All posts by Ondra Karlík

Corona for Cinema4D Alpha v2 released

Release, , , ,

After a lot of hard work, we can finally present you the second Alpha release of Corona plugin for Cinema4D. It fixes all major problems of the previous version, and brings the Corona 1.0 core to Cinema4D, along with some new important features.

It is compatible with Cinema4D R14/R15/R16. Download it here.

Changelog

Major changes:

  • Added multipass support (render elements)
  • Added Blend and Portal materials
  • Improved stability of animations
  • Uses Corona 1.0 core (with all its stability, performance, and rendering quality  improvements)
  • UHD cache (with save/load support)
  • Reworked render settings UI to match 3ds max version more closely
  • Interactive colormapping
  • Improved logging

Continue reading Corona for Cinema4D Alpha v2 released →

Corona Render 1.0 for 3ds Max – released

Announcement, Release, , , ,

This is it. The road was a bit longer than we expected, but we are proudly releasing the version 1.0 of Corona Renderer for 3ds Max today. Cannot wait another second? Go get it now!

Licensing

Corona 1.0 is the first non-free version of Corona. It can be used in demo mode without any limitations (no maximum resolution, no watermarks, …) for 45 days. After that, purchasing a license will be necessary. You can read more about the licenses we offer here. We have also written extensively on the topic of licensing here on our blog: [1], [2].

Even though the demo will work for 45 days, we strongly recommend you get your license sooner, as we have a 45-day launch promo discount for all FairSaaS and Box licenses. With the discount, you can get Corona for as low as 19.99 € per month. See the prices and licensing for more details. Also various discounts and bonuses will be provided during (and sometimes after) this period.

Continue reading Corona Render 1.0 for 3ds Max – released →

Making of: Corona sample C4D interior by Thomas Vournazos

User Content,

Today, we bring you a tutorial/making-of article about the sample Corona for C4D scene written by Thomas Vournazos. Thomas is the founder and lead artist of Slahcube, a visualization studio based in Zurich.

I don’t have the patience to make super extra detailed blog posts, so I will try and make this post a bit basic and easy to follow. I’m already using Corona for some months, and although still on the start, things look promising.  This scene was actually a vray scene that I worked on some months ago for a commercial project, so I had only to work on some material conversions and some mood concepts to check how Corona would pull it through.

I almost always work with HDRIs, because it is the only way i can check easily my light  set-up. CoronaforC4D actually has a quite flexible way on dealing with HDRI. I often after some rough modeling with a white material and a fast check with some HDRIs I have. I tend to keep my whites quite low, around a 165 – 180 value in some cases at this point.

For the HDRI, i created a sky object and i attached a Corona material with an HDR texture in the emission slot. For this particular scene i used a Peter Guthrie map, the 1934. I also played with some afternoon ones but at the end i decided to stay with the 1934.
Apartment_02Bedroom_01 Continue reading Making of: Corona sample C4D interior by Thomas Vournazos →

Corona C4D A1.1 hotfix + free sample scene

Announcement, Release

Corona for C4D render by Thomas Vournazos

 

We have just released a hotfix for our Cinema4D build. It corrects some issues reported after the recently release Alpha v1, that slipped through our internal/closed beta testing.

Updated Nov 22nd 2017 – this is an old article of course, so for those of you looking to download Corona Renderer for Cinema 4D, here is some updated information, replacing the old and out-of-date links:

You can download the latest official builds, for Windows and macOS, from our download page. If you are looking for the latest possible release, that will most likely be our daily builds – simply sign up for our forums and visit the daily builds section for the latest changelogs and download information!

And now, back to the original article – of course, there are many more changes to Corona for Cinema 4D since this was published!

