Corona Popularity - Introduce your self

[Javadevil]

Hi,

I've noticed the last couple of months Corona is gaining  popularity and just thought I'd start a thread where we introduce ourselves.

I've been working in 3D since 3dsmax 1.0, working in various companies in Australia.
Started off animating characters for realtime web movies, childrens DVD's/TV shows, computer games.
Moved from the city to the coast and started a Architectural vis company, thats going through tough times, I hope that picks up soon.

So my main focus of interest became renderers, I own Maxwell, Fryrender, Thea Render, Vray and Mental ray.

I bumped into Ludvik on the mental ray forums probably a year or so ago and started discussing renderers.
I tried to get him interested in another renderer (which I won't name cause I really like those guys and there product ).
Ludvik told me about Corona.
Well once I started playing around with Corona, I couldn't stop,  the pure speed and clean results of Global Illumination was just amazed me.
No slow speeds of unbiased rendering and no pissing around with light cache and irradiance map settings, it just works.
The development speed of Keymaster, he just keeps on adding features within weeks, sometimes days.
Translucency one week, Anisotropy the next,  sun & sky, Scattering, proxies, DOF and the last month or two, displacement, motion blur, render elements !!!
This guy is on fire and its only in Alpha !!!

Well a nearly a year later and I'm still here using Corona.

So how did you get interested in Corona ?

[racoonart]

Someone posted a couple of corona renderings in another (non-public) forum which rendered (according to the rendertime stamp) way to fast to be true. That's when I started testing the alphaV2 build here and was blown away by it's astonishing speed! Ok.. it's just a couple of days ago, but I feel amazingly familiar with Corona already ;)

I'm a more or less 3D-generalist working for a German Vfx-studio. I started doing 3D-stuff 8 years ago. 4 as a hobbyist, 4 as a professional. I prefer doing the "finishing" stuff. Lighting, Shading, rendering and compositing are the things I love to do. Furthermore I spend a lot of time in Tool development and scripting in common.
In Production I've been using Vray, Finalrender, Mentalray.
In the last couple of years I've been testing most of the renderers available for max, like Maxwell, Arion, Thea, Nox, etc but Corona is by far the most useful one already :).

[Ondra]

So how did you get interested in Corona ?

One day I started programming my bachelor thesis... ;)

DeadClown: what forum (which renderer) was it? ;)

[racoonart]

DeadClown: what forum (which renderer) was it? ;)

You should ask loocas, he posted these images there ;-) I'm not sure if I'm allowed to tell you ;)

[Ludvik Koutny]

Loocas is definitely not a Vray or MentalRay user...  so we know where this is going :D

[Javadevil]

Now I just want to know which forum it was :)

[Ludvik Koutny]

Ok... 

how did i get interested in corona:


Well, a few years back i met this guy who started programming his bachelor thesis... ;)


Once his thesis started to turn into monster with area lights, gi and glossy reflection, i started to test it for fun and see what i can get out of the toy that he created. As time passed, that toy started to be better at some aspects than the renderer i was using for production at the time, and it was not long before it got better at all of the aspects that are relevant for the work i do. :)


I am a CG generalist, but like DeadClown, i prefer mainly lighting, shading and rendering and consider them my strong points.


You might know me from the hollywood blockbuster such as:


Mental Images on fire.


War of the flames.


Trolls in nVidia forest.


Pissed Remydrh.


:)

[alieneye]

My friend sent me a link to the corona forum a week ago.
and it seems that  i`m already loving corona  :)

i`m in 3d since 1998, 3d generalist, but lighting, texturing and rendering is more important things to me.

[Paul Jones]

I'm also a 3d generalist - started out doing exhibitions/retail, then moved to architectural, then the recession hit so anything I can get my hands on now.
Loocas is to blame for my presence here, having known him for a while from the finalrender forums. I'm also along with a few of you guys on adesk beta and have just been laughing my socks off at some ridiculous render times for iray with 7 high end GPU's

Started rendering in Autocad and Autovision on a pentium 90 with 64mb ram, changing to max dos, then onwards. I use finalrender, mental ray, quicksilver, scanline - whatever suits the job, but am just about to strat the jcb job in corona once I get the legacy build for max 2013 to run on my old xeons!

