making it possible paint scattered objects directly inside layers within a scene, as shown in the video at the top of the story.

Updates to Corona Physical Material, rendering, and pipeline integration
Other changes include new thin film parameters in the Corona Physical Material, for recreating the look of the iridescent surfaces of real-world objects like soap bubbles.

There are also new options for removing fireflies in renders, the option to import .vrscene files from Enscape, and initial support for the asset variation system in the Chaos Cosmos library.

Price and system requirements
Corona 13 is compatible with 3ds Max 2016+ and Cinema 4D R17+. It is rental-only. You can find details of Chaos’s current subscription packages in this story.

Named-user Corona Solo subscriptions cost $59.90/month or $394.80/year. Floating Corona Premium subscriptions cost $72.90/month or $514.80/year.

Read a list of new features in Corona 13 on Chaos’s blog

Find more details of the new features in Corona 13 in the online documentation


Have your say on this story by following CG Channel on Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter). As well as being able to comment on stories, followers of our social media accounts can see videos we don’t post on the site itself, including making-ofs for the latest VFX movies, animations, games cinematics and motion graphics projects.