GPU ! RTX

[Horse]

"Proudly CPU based" - sounds very cool for the year 2015, ok guys i think its enough. Having RTX 4080 with corona - its like driving lamborghini with the engine turned off. Everything it can do - denoising, awesome, i have a beast inside my pc case that is capable to denoise image. I work with corona from the very begining. First time i installed in 2015 and it was like love from the first sight. I bought subsrciption immediately. No doubt one of the best renderer ever made but i think its time to make a change. 1-2 hours for each render - really tires, something wrong here, i think this concept is obsolete. For example Fstorm is the beast in sense of GPU performance and image quality but its so difficult to work with different renderers. Unreal engine 5, just look at this, it makes 30 - 60 frames per second! with amazing image quality. Why the f.. should i wait hours for one frame... Really. Today we have corona 9 and 10 in the development and still no GPU support. So any chance to see GPU support in the next 2-3 years ?

[JGallagher]

I think people use Corona because it has unbiased path tracing. I'm about 99% certain that Unreal Engine can't do 30-60fps real-time path tracing.

What CPU do you have? Did you buy a top-tier CPU as well? Or just a GPU?

[burnin]

ay, ay, ay...  you bought wrong "lambo" for farming (;


 

[mferster]

ay, ay, ay...  you bought wrong "lambo" for farming (;

That tractor looks so weird, It looks as if it was generated by AI or something.

[frv]

Problem is that its difficult to move on from one great product to an even better one. I am working on a borrowed Mac Ultra 20core and Corona seems rather fast. But in the past few years here at the office, a new generation with PC's came in and their work (Unreal, Octane, Twinmotion, Lumion) is competing with my Corona renders. Now when clients come in the office they sit with them looking at models, animations and renders in real time. I have to get on board or be out of work.

With great reluctance I am going to order a PC and dive in Unreal Engine and Octane or Redshift.  My son (14 years) bought an ugly game computer (3090) for less than 2k euros delivered in 3 days. My much slower 7k Mac Studio Ultra took 4 months delivery. No sensable company can justify that. The same will apply to Coronarender, how to justify the rendertimes when your clients rave about real times renders from the competition.

[TomG]

It depends what your clients want. There are still compromises with GPU, and if you want the ultimate in realism, and the confirmation that all plugins you have collected over the years will work (well, most :) ), then CPU is the way to go.

There are no plans to develop GPU rendering for Corona. It's non-trivial to do (not just a checkbox at compile time ;) ), and this would mean delaying and slowing the development of the CPU engine for an extended period of time, which we are not willing to do. There are great GPU solutions out there such as V-Ray GPU and Hybrid, if that is the route someone wants to go - meantime we will remain, as always, focused on creating the best CPU engine there is!

[triget]

I checked trello and I don't see, any spectacular changes in the release of Corona 10. It's more cosmetics and polishing of the product. It seems to me that Corona does not want to be competitive with Vray, because how else to justify the price increase when no really big changes have been added? Not much has changed since Corona 8.

You guys are doing a good job, but locking yourself to CPU only is a road to nowhere. TomG you keep writing about compromises, but we, as users, are ready for them. Currently, rendering times have gotten cosmically large. I'm already starting to use Cycles myself, because it scares me to render for a few days some animation.

In my opinion, instead of wasting time on, for example, a new benchmark or a faster material rendering preview, the focus should be on the GPU. There is no point in putting it off. Corona is about to reach such an absurdity that changing the desktop icon will mean a new release.

[LE DON]

a faster solution is to support chaovantage

[frv]

@triget
About the updates. Actually the enormous steps Coronarender takes from version to version is impressive. Chaos scatter, the Chaos libraries, Cosmos, the incredible way decalls works now, all the assets available from Maxtree and so many others, Clouds and more. And I hardly crash huge files.

[triget]

@triget
About the updates. Actually the enormous steps Coronarender takes from version to version is impressive. Chaos scatter, the Chaos libraries, Cosmos, the incredible way decalls works now, all the assets available from Maxtree and so many others, Clouds and more. And I hardly crash huge files.

Just is this the right way to go? If I wanted to use Chaos libraries, I would just pay for Vray. The rest are just interesting marketing things that no one will use in practice. You can live without them...  The advantages of Corona are:
- intuitive interface
- it is very fast to get a nice render
- nice masks
- easy handling of nodes
- super window with post-processes
- price used to be an advantage. This is slowly being erased which is a big minus.