Loving the speed of response on development, speed of renders and the lack of fecking about to get decent clean results - render once right, not 3 times shite ;-)

Would be interested to know who you are Deadclown ;-)

[racoonart]

Would be interested to know who you are Deadclown ;-)

I'm "Martin Geupel", I don't write a lot in "the forums", normally I'm nagging around here at the studio and Michael is the one who is getting the trouble after posting that stuff :P

[michaltimko]

Hi hi, my name is my nick :)
Im working in archviz business for Belgium/Germany agencies and private persons. I was working with Vray for few years, and then i moved to Indigo renderer (i was beta tester too).
I found Corona back in 2009 on our local forum (maxarea.com).
I found Corona few weeks ago as stable and production ready product. I was totally impressed and invested hours of my free time into this little dll.
Now, im totally in love with this engine. Its fast, friendly and im feel that i found my render engine finally! I was able to convert my old scenes to corona easily without any problems. Workflow is great, integration to max is perfect. In alpha stage, i can say, its one of the best renderers i tried and it seems that i`ll stick with Corona in future !

I already did 2 commercial projects in Corona without any Max crash :)

[Paul Jones]

Deadclown - didn't you used to be on fr beta?

[racoonart]

Deadclown - didn't you used to be on fr beta?

That's what I'm talking about ;)

[hglr123]

Hi to all :)
My name is Nikolay Nastev. I'm a 3d modeler and render artist. :)

BR!
Nik

[maru]

Found a link to this forum on max3d.pl - one of the biggest Polish cg forums.

I study computer graphics at a private school so I can use Corona on a legal, student version of 3ds max 2012 x64, which is awesome. It's also insane that Corona is free but please don't turn it into a commercial application like Crazybump did.

[Ondra]

Found a link to this forum on max3d.pl - one of the biggest Polish cg forums.

I study computer graphics at a private school so I can use Corona on a legal, student version of 3ds max 2012 x64, which is awesome. It's also insane that Corona is free but please don't turn it into a commercial application like Crazybump did.

I'm planning to go commercial when its good enough, but there will always surely be some free builds (for example for students). Also, most active alpha/beta testers will have corona always for free.

[andreupuig]

Hi, I'm Andrea, an italian architect living in Barcelona.
I 'm an "archivizzer" and interested in generative architecture and performance based architectural modeling. I work usually with 3DS Max and Rhinoceros. During the long pauses between a work and another I usually work as generalist for myself or doing some architectural porn with rhinoceros and scripting.

Started CG in 1999-2000 at last year of high school with caligari trueSpace and Bryce3D (!!), then switched to max 5 at university (Radiosity and Light Tracer, they were like science fiction to me). Since 2005 started using vray, then in 2007 switched to Mental Ray, then another time to Vray this year due to inefficient light solutions during my thesys project (lot of indirect illumination and particular light condition, in the future I will make some tests with Corona...).

I discovered Corona this May, but never tried for lack of time, on Mental Ray forum thanks to Rawalanche comparisons during my "self thought" way to optimize render times.

This engine seems quite fast at this early stage, can't imagine how fast could be in the future. And it's less than 3 MB!!

Totally right for a commercial version at reasonable price.

[maru]

Started CG in 1999-2000 at last year of high school with caligari trueSpace and Bryce3D (!!), then switched to max 5 at university (Radiosity and Light Tracer, they were like science fiction to me). Since 2005 started using vray, then in 2007 switched to Mental Ray, then another time to Vray this year due to inefficient light solutions during my thesys project (lot of indirect illumination and particular light condition, in the future I will make some tests with Corona...).

I'm 23. I remember playing (literally!) with caligari truespace on a 166MHz pentium when I was in primary school. It was one of first 3d graphics apps I remember. Next ones were Bryce 5 (it was amazing), Poser, Max 5, some early versions of CAD (I'm not sure what it was but I remember makings lathes from splines and "baking" them as bitmaps). I'm proud to live in times where computer graphics achieved such progress.

