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Official Stuff => News => Topic started by: TomG on 2021-07-14, 19:26:24

Title: Corona Renderer 7 for 3ds Max (Release Candidate 6) is out now!
Post by: TomG on 2021-07-14, 19:26:24

Corona Renderer 7 for 3ds Max (Release Candidate 6) is out now!

Everyone with an active FairSaaS or Box with Subscription license has access, and the download is in the usual location: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/mswauuv1afec8am/AAA5OKrd_QujokDM3mxQ7S40a

We're getting ever-closer to the final release, so this is an important chance to give us your feedback and to catch any remaining bugs or other issues from real world testing.

Here are some of the bigger features in Corona Renderer 7:
  - New Physical Material - greater realism without extra work from you, and greater compatibility with other software and workflows (mapped Metalness, choice of Roughness or Glossiness mode, choice of IOR or Specular mode, and more)
  - Improvements to hybrid and thin glass (thin glass can now have rough refraction, better shadows, and more)
  - Many rendering speed ups that add up:
  - Bucket Rendering, a 5% overall speed up on average, up to 15% in some cases (note: not like V-Ray bucket rendering, you will still see the whole image build progressively!)
  - Faster Denoising in our own High Quality denoiser, a 20% speed up on average, up to 60% in some extreme cases
  - Faster Transparency / Absorption, will depend how heavily these are used in the scene - can be up to 50% in extreme cases (note, does not affect Translucency)
  - Faster scene opening - by loading texture files in the background, scene opening times reduced by 35% on average, and up to 73% in some cases
  - Faster scene opening part 2 - by loading proxies in the background, scene opening times reduced by 12% on average (combines with previous scene opening speed up)
  - Corona Sky in Improved Mode with Volume Effect (aerial perspective), Altitude, Turbidity, and Horizon Blur
  - And more!


Lots of changes since the first RC, and here are the changes just since Release Candidate 5 (for those who have been testing as releases come out):

Improved sky model

• Fixed green/magenta tint in the new improved sky model volumetric effect when computed for short distances (under 200 meters)
• Reintroduced fake horizon blur for Improved sky model. Default horizon blur is now 0, since the blurring should be controlled by the physically correct altitude parameter.

Corona converter

• Fixed an issue with reflection parameters not being computed correctly when reflection map, IoR map or both were plugged to the original material.
• Fixed asserts during conversion of some scenes in certain 3ds Max versions.
• Fixed “convert by class” not working for 3ds Max physical material.
• Fixed conversion not preserving the “show background in preview” option.
• Conversion now preserves material ID channel.
• Conversion from VRay2SidedMtl to CoronaPhysicalMtl now produces simpler shading networks.
• Polished the UI.

General

• Bucket rendering disabled for IR, because in some cases it is still too visually distracting.
• Buckets are still enabled in production rendering after 5 passes, and in DR/Backburner/command line render from the render start, to get better performance. We'll experiment with IR buckets more in v8 to get some better solution.
• Fixed render to texture not working.
• Fixed crash when using Forest Pack version 6
• Fixed excessive rendering times and RAM usage in some corner cases caused by refraction
• Fixed some checkbox labels being clipped in the render settings dialog
• Added tooltip to randomization mode of MultiMap and UvwRandomizer mode, explaining that the "Instance" randomization is based on a node name and will change when the node is renamed.
• Added warning when proxy contains corrupted normals which cause it to render differently depending on whether the “keep in RAM” checkbox is checked.

Material Library

• Added 13 new metal materials.
• Added 13 new masonry materials.
• Added 9 new wood materials.
• All new materials are built upon the new physical material.
• Converted existing carpets, ceramic tiles, concrete and flooring materials to the new physical material.
  Note that this might result in a slightly different visual result, however existing scenes based on the previous versions of material library will be unaffected.

Please test as much as possible and report your findings to us, so that we can make Corona Renderer 7 ready for release as quickly as we can!
Please post all bug reports, questions, etc. on the main Corona 7 Daily Builds thread at https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php?topic=30877