Minuses:
- no GPU rendering...
- nodes need 3ds max installation (this is a mega big minus). I don't know why this topic is not moved. Is there really no way around it? After all, it is a misunderstanding that I have to run around the office and install 3ds max trial on the other machines.
- no meaningful system to render object lines etc. something like lineart

Sometimes it seems to me that the people who design this soft do not use it themselves. They have a vision from the 90s , and now times have changed. My conclusion is that the potential of the best rendering engine on the market is slowly being squandered. Sorry Team Corona, but these are my conclusions after these few years.

[davetwo]

For ease of use and beautiful looking images Corona is THE best engine IMHO. And my lo-res look-dev stages are not slower than comparable GPU renderers as far as I can tell. There's also something very useful about being able to CPU render on anything (ie my old MBP) if necessary at a clients location. And not being locked into using Nvidia proprietary technology on a workstation.

These are big plusses that I dont want to compromise on. But you know - if you want to outupt real-time or lots of animations then GPU is probably the way to go. There will be some compromises.  But just run a copy of Redshift or whatever for those case-scenarios as well as Corona for the breauty stills.

I'm still searching for the 'best of both worlds' solution. In theory Vray/V-ray GPU looks promising. But in my (limited) tests its not as quick/functional as RS or as good looking/user friendly as Corona. So the worst of both worlds in effect.

[frv]

@triget
For the items I listed are not marketing. I do archviz but not full time. And the latest additions to CR make my life a lot easier. I haven't found these features yet as well implemented on other render apps.
The problem for me is that my workflow seems to be getting obsolete considering all that is happening now with Unreal and for instance Octane. I have an Apple system, the fastest available really. All works well and my images look goog enough especially considering the little time I practise. I can still do better than basically most of the specialised render companies that my clients can afford.

@davetwo
lo-res look-dev stages are not slower than comparable GPU renderers
I wonder how that is possible. These would be in real time with any of the GPU render apps on a PC. I am on a Mac and can't compare really. 99% of my time is spend doing lo-res look-dev stages. Are you telling me that in your experience buying a PC and getting Octane or Redshift is not going to be a huge timesaver for me ?

[Mac3DX]

@Horse, Hi!

Yes, I know it's the most frustrating thing there is. Corona is wonderful but I'll tell you what nobody has the courage to say, straight to the point.

First, the focus of this renderer is architecture. For very simple materials with diffuse, reflection and transparency. For that it is very fast.

Second, forget about animations, extremely slow (against GPU) and noisy (flickering). Corona shines for still images, accurate with shadows. Choose a GPU renderer which is much more advantageous for animations.

Third, it doesn't make any sense for a company to offer two products that offers to similar products, if you're looking for a GPU renderer with very good quality, choose V-Ray. It is not the fastest, but its quality is unquestionable.

The future of this software is questionable, matter of time. GPU renderers are way faster than CPU for less money. With your graphics card you can get a 4k image in 3-5 seconds with volumetric materials (very time consuming) easily in Cycles, just for comparison. Features like volumetry, DOF, SSS, are infinitely faster with GPU. Corona was a big draw in the beginning because it was cheap and offered superior quality, now the game is changing.

So, make your choices!

[frv]

@Mac3dx
I think you are right about animations and fast renders in general.

But many architects are still on Mac's where there is no competition to Corona. Octane, Redshift, Unreal or Blender/Cycles is just nonsense on a Mac.

If Corona is fast for archviz stills it will still be around for a while at least for Mac users.

[LE DON]

render gpu is gradually becoming more popular
vray, encape,d5,redshift,...The famous rendering software all support gpu (except corona)

[Blanco]

For what it’s worth, I don’t feel GPU rendering is the magic bullet that some people think it will be.
Having just come over from Vray, I didn’t find there was this humongous time saving between CPU and GPU rendering for complex scenes. It is after all, just another render engine that is a bit faster. However, what you have to keep in mind is that many functions are switched off for GPU rendering.  The last time I looked, you couldn’t even use Vray dirt (!!) which is essential for most of my work. Also, there’s a good chance that your 3rd party plug-ins won’t be supported either. So, if you want 100 percent functionality, then you’ll need to use CPU.
This is all discussed in the corona marketing blurb.

As for workflow, I was hoping that at least my 3090 might work wonders when using IPR but in fact, my 3970x is just as fast, more stable and has 100 percent compatibility.

Lastly, Vray gpu isn’t real time rendering. Not even Vantage is real-time - it is however very very very crazy fast. Real-time would be Twinmotion, Lumion etc. but these have a noticeable drop in quality.

Anyway, this is just my humble opinion. I have no doubt others will have their own, equally valid opinion.