End Update

Major changes

  • Fixed slowdown when using multiple CPU cores and some specific shaders
  • Fixed incorrect DOF distance parsing
  • Added missing opacity channel to Corona Material
  • Fixed layer shaders in R14
  • Fixed incorrect gamma in material editor previews
  • Fixed visibility property of objects (Display tag)
  • Added icons to Corona menus, better plugin load diagnostics, and other small UI changes

Cinema4D sample scene

This is not all we have for you today. After the release of Alpha v1, we got many requests asking for a sample scene. And now we are pleased to announce, that Thomas Vournazos agreed to share one of his scenes he made during testing. Here is the download link: https://download.corona-renderer.com/c4d-a1.1-scene.zip.

Corona for C4D sample scene by Thomas Vournazos
Corona for C4D sample scene by Thomas Vournazos

Corona for Cinema4D: 1 week after

Announcement, Release, Uncategorized

Attention to all C4D Coronauts!

Exactly 1 week ago, we have launched the first public Cinema4D build of Corona Renderer. Since then we have monitored and analyzed the overwhelming feedback from the cg community. We are extremely pleased with the number of users who decided to try it and amount of positive feedback we got,  considering this is only the first version.

Some bugs popped up, which is understandable, since the code is still “young”. Any in-house testing cannot cover all the possibilities that the thousands of users out there will try. Normally, we would wait for the Alpha2 with the fixes, but with so many new users trying out Corona Renderer, we have decided to speed up things a little, and go for 1.1 hotfix. We will try to fix most of the problems in 1-2 weeks, and release an updated version as soon as possible. Promise.

OSX version?

Next frequently brought up question is the OSX version. It is possible to port Corona Renderer to other platforms, but doing that will require time which we currently do not have.  So while we will do OSX version as soon as possible, it won’t happen before the commercial release of 3dsmax version later this year. We should also mention that the Cinema4D version of Corona will stay free even after the commercial 3ds max release, until the plugin is stable and mature.

We would once again like to thank all Cinema4D users who decided to give Corona a spin. If you keep your enthusiasm, Cinema might even rival 3ds max as the main Corona platform in the future.

Ondra & Corona Team

Corona Scatter innovation

Announcement

We are glad to announce that we have recently welcomed another Coronaut to our family. Chris Johnson is a seasoned veteran of 3ds max (some of you might know his extremely helpful blog on Windows and 3dsmax development), and he has agreed to help with the Corona Scatter development. We are currently getting things started, but in the future we will be posting some test versions for our daily builds users, and we will appreciate any feedback and feature requests. We have created a new forum section for this.

In the next few months, you can expect both new features of Corona Scatter, and better integration in 3ds max. We will still try to keep the key features of the scatter intact: simplicity, easiness of use, and great performance even with lots of instances.

Alpha v7.1

Announcement, Release

We have just released a quick bug fix to our Alpha v7 release. It corrects few of the issues we have discovered shortly after releasing the Alpha v7. Because it has no new features, it is 100% compatible with A7, so you can update at any time.

The fixed bugs are:

  1. Proxy exporter script adding multiple items in the quad menu (right mouse button menu in viewport).  If you have experienced the problem, you will need to go to Customize -> Customize User Interface -> Quads after installing, and either manually remove the Corona_proxy_exporter items, or press “Reset”.
  2. Shadow catcher‘s option “Use enviro color mapping” projecting the environment incorrectly.
  3. Only part of the image being copied/saved when render region was used.
  4. Photographic exposure for Cylindrical/Spherical cameras not working.
  5. Crash when copying targeted CoronaLights into multiple copies.
  6. Crash when creating proxy by clicking the “From scene” button before the object is created in the scene.

Update: This version now expired and is no longer available. Use the version 1.0 instead.

Corona Alpha7 is out!

Announcement, Release

Corona Renderer V7

Exactly 3 months and 13 days after releasing Alpha V6 we are back with the fresh new version 7. We would like to commit to this fast-paced development also for the future releases – we hope to deliver up to three versions per year – so you will be always able to get your hands on the latest tech as soon as possible. You can download it here – or continue reading about the new features ;). We are also including a sample scene with Corona set up with this release. There is also a dedicated A7 thread on the forum.

Continue reading Corona Alpha7 is out! →