Author Topic: Evaluating Corona vs. Octane (vs. Indigo)  (Read 4815 times)

2022-04-25, 08:45:42

Kukulcan

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Hi all! First off, as a hobbyist I really don't like subscription model. Got me a R21 perpetual and was glad there was an unbiased renderer with perpertual licence - Indigo. Unfortunately, their forum is in deep sleep and there is practically no support for my content (Laubwerk, Vizpark, Forester).

My setup right now (and won't change for about probably 2 years): 3900X, 64GB RAM, 3060Ti - 8GB obviously.

Hobby work is mostly huge scenes with lots of trees etc. Loved to just drop a skybox in Indigo and let the sky do the lighting, will it be similar in Corona?

Render time is not #1 priority, but I love the integrated render preview of Indigo. I wonder if 8GB of VRAM will be a problem with GPU rendering of compex scenes and if with my setup GPU render speeds will improve over CPU substantially.

Animation is of no interest right now, probably will use Redshift once I do commercial animation again.

Probably stuff I can find out myself, but kind of also evaluating the community ;)

2022-04-25, 14:10:08
Reply #1

TomG

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GPU vs CPU render speeds, as to which is fastest, will depend on the scene to be honest. https://corona-renderer.com/features/proudly-cpu-based remains our take on comparisons between the 2 approaches.

As for 8 GB of GPU RAM, in general that is the most that any card has so the engines should be set up to work with that amount as it is the most common set up. What that means though is it should be able to manage doing any out of core rendering with that amount of VRAM, as complex scenes would likely require more, and having to be out of core does slow things down. Basically though you wouldn't be any worse off than anyone else rendering using GPU :)

For sun and sky, you can use our procedural sun and sky, or use an HDRI (or some or any combination of both).
takes a look at using the sun and sky. You can have multiple suns and skies in a scene to render once and get the results from all of them for use in LightMix.

As for the subscription model, Corona is a little different compared to most - watching many subscription model software, my personal take is that the changes from one version to the next are often not major, resulting in a feeling of frustration at having paid for a year to get very little, and I wouldn't have upgraded if this was a perpetual license. Corona releases are usually significant (apart from the occasional maintenance release where we focus on the code itself, but then those usually appear as an "extra" during the year), so if you were on a perpetual we believe you'd want to upgrade to get all the cool new features, so would have been paying the upgrade price anyway :)

Feel free to give Corona a spin, you can use it for 45 days without any restriction (no render stamps, no resolution limits, you can even use it commercially if you want), but wanted to give you some starter answers too. Hope this helps!
Tom Grimes | chaos-corona.com
Product Manager | contact us

2022-04-25, 14:35:28
Reply #2

Kukulcan

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Thanks for the comprehensive answer, Tom. Always nice to see a team member taking care.

I understand the reasoning for a subscription model, sure I would end up with a few hundred bucks with Indigo every odd year to be up to date. It would just be nice to have some non-commercial license until I am ready to go commerical again. But I see the problems of such a licence.

Anyway, I will check out the trial, which is pretty generous.

Don't want to open a new thread - sure more topics about Corona Scatter will pop up soon - but will there be a huge improvement in viewport and render performance over like Surface Spread or Forester?

2022-04-25, 15:01:45
Reply #3

frv

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Surface spread is great but Chaos Scatter is more straightforward. The key ingrediant here is camera clipping. In Chaos scatter you can have the render-camera clipped. In SurfaceSpread you need to assign a camera which is not practical if you have many different camera's and scenes.

Anyhow, camera clipping makes all the difference when working with lots of vegetation.

Chaos scatter also scatters over different surfaces with a set factor for how much on each surface is scattered. I don't think Surface Spread has that.  Laubwerk is very slow developing new stuff and hasn't produced much new vegeatation the past years. I have found new and more refined resources for vegetation at Graswald & Maxtree icw Chaos scatter.
Redshift is much better integrated in C4D R26 then before. But resources are a bit less than for CR and lack stuff like Chaos scatter and Cosmos. The resources provided by Maxon are basic compared to what you get from Chaos or the market in general.

Speed is something else indeed. For me the whole interactive process is much more important than actual renderspeed for the final images. I do mostly architectural design work. Time to first pixel is important to me and it seems that renderengines don't differ much in this aspect.

2022-04-25, 15:33:52
Reply #4

Kukulcan

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Thanks for your assesment, frv. I love the camera clipping in Surface Spread, but if it is even better in Chaos Scatter - great!

Quote
Speed is something else indeed. For me the whole interactive process is much more important than actual renderspeed for the final images. I do mostly architectural design work. Time to first pixel is important to me and it seems that renderengines don't differ much in this aspect.

About the same for me. Not sure if I am stupid, but in Octane I wasn't able to have the preview render window integrated in a standard viewport. If that isn't possible that would be a huge plus for Corona.

