Will Corona Kill V-Ray

[M V]

I hear a lot of buzz these days about Corona and from what I am seeing in these and other forums, it looks like folks are quickly making the transition to Corona. Thoughts?

[Tommy L]

VRay is too big to fail. Chaosgroup will probably get a bailout...

I havent used Corona and dont plan to anytime soon. I am too heavily invested in VRay ion both expertise and dollars. That said, if there's any down-time soon I'd give it a try.

[philippelamoureux]

I was able to do better images much faster (skill-wise) with corona than with v-ray (pre 3.0) because corona was/is more user-friendly imo. V-ray has too many settings for my taste.

 

Plus there is a good v-ray to corona scene converter available for free. I like the fact v-ray has a gpu renderer included tho!

Edited September 9, 2015 by philippelamoureux

[Corey Beaulieu]

I have used both and found both to be equal in the viz world. I waged my complaints on Corona, but they were in a compared to Vray world. On its own, Corona is more than sufficient.

 

That said, Vray can respond too quickly to Corona's success for Corona to make much ground. They are far behind the flexibility game and while they will eventually catch up, they will not fracture the market at their current scale. Before long they will be the same price as the rest and people will pick and choose based on need and knowledge.

 

Sketchup didn't take anyone down in their rise, but they carved out a solid niche. They seem to be at a plateau for now, but that would be the comp I would watch. More User Friendly, not as evolved/refined; cheaper, not better.

 

Both will have their place. Especially if Max continues collaborating with Vray to create things like the physical camera so Corona never has to.

[Justin Hunt]

It is a good companion to Vray at this stage, I dont see it taking over any time soon though.

[simonm]

i bought the subscription and ive been wanting to try it out (its been a week)

 

Ive only just dabbled into it but to generate some preview renders for clients seem to take longer so in that aspect im not so convinced (although dont shoot me, there might be a quicker way and i may be doing something wrong)

[JWEST]

I have swapped over to Corona from Vray and I must say I'm really happy.

Granted that there are features that Vray has that Corona doesn't but these will get there.

 

Price wise it wins hands down, especially if you are a small studio in a country where your currency sucks against the Dollar and Euro.

 

I must say that its ease of use and user friendliness is great too. I doubt it will be a vray killer anytime soon but I'm excited to see how it develops.

[Scott Schroeder]

Here's the big thing with Corona. How well does it do animations? Progressive style rendering, both with Corona and Vray, seem to be a bit tricky when you need thousands of frames.

 

The developers of Corona were very smart to make it as Vray like as possible though. So that an experienced Vray user needs only about 15-30 minutes with Corona to get up to production speed with it. Unlike some other rendering software I won't name but it rhymes with Mental Ray.

 

If I were to head back into freelancing mode full time and I would have to purchase all new software licenses on my own dollar, I would without a doubt use Corona for my stills. For now, you can't beat the price of the engine for the quality it can produce. In the long term, once a cash flow was secured, I would probably head back over the Vray just for it's robustness, speed that Vlado and crew can R&D new tech, and the long term viability of Chaos Group.

 

But to answer the original topic, no, I don't see this killing Vray anytime soon. Corona may push Vray out of the arch viz world a little bit, but Vray would always crush Corona in the film/vfx and product viz industries.

[John Dollus]

you could easily swap corona and vray with vray and mental ray in this discussion from over a decade ago and it would read the same.

 

As a tool, corona is dead simple to use BUT so was vray when it started. Corona is a bit slow BUT so was vray when it started.

 

Chaos group is no different than any other company in the world. They have had to add features and complexity to address other markets and increase the volume of units sold. If they would hire a decent UX specialist to tone down their coderific UI, it would go a long way toward maintaining the market share in the design arena but there's little incentive to do that.

 

It's no more a 'vray killer' than Twinmotion was a 'rendering killer'. Just another tool in the toolbox.

 

I feel it's worth mentioning that software doesn't kill other software. Companies are far more effective at that through acquisitions so the largest threat to either would be getting absorbed by some larger fish. Thankfully, Vlado is young but that won't always be the case and there doesn't seem to be a very strong line of succession.

