Beta noticeably slower than Alpha

[Beanzvision]

I can see that you sent us an image to the private uploader?? You need to send the entire c4d. Go to File > save project with assets.

[PsychoTeddy]

Yeah, I understand now that scene doesn't mean picture.
I had problems with the uploader even though the file's 111MB so I uploaded it to the Dropbox alternative.

[Beanzvision]

Thanks

[Beanzvision]

So....

You have a few issues going on. Firstly, you have the gi mode set to "single bounce". This isn't going to do you much good in a dimly lit room like this. Change it over to "full". Denoising was set to remove fireflies, not really needed here. Try full denoising and lower it to .65 (default), the higher you go the more fine details you will lose in wood grains etc.

Secondly, your portals seem to be set up incorrectly. For a good explanation on them, see this article and example 2. https://coronarenderer.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/5000501660-how-do-light-portals-work-in-corona-renderer-

Thirdly, and this has nothing to do with your render quality ;), but your hierarchy is a mess! lol Try to group things ie: lights, cameras, furniture etc A clean workflow is a good workflow.

Other things like your blinds are completely blocking most of the light, I'm not sure if that's what you are going for or not.

The render attached is only 10 passes and it started right away for me.

Hope that helps

[PsychoTeddy]

Thank you for your help and for the tips.
LOL...I know the hierarchy's a mess, sorry about that. It's kind of currently a patched up model that needs cleaning up. I'm also aware of some of the issues with materials that you've mentioned (like the blinds). They've been removed when I was clearing out all the Corona materials.

I tried changing the render settings as you suggested but it didn't really fix the issue that I was having with this particular model. Interactive rendering still doesn't work. It takes forever to start up and then when it does it keeps switching from parsing to Sec.GI or doesn't do anything at all. It never actually starts doing the passes. Now, obviously the model itself works fine on your computer so it has to be something on my end. I've used this version of Corona on new models and it worked fine. So I was wondering if you have any idea what might be causing this issue? Maybe some temporary files somewhere that are clashing with the new version or some type of cache that needs to be cleared?

[PsychoTeddy]

So I managed to fix it in a very crude way. I cleaned up the old file as much as I could and the VFB still didn't work. Crashed C4D a couple of times so I lost my patience and opened a new "scene" in a new folder. I copied parts of the old scene group by group testing the VFB after every pasted group and saving the scene after it tested ok.
I still can't identify what was causing the problem exactly, but pasting everything into a new file worked for me so if anyone ever has this problem try fixing it like this.