2022-04-26, 10:25:32
Reply #5

Kukulcan

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Speed is something else indeed. For me the whole interactive process is much more important than actual renderspeed for the final images. I do mostly architectural design work. Time to first pixel is important to me and it seems that renderengines don't differ much in this aspect.

While I prefer Corona over Octane from the first playing around, this point is actually what made me giving Indigo another chance. The preview of Corona is okay, but it doesn't render my Surface Spread trees. It renders Chaos Scatter instances of course, but it is not nearly as fast as Indigo preview, which renders all vegetation I throw at it very fluidly.

While general render speed of Corona's CPU renderer is more than sufficient (slower than GPU, but not that much), the visual feedback in Indigo preview viewport after just a few seconds is much closer to the final render result than in Corona preview.

8GB VRAM seems no limiting factor with my current scenes. Not sure how dead Indigo support actually is and if I will encounter any roadblocks when working with it. If so, I will probably choose Corona over Octane.

2022-04-26, 11:46:22
Reply #6

burnin

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also note that IR shows an approximation of full render, and on occasions you'll likely find a missing feature
there's comparison list somewhere...

 

2022-04-26, 14:30:40
Reply #7

Kukulcan

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There is no question Corona would be the more future proof option with more support, but I am frozen at R21 and plugins from 2 years ago anyway.

2022-04-27, 00:44:38
Reply #8

burnin

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no problem, corona supports older versions way back to R14, so I think you'll be in good hands for quite some time...

then, w/ CPU engine there's no pre-loading/pre-computing (just parsing) which means faster startups, especially noticeable in animation renderings, with modern disks you also have almost limitless memory at your disposal, and not to forget  - pool of talent, great & lively community w/ many tricks up their sleeves and wizards  always willing to wave a magic  wand :D   

finally, my condolences on Indigo
I too hope its devs give it some TLC, since they left OCL engine and few plugins somewhat unfinished. What a jewel it could be... Yet still, they instead of at least sharing a word w/ their user base keep silent, putting all their energy in Substrata.
which reminds me so of Next Limit's (M~R) falling down for RoomBox

Hubris never plays to loose, not even with time. Or be it money. Both are good servants, but neither good master.

Challenge yourself & experience them all. Just start those engines :)

2022-04-27, 10:57:30
Reply #9

Stefan-L

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knowing most c4d render engines, i also can recommend Corona from full heart, in special new v8 makes it one of the best C4d render engines for me at least.

 if you have a proper cpu it is not much slower than a gpu, with all the advantages of cpu rendering (more stable, no driver hassle, more features, better c4d native support, no export to card before render)

2022-04-27, 13:47:38
Reply #10

Beanzvision

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Thanks for the kind words Stefan xo
Bengamin Jerrems l chaos-corona.com
3D Support Specialist - Corona l contact us
Corona Uploader l Upload
Portfolio l Click me!

2022-04-28, 08:43:22
Reply #11

Kukulcan

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I played around with a few Forester trees at max leaves setting. Although I chose Indigo to render I got a warning from Corona that my 64GB of RAM are full. After uninstalling Corona Indigo was able to render the scene with 8GB of VRAM although it took quite some time to set up the scene. That was my only excperience with the "advantages" of CPU rendering. Of course that was purely anecdotal and could been whatever sideeffects of mutliple installed renderers. Maybe if I find the time I will reproduce it with a more straight setup.

On the other hand I haven't experienced any driver problems or instabilities yet with Indigo, just some problems with material previews (on top of most materials needing to be replaced, built or at least adjusted).

2022-05-01, 17:49:57
Reply #12

babumbol

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In SurfaceSpread you need to assign a camera which is not practical if you have many different camera's and scenes....Chaos scatter also scatters over different surfaces with a set factor for how much on each surface is scattered. I don't think Surface Spread has that.
Nope, you don't have to assign a camera to surfacespread for camera clipping. by default it uses the render camera. You can drive all aspects of scattering via vertex maps & co. So yes, you can finely adjust scattering on different surfaces, too.

SurfaceSpreads only drawback is really strange: It's getting extremely slow at some magic clone-number (never figured out which). So sometimes it's faster to duplicate one cloner several times with different seeds, than just using one cloner.


Now regarding CPU vs GPU:
GPU is faster, most of the time. There isn't more startup-blah-whatsoever. It's way faster from A to Z, and more responsive. Especially Octane. Maybe not with some special heavily textured scenes, I don't know. Regarding geometry, those GPU renderers can chew up a lot. Besides that: When using displacement, I regularly get short-on-memory notices from Corona. And sometimes it even stops rendering, because of that (only UHD, nothing too big). The hassle is the same. And if you start doing animations: Be ready to get frustrated at some point.

Besides that, Corona creates the most beautiful images out-of-the-box. IMHO that's the biggest seeling point. You'll have to invest quite some time, till you get the same image quality with Octane & Co.