[pionier]

My friend sent me a link to the corona forum a week ago.
and it seems that  i`m already loving corona  :)

the same here :)
hello everybody, my name is Peter also know as 'pionier' and I love corona renderer, nice to meet you :)

best regards,
pionier

[Polymax]

Hi, my name is Max.
I learned about the Corona Renderer of Russian Forum 3dcenter. First I made a couple of tests, but thought that the rendering is flawed. But I did not leave a strange feeling (just magic) that this revolutionary product. I began to actively test the Corona renderer and realized that inner voice had not deceived me:)!
Now I get great pleasure from the use of the Corona renderer!
Many thanks and great respect Ondra for my new feelings!!!

[patoaltaco]

I saw an exterior image on evermotion. It is now on the front page. This was a couple of months a go. I remember i did a google search and found almost nothing.
I dont remember exactly how I found the forum.

I think this engine is wonderfull.

Keep it up guys!

[helge75]

 My name is Oleg, Helge or as it is called in Evrope.Ya first saw Corona Renderer in Russian 3d tsentre.Only used Vray, because I thought it best .. At the moment I am an active user of Corona. Sorry for my bad English.

[Chakib]

Hi,

My name is Chakib, 29 years old from Morocco, i'm a 2d/3d artist, i have 6 years of experience in 3d domain working in some TV ads ( local ones ) and doing many 3d works that I've enjoyed them during all these years, i love to be always updated to the new 3d technologies especially the rendering engines, i do a lot of testing day by day to improve myself.

I use 3ds max and Vray as primary 3d softwares, but i can tell you Corona render is my new love right now i know it from the first test, solid amazing results with easy things to do is what artists demand  the most, the corona team must  be proud !

Actually i'm using a core2quad in a poor rig so not the fullspeed version, and i hope i can get enough money to by my own solid rig for my next projects soon...

I'm very happy to be a member here and i'm sure everybody here is enjoying his corona drug like i do lol, Cheers !

[kumodot]

Hi , my Name is Marcelo Souza, my fancy name is Kumodot. :)

    I am 40 years old, working with CG Animation since 1995. :) I am a 3ds user since version 1.0 (DOS version). Before that i was using Crystal Topas.
    I am from Rio de Janeiro, but livin in São Paulo for the past 8 years.

    Working as VFX Supervisor and Senior 3D Generalist at O2filmes Post production house. We work for advertise and Feature Films.

    My render tools are Scanline (in the past and for some pass until today), Mentalray, a little bit of Vray RT (for stills) and now Corona.

    Maybe you already know my work (maybe not), one of my images came bundled with 3DSMAX 5 Sample files as a sample of Scanline Rendering "capabilities" lol. This image :
   
    (more about this image here >> http://www.kumodot.com/portfolio/bolts/)


    I am on twitter too : @msouza3d
     

[Chakib]

I remember this render since i've started with max 5 it was inside the help, i'm impressed that this one is yours really amazing job with the old scanline ! i remember when i see this render i was  shocked it was my first time trying max and 3D lol

Respect !

[Polymax]

I also remember this example. Nice to meet with you!
Your work is really great!

[maru]

Hahah, I remember my frustration when I was trying to reproduce it without any knowledge of 3ds max. You're a veteran! :D

[Javadevil]

Wow Marcelo I sure do remember those screws, its great to have more talent interested in Corona.

cheers

[rfox]

I'd never knew this renderer until i came across the forum called 'maxarea'... somebody put the link to this site.
and WoW! this renderer looks promising....love it already! count me in, Guys!

[sunji_lacsi]

I am sunji from Philippines, a newbie in rendering. There are a lot of promising Filipino CG artist out there(CGpinoy.org) but most of them are vray users. i have already introduced corona in the forum for CGpinoys who would want to use (free)legal renderers... My Max and Cad are student licensed from autodesk. Since i couldn't afford to buy Vray, (OUT OF CONSCIENCE) i resolved to stick with mental ray or atleast find a free renderer that could somehow produce like that of vray.

i was browsing for 3D inspiration and  got hooked by Marcelo Souza's superb corona typwriter and visited his portfolio. He described the renderer he used and i was surprised that he's using a free renderer.

