We are finally able to announce some interesting development in our company. Last year we have decided to explore other projects beside Corona Renderer and cooperate with third parties. Our main goal was to get access to resources, knowledge, and exposure that would be out of our reach otherwise, by cooperating with interesting partners.
Our first of these “special operations” projects is developing a 3ds Max integration plugin for AMD FireRender. FireRender is a GPU renderer developed by AMD primarily for AMD FirePro GPUs. We were responsible for plugging this existing product into 3ds Max. You can read more info about FireRender in AMD’s press release.
In this blog post I would like to inform you about our future plans and what you can expect in following weeks. It is actually one month and 11 days later, but we simply did not have any spare time to write this blog post earlier ;).
Important things first!
PROMO PRICES END ON 11TH APRIL 2015!
Our promo prices (and first demo periods) will expire really soon. So if you want to catch a good price, then do it quick! You can get your Corona Renderer license from our online store!
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.
With the release date of commercial Corona version approaching, one thing was absolutely obvious: the need for a new website. We have been preparing the website for quite some time now. Sorry for letting you wait for so long, but we hope that it was worth it!
Calm down your horses. This is NOT the final version. This is basically the re-branded version Alpha 7.1 but with one significant difference – it will work after 31.12.2014 till the end of February 2015. Go get it now.
Simply said – It is completely the same as Alpha 7.1, but you can use after New Year for two more months! This version was released due to the version 1.0 delay.
Fact sheet and list of changes of Alpha 7.2 for 3ds max:
Extended period of use – It will work until 28.2.2015
Same feature set as Alpha 7.1
100% compatibility with Alpha 7.1
You can combine Alpha7.1 with Alpha7.2 in DR/backburner/renderfams without a problem.
Bad things first, so let’s jump straight into it without sweet talk.
We are aware that you all expecting the release of Corona Renderer 1.0 for 3ds max during November, but I have the sad obligation of telling you that it will not happen. There are some delays in non-application related things we have to deal with before the release.
We still aim to release Corona Renderer 1.0 for 3dsmax as soon as possible – so keep your fingers crossed for the beginning of January 2015.
We are really sorry about this, but delays seem to be almost inevitable in all software development. When we were forced to decide what to do, we chose postponing the release a bit, rather then releasing something that is not quite ready.
As version 1.0 for 3dsmax is behind the corner, we have decided to post a series of articles showing new functions & features which you can expect.
I have prepared a longer video showing Interactive capabilities of Corona Renderer in combination with our CoronaScatter (old version) which comes for free with the renderer.
The video shows two demo scenes. First one is the all-time favorite demo for GPU renderers – acar lit with HDRi, but I decided to do it with a little spin. The second one is a more realistic scenario which you will encounter in archviz – non-proxied vegetation which uses opacity maps, the multitexture plugin in diffuse, translucency, and bump mapping.
The car scene was kindly provided by Ludvík Koutný, and the tree model by Juraj Talcik from TD Visual.
Videos
Corona Interactive + Scatter
Bonus video: turning it up to 11: Corona Interactive – extreme polycount test (5.5 Trillion polygons)
Corona Interactive Facts
Runs on CPU (No special HW needed)
Shares over 99.9% of code with standard Corona Renderer (ie. same render engine)
Same results as the final frame rendering (What you see is what you get )
Same set of features as standard Corona Renderer (geometry, proxies, motion blur, dof…)
All 3ds max maps and 3rd party maps are supported
Truly interactive (Change materials, lights, geometry while rendering, no need to restart interactive mode)
First, thanks a lot for all your responses, suggestions, opinions & messages – good spirited and even not-that-positive ones. They both count as they show us different views. Since some points we made in the original article were not clear, there was some confusion and questions we want now to clear out.
This follow up article tries to explain some points better and answer you all questions where we know the answer (there are some questions where we ourselves do not have the answer yet, however our intentions and visions are crystal clear).
Also we have decided to change couple of things based on your suggestions. We try to be as fair and transparent as possible.
I have decided to write this blog post in Q&A fashion. Most of the questions were raised by you. Also some facts and topics we did not cover in the first article are published in this one.
Make yourself a tea or coffee and enjoy the long blog post.
Thanks to a discussion with Corona Renderer users, we have decided to adjust some of the things in this article. Please read follow-uparticle here.
Prices & Licensing
One of the most complicated topics which we have encountered yet. We are talking about this for the second time. This time we have much clearer image, but still it is a big step into the unknown. We have done our research, calculated costs of future development, compared licensing options, exchanged numerous emails, made countless hours on skype and killed couple of hours on meetings regarding this topic. You can read the results below.
Friendship. That is probably the best word to describe this event. That was something what was clearly visible everywhere you looked. And I had the opportunity to experience it twice as a speaker. During Academy Day #3 as an lecturing artist and this year as “representative” of our Corona Renderer. But main part of Corona presentation was done by the creative duo from TD-Visual – Juraj Talčík & Veronika Demovičová. Without their extensive help, expertise and superb works our Corona presentation would not be possible. So I would like to express my thanks once again here. Díky moc!
For those of you do not know what SOA Academy Day is, I will use the official line: “A two day workshop for professionals and passionate architectural visualization artists.”
But for me it was more about meeting people, friends, “converting” virtual friends to real ones and meeting new and old Coronauts:) It was simply amazing experience as always.
We are finally able to announce some interesting development in our company. Last year we have decided to explore other projects beside Corona Renderer and cooperate with third parties. Our main goal was to get access to resources, knowledge, and exposure that would be out of our reach otherwise, by cooperating with interesting partners.
