Hi All-
I'd like to show off a project I just completed using Corona that was unveiled today.
All of the vehicle CG for the new Ford GT press event today at the Detroit North American International Auto Show was done over the last six weeks using Max and Corona exclusively. Developed under the code name 'Project Phoenix', this LeMan's bound super car has been in development for just over a year. See below for more information...it's cool.
The Corona rendered GT starts up around the :50
I started off using my usual workflow of Max and Vray, but I was having problems truly 'nailing' the paint. It's a completely custom formulation from PPG with some really interesting properties. It's a rather subjective paint, and people seem to see it differently. I've been playing with Corona off and on for the last year and had wanted to try it out on a real project. When I put a shader together in Corona, we were happy very quickly and representatives from Ford came by with a sample and approved it.
As the project developed, we did some tests of Corona on our render farm, and barring a couple little issues, Corona was solid. So before the holiday I took the gamble and decided to stay with Corona for the project with a set of Vray shaders in my back pocket just in case we hit something that could not be solved. I figured that in about half a day I could do the switch to Vray. I never had to pull out the Vray shaders.
I developed a parallel set of Corona shaders both by hand and by using Martin's material converter.
The inclusion of the mask render element in Corona allowed us to use the standard 'Detroit workflow' of LOTS of G-buffer channels to allow plenty of after the fact changes and tweaks. But, Corona did such a nice job that most of the changes were small and largely atmospheric.
The resolution for this show was 7600x1200...massive by any one's estimation. But Corona chewed through most frames in between 1.5 hours to 4 hours depending on the frame and the machine's specs. I experienced NO 'whacked out' frames that needed rerendering...which I found amazing.
All in all, I'm very happy with the way that Corona handled this project, and Ford executives were thrilled by the final product. They had very few changes and simply said things like 'wow' and 'amazing'. I've been using Vray for a long time so it can be odd to get out of your comfort zone, but Corona got me to what I wanted much quicker than usual. It was fun to be part of such an interesting product announcement.
Thanks for looking.
A
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-detroit-auto-show-ford-gt-raptor-mustang-gt350r-20150112-story.htmlhttp://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2015/01/12/ford-performance-cars-gt-raptor-mustang-350r/21629997/http://jalopnik.com/ford-gt-this-is-it-1678893649