I'm working out some scenes as of the moment using corona. I'll be posting it as soon as it's finished.

Hoping i could still get corona for free when things will be commercially distributed in the future.

[chilombiano]

It all sounds a bit like a AA meeting: ..i used to consume 10 hrs of vray for the last five years until i found Corona!.. But not far from the truth actually:).. The problem is who's going to save me from Corona now?

Hello guys. I stumbled across this site by absolute accident as i was looking into some news into sky model implementations. First thing that catch my eye was keymaster's last line in the faq about not having time for a hip website design ..which somehow... defines Corona. I have spent no more than 1/2 day playing with it and found myself actually really happy enjoying rendering again. Looked into the whole forum and noticed this is actually a very cool small and engaged community where we the users can make a difference through  keymaster's amazing drive to make corona an awesome tool.

Anyways. I have been working with images analog or digital for the last 13 years. Eight of those exclusively doing vfx for the film industry and i hope i can collaborate with some feedback, dialogue and images ( although there is never enough time ) in this forum. I'm really impressed by this tool and the people behind.

 I would say Corona sits with Arnold in a category on their own but ..hmm, i better leave this for another post.

To sleep now.

//

[ikifenix]

First: Sorry for my bad english.

I just tested corona and must say is awesome!! It's like maxwell but really and awesome fast and easy to understand. I can't believe is developed by 1 guy, Ondra Karlík is my new god.

30 years, Spain, 3d as hobby since 3d studio max 1.

[steyin]

Been using MAX since 6.0, started in 2003 in college. Primarily always used mr, but have been venturing into VRay also. Though once Corona caught my attention (thanks to Juraj's work on Ronen's forum and once I found out Ludvik was involved I was sold), I decided to give it a shot. I've been really impressed so far and have started to implement it into my work, both professional and personal. Currently I work on the design team for Goldstein, Hill & West Architects in NYC and got into architecture thanks to LEGO.

I haven't always had the most impressive work, but I am eager to learn and always improve. Using mr didn't always yield the best results, hence my move into VRay, and now into Corona. I've never actually posted my work on a forum before, mainly because I was never satisfied with it since I strive for the best, but I'll be updating my work with Corona and sharing it here soon.

The community here is great, and I hope it continues to grow and succeed.

[neri69]

Hi there, working with autodesk as an training center since 1993 a lot of trained people in CAD, GIS, MCAD and 3ds from Dos Versions.
Then when training became obsolete and no more a business (2007) became specialized in BIM and MEP and coaching small studio in archviz to squeeze MR and iray....
Always watching new technology and renderer (CPU and GPU) i was fascinated from Corona near 3 months ago...

[Malkosh]

Hi guys,

I'm new here and excited to test corona for rendering, i usually work on marvelous designer and modo for 3D. Recently learning octane and now corona. Hope to impress your community and forum.

Oh and is there a mac version to download?

Cheers,

https://www.behance.net/zeropointpolygon

[Marvey]

Hi my name is Pedro

I start in Max maybe around 1997, then i used caligari and joined gamedev world in 2000 doing coding and 3d models.
After that i made my bachelor degree in Architecture and later the master degree, and joined the archivz world and started using cinema4d, till today my main work is 3darchviz. In the company where i work we owne cinema4d and vray licenses.
I meet corona about 1 year ago, in a forum i dont remember witch one, but i remember the work i saw was from Juraj Talcik and i just got so impressed that i start googling about corona...found it and after that i jut got addicted to check the corona forum almost everyday looking at pictures and waiting some info from the cinema4d corona development.
Final words: It was a pleasure to meet corona!
best regards

[davemahi]

Hey everyone. My name is Dave. I have been working in my own company using Max for over 10 years now called www.iamstatic.com doing mainly animation and print for commercials and a bit of film. We switched to Vray 2 years ago and have been very happy with it. But I have been sneaking Corona into my workflow where I can, mainly on product renders, and less so on animation. i have also found it great for doing style frames during the pitch process to win jobs. I love the Corona team and what they have done so far, and we plan to continue using it more and more.