[Devin Johnston]

I agree with John about how software dies, just look at what Autodesk has done with Mental Ray or Lightscape, all bad moves on their part. In my opinion Vray will loose ground to Corona due to the ridiculous licensing change that was made last year, many people can't afford it any longer. Still Chaos has built a tremendous community with their user base and they are continually innovating and upgrading. So I guess we'll see what happens but I remember people were talking about how Maxwell was going to kill Vray and look what happened there.

[MarcellusW]

Have no idea about vray and am still quite new to rendering, but I used corona last weekend for the first time and...it just worked! I just plugin my hdr, add some fog, use the material converter, and viola! Changing the exposure after the fact?! I felt like crying bc of all the time i spent in mental ray previously. The only similar experience I've had is the first time I went to Aldi(grocery store) after shopping at bigger chains. One thing, the material editor options seem more "coderific" as one has mentioned the term than the Arch&Design materials. They do not seem intuitive at all but fortunately they gave out some basic materials with which to start. The only reason why I dont use Vray is price. The vray trial has maybe a 150x200 pixel render output? They aren't looking for new freelancer business...

[Anton Cherenko]

vray much more faster , and its inmportant in comercial render,corona take a part of users but thats not killing

[philippelamoureux]

I think Corona is too arch-viz/design centered to surpass v-ray but it's nice to have options. I personally liked Octane Renderer a lot! Version 3.0 could be very interesting.

[John Dollus]

I ran across this when wandering through vray light setting options and feel it's a great example of why Corona will continue to be popular:

 

I noticed 'MIS' under the advanced options with no description at all so I had to look it up (requires internet connection)

 

Advanced options

These options do not generally need to be changed. They are used in very very specific situations.

MIS - this option allows to disable Multiple Importance Sampling for the light. When MIS is enabled (the default), the light's contribution is split between direct illumination on the one hand, and GI (for diffuse materials) or reflections (for glossy surfaces) on the other. This means that portions of the light's contribution will end up in the GI render elements (or the reflection render elements respectively). In certain specific situations this is undesirable and this option can be used to always calculate the light contribution through direct illumination.

 

 

Hmm...how about telling the users exactly what these very, very specific situations may be? Perhaps provide visual examples? Nah, can't be bothered.

[Justin Hunt]

Vray is trying to get Corona's sort of simplicity (set and forget, no need to tinker) whilst keeping all the under the hood settings for those who really need it.

Although the documentation is still way too tricky to easily understand. I have to read and re-read the docs to get my head around certain explanations, but that's just me, I am slow.

[braddewald]

My question is: Is Corona better than Vray at producing a good looking image? If you take price and speed of the engines out of the equation, can Corona create a better image?

[philippelamoureux]

No... it's the artist that make a good image, not the software. Both render engines can do photorealistic imagery.

[Justin Hunt]

Yes... artistry aside ... it does subtle lighting and shadowing very well. I am talking about contact shadows etc. I find the materials, whilst very simple, actually give good control and not having to worry about sub-div samples means I can have really soft reflections.

 

Yes it is slow, but I have found that once you throw a second or third machine at it it can be production fast. The DBR is easy to set up, although there are issues with the slaves not picking up assets if the network paths aren't correct.

 

Its still young and a way to go before its bullet proof, but is getting better all the time

[Chris MacDonald]

If I were freelancing, I would pick corona without a shadow of doubt. However, I am in a production environment where all of our assets are geared towards VRay as are any assets we are likely to purchase in the near future.

[edgemaster]

I like to kill a Corona after a long day of Vray but sometimes forget to get limes so I go back to Budweiser cause it works without needing limes.

Edited September 24, 2015 by edgemaster

[John Dollus]

I like to kill a Corona after a long day of Vray but sometimes forget to get limes so I go back to Budweiser cause it works without needing limes.

 

well played, Alex.

[craignowakowski]

After working w/ MR for years and years, VRay seemed seemed like, the only physical based rendering engine to try. Download a VRay trial, and it was waay to complicated for troubleshooting. Then Corona Render comes out, and for the 'Right-brained' person, it is the only way to go.

 

1.4 version out 4/1! Now, w/ Adaptivity/Denoising

Artist/Designers: Back away slowly (from VRay) Corona caters to us!