Vray 3.4 vs Corona 1.5

[fa2020]

Hi there,
If you want to buy one of these render engines, which one would you prefere? And why?
Considering you have enough money to buy each of them.

[grafichissimo]

Definitely Corona, you spend a tenth of the time to get better result and more realism at very convenient price.
Just one thing, when you start with Corona keep in mind you will not go back back to Vray, so be careful.
If you are a freelance and someone ask you at some point to use Vray, will be a real pain in the neck!
Actually I am just try to deal with this.

Enjoy :)

[Ondra]

Asking in Corona forum, there is pretty big chance people will tell you "corona". ;)

[ask3r]

I just can't imagine going myself back to V-Ray, bleh.
Long story short - I just enjoy working in Corona...

[romullus]

Asking in Corona forum, there is pretty big chance people will tell you "corona". ;)

Maybe OP did ask same question in Vray forum too, then he will compare the amount of entusiasm  from the answers and then will decide which one to buy ;]

[Ondra]

oh, gotta check if vlado posted the exact same answer as I! ;)

[moriah]

While Corona is somewhat cheaper on the short/medium run, has pretty good IPR, fast lookdev process, dumb-proof setup, etc. it still isn't the powerhouse that vray is. Vray can do much more than corona (Volumegrid, particles, external tools, skin shading, hair shading/support, OSL support, more universally used, etc.....) So i think it's a bit pointless to compare both. Ideally i would like Vray to have Corona's fast IPR and lookdev process but on the other hand i would like Corona to have such features like VDB support, proper skin shading, etc. But i doubt that will happen since they can't tackle everything everyone wants. So ultimately it's up to your needs and your work. I use both, "simpler" jobs i use Corona, more complex and technical i use Vray. I love both :)

[pixel-flow]

Only reason to go with V-ray would be if you're working with VFX

[FrostKiwi]

If you want to buy one of these render engines, which one would you prefere? And why?

There are things that speak for both renderers and it's easy to step into fanboyism.
A neutral review of all renderers is long overdue, although that's true for every Tool, I guess.
Much comes down to personal preference and some things are destined to be subjective. However, there are a few objective things you should consider:
Tread lightly, own opinion coming.

V-Ray

• + Old veteran, Tons of info sources, Tons of Material libraries, most archVIZ models have V-Ray preset by default
• + Incredibly large set of options, you can tune a biased approach and with enough knowledge, beat out Corona in Speed with bias.
• - Requires knowledge to do so, countless tales of people having a flickering mess and many hours spend on figuring out why (I know ;_; )
• - Many settings on how sampling can be changed, sometimes overlapping
• - Unbiased approach is way slower than Corona
• + more RAM efficient, more options for offloading
• + Optional GPU rendering, although not 100% compatible with all of it's own features
• + Caustics way faster than Corona, although not easy to setup
• + Better with blurry sampling algorithms, faster DoF and MoBlur, although can easily be broken with previously mentioned sampling settings (smart interpolation between blurry samples)

Corona

• + Built from the ground up on Embree and easily beats out Vray in Speed, especially with unbiased
• + Vastly simplified in every way. Way less technical knowledge needed. All rendering settings are being adjusted by the engine, not the user.
• + Way less working with fakes. There is no Carpaint mat, no FastSSS, no... etc., all unified with one physical material
• + Vastly cheaper
• - Caustics pale in comparison
• + [Although a touch subjective, still kinda big] Way better HDRI setup. No need for Domelight with faked interpreted direct lighting to get flicker free Animation
• - Still missing much interplay with industry wide plugins
• + Faster Development cycle, big chunk of community input being considered

My personal say in this, is that for a single artist with no renderfarm, corona has many technical features, that set it apart.
With a team and more specialized approaches, both have to be considered individually.
No matter your choice, both developers have a friendly relationship and communicate with each other, as such each team is aware of it's strengths and weaknesses and prioritized accordingly.
Please note, as time goes on each Minus point of each renderer is subject to change.

terribly inaccurate tl;dr:
Corona - Fast, simple        VRay - Feature rich, complex

[fa2020]

Thank you guys.

[prozac93]

in my opinion it depend on what you have to do. Corona is better than vray in almost everything, faster, more realstic, more easy to understand and you don't have to get mad with all that samples value, light settings exetera. The only thing that vray has better than Corona is the displacement, the one of Vray give you the possibility to use 16 and 32 bit displacement map and it is faster and very very precise.

[Christa Noel]

oh topic like this again.. i heard it tooo much from people here in my city.
actually it depend of your needs.ex: if your jobs needs better dispersion, skin and hair shader.. buy vray
but for general archvis need, just buy corona because it is fast to setup and fast to render.
and if you take the first choice then after couple of years you'll need to switch back to corona because that time you'll find corona has more stability and feature rich as rich as character shaders.

and a little bit off-topic and fanboyism :P
imo, with these conditions:
-vray and corona live in different planet, without knowing each other.
-has the same number of team.
-and both are at the same age.
based on their developments methods and speed, we know which one is far far better :D

[philippelamoureux]

Unreal Engine!!!

Jokes aside, I'd go with Corona too. My firsts renderings ever were made with v-ray 2.0 and it was a painful process. Then came v-ray 3 that was miles better and easier to understand/tune but it's still not as easy as Corona. The corona interactive renderer is pretty dope too, I don't think v-ray's active shade is very good. I've never had success with it at least.

[Christa Noel]

.... v-ray's active shade...

Thats one of the best point why people choose corona. But i heard vray has tired to build their vray-RT as their IR.
And ended with decision to make vrayRT as separated renderer and build their own IR based on vray-adv core.
Ive never been in the vray forum, so correct me if the info i got is wrong

[BishopDesigns]

I just can't imagine going myself back to V-Ray, bleh.
Long story short - I just enjoy working in Corona...

same here...its an amazing renderer...it's currently the king of interiors (speed wise) and verrrryyyyy realistic...most other renderers will go nuts with time while trying to render interiors...#CoronaIsMyHomeNow