I love 3ds Max because with a small team we can get so much work done and fast. And Corona makes it very simple to sit and get some great renders out. I really hope to have more time to post some renders here. My work tends to be less about being photo real, but like to live in that world in terms of lighting and materials.

[GestaltDesign]

Hi all, I'm Jon and have worked as an industrial designer for the last ten years but have always spent way more time on the rendering than any of my bosses would have liked!!
I think I have more fun visualizing than designing. First met rendering with Artlantis in 1998 (damn it was ahead of its time) and then moved onto Vray and trialed and tested everything in between. Funny how I found Corona, got fed up with the time consumption of Vray and hated the restriction of Key/Bunkspeed shot so thought lets review GPU rendering. Then during a big test ironically came across a CPU renderer thats output kicked arse and a speed that left my jaw on the floor.
I then picked up on the attitude of Ondra and the team and the deal was done for me, 2 months on and I am still being impressed!
It's all about product and studio rendering for me taking models from Alias, Rhino, Solidworks and Catia into Max, that's where I want to improve and look forward to learning more here.

[borisquezadaa]

Hi to everyone, my name is Boris Quezada, i'm from Chile.
I started to do  3d about 5 years ago just cause i like it then moved to work in 3d cause i needed the income.
i have spend 2 years working for an architecture firm doing some boring task in autocad and when bosses didnt look, started to link autocad files to max and hit some renders after hours.
I painfully learn how to model in Autocad , then Solidworks but i fall to Blender cause  it was open source. Then start to get in 3d forums a little, then a little more  and finally get a grasp of 3dsMax in college. After that try to learn vray for a couple of time wondering why is that painfull to get what i see in my head.
This year i discover (almost by accident) Corona renderer and i never look back.

I'm a Corona evangelist ever since spreading the word.

Actually i work for a company that does 3d animation videos for big mining process (pretty serious stuf XD).
My greatest achievement  lately was to convince my boss to install Corona in the company farm, it was so straightforward process and it coupling so nicely with our previous workflow that i can belive the time i passed trying to learn other stuff.

Now my time in this company is almost over and i have to move on. I dont know what the destiny have for me depared but sincerely i hope it has something to do with 3D.

Engeneering from mind, 3D generalist from heart.

Greeting from Chile

[ArtistBob]

I am Robert Palmer (Alias: ArtistBob) of Palmer Design. We are NEW on board! Ran across your video on YouTube while at the KeyShot 5 site and you put together a nice impressive presentation! Although you have some catching up to do with Luxion but it's always exciting to see a new company develop and be a part of their growth. Although My Company, Palmer Design has been well diversed for over 40 years, I chose to try out your program because of my most recent side venture involving 3-D digital graphics which I find exciting and easy to get hooked on. Please say hello and I look forward to reviewing the new program!

ArtistBob . . .  over

[AnnieC]

Hi, I'm Annie. I was interested in 3D graphics since I was a child, I tried several versions of 3ds Max, Rhino and AutoCAD in the last 14 years but somehow I never managed to get really serious with 3D in that time. It seems that I'm drawn to 3D graphics because no matter what I do I always end up experimenting with 3D modeling and rendering. I have experience in 2D graphics, video and sound editing, a little programming and I was a system administrator too in two of my jobs. I'm quite a geek :)

2 years ago when I had the chance I completed a 3ds Max course and I decided that I will look into it a little further and started on a long journey of learning. I had very little free time because of my job but as a side job I did some simple product visualizations with tight deadlines for a company.

I was using MR but I was not completely satisfied with it in my personal project and I remembered that one of our instructors has shown us the work of Jeff Patton as an example of great quality Iray rendering. I tried Iray and I quite liked it even tough I had some issues with it. The speed wasn't that great(I guess because I don't own an nVidia GPU) but I thought I should stick with it for a while to see if I should invest in GPUs.
As I checked Jeff Patton's portfolio a few weeks ago I've seen the images made with Corona. At first I did not want to try Corona because I had enough to learn as it is and trying another renderer seemed too time consuming. But my curious nature won and I started to read about Corona. A little later I was downloading and installing it and setting up my materials and doing test renders. The speed and quality was great, I don't think I'll buy GPUs for rendering anytime soon.

I am amazed by the talent on this forum, I think I will learn a lot by just reading the posts here.

As I gain some experience I may be able to help in testing, I have worked in QA and used Mantis for bug reporting so it's not an unfamiliar territory for me.
I hope I will be able to contribute to this great forum someday.

[abubaker]

was looking to test a new render engine for the CGTalk lighting challenge. It is not as full featured as the others who have been in the Market for years, but It is just an infant so I am sure it will grow to be a fine renderer.  I wish I could control the distribution of scattered objects with vertex paint.

[omar.essam]

Hello, I'm Omar , an Interior Designer from Egypt, I'm 25 (turning 26 next December).
I stumbled upon Corona about a year ago, while searching for unbiased/physically based render engines.
I am working in 3D arch-viz for about 12 years ( 8 years professional ), I usually visualize my own designs, sometimes I do 3D for other designers.
I started in 2002 with Maya, after a couple of months I changed to Rhino, then settled for 3dsMax, I guess it was Discreet 3ds Max 6.
then I learned Vray, worked/played with it for about 5 years,then switched to Cinema4D and VrayforC4D , worked with it from 2007/2008 till late 2011. also worked with Fryrender, Indigo, and Octane.
Then switched to max and vray again but I've been always in love with unbiased/physically based renderers. Till I met Corona :D I fell in love with how it works and how the developing team is thinking.  and now I'm taking decisions concerning working with it on all of my projects and also buying it (as I never bought any software in my life -shame on me- but this culture is not mainstream in Egypt or most of Arab countries as we find softwares are so EXPENSIVE, on the other hand they are always available in cracked versions). Also I told about 8 of my friends about Corona and they are starting to loving it and working with it. I'm HEAVILY marketing here in Egypt and giving good reputation to Corona :D
That's it. Thank YEW :D

[xt13r]

Wow. It's very interesting to read about who is who and where came from to this forum and Corona)
Hi. I'm Timur. I'm from Russia. I've met Corona in about 2012-2013 after seeing some posts with works from corona on russian very popular site for architects and designers 3DDD(they have now their foreign copy 3DSKY), when it was on alpha4 stage, as i remember. It was always very interesting for me to recognize and met with new features and stuff, but almost all things in about 3-4 last years wasnt so revolutionary as it would like be (well, maybe except fusion in modo and superduper fast integrating features in zbrush)). So I was seating on vray for last 7 years, but also tried mentalray,maxwell,fryrender,thea,keyshot, octane...Until met with Corona)
Ah, and i'm currently working in arch studio and doing lot of arch visualizations. and working slowly on my personal projects...very slowly, unfortunately(
So, now Corona is my personal favorite render for my tasks.
I can tell, that as only i see those images in gallery and read timestamps on there (and at the first i can't believe to my eyes), after that i seat and read forum, and after trying myself alpha4 - after that i decided that this should be my main renderer in working process.
And especially after DeadClown posted his script for converting vray materials to corona (thank you again, DeadClown, for this superuseful script!) - it becames very pleasent to use this renderer)

And now, with interactive renderer, working and adjusting scene - is like magic)) with some rare crashes,haha) But, hay, it's almost alpha!) And, hay, even thow it's alpha it is so powerful and useful already)

So, i'm very waiting for the first commercial release v.1.0 and definitely will buy this powerful thing named Corona.
And i'm happy with pricing politics, thanks for this to Ondra and his team)

[Christa Noel]

greetings, my name is Christa Noel.
where did i find corona?? ... i don't remember at all... seriously, i can't find it in my head.
i'm a newbie 3d generalist. basicaly i'm an engineer at a wooden furniture manufacturer since 2005. but after a couple years many design project was handled by me. then i became an interior designer & 3d generalist freelancer at 2012.
last year, when i first time download corona, it is v6. so promising.. so natural.. so adorable...
then, the second days since i played with it, i created 2 still images for commercial.
without thinking any other consideration i decided to switched to corona. vray was trashed away (never use it again till now, even once time. i'm so sorry vray)
now i work for another furniture manufacturer as 3d generalist on design development division, but outside job (3D visualization) is available too. 90% of my job is product shot.