Corona as a professional renderer for visualization?

[hairston630]

Hi all!

I have been lurking on the forum for a few days now and wanted to finally drop in and say hello to all.  To the developer, thank you so much for your work in regards to this renderer.  I have a slight obsession with renderers, although I only have about 1 year of training in the 3d world.  This renderer; however, has impressed me so thoroughly that I am on the verge of abandoning my vray training and jumping ship. 

To all,

As my subject states, is making that jump a good idea for someone who is wanting to do professional freelance architectural and vehicle visualization?  I am still inexperienced with materials, shaders, and some lights (other than basic) and I noticed that there aren't many tutorials pertaining to just the corona renderer and its shaders.  Would my continuing education, using this renderer, be advisable or would I be better off learning something with more tutorials?  Feel free to speak your mind, i have thick skin! :)

[racoonart]

If you want to do freelance work in Archviz / vehicle stuff it's very likely that you will have to work with vray sooner or later. Corona is indeed a very good renderer but you will have to use whatever is requested by the client - and that's in most cases Vray.
Corona Materials and Vray materials are not so different, you won't have problems to switch between these two renderers. Apart from that, the basics are the same everywhere, lighting and shading doesn't differ so much between all the engines.

[hairston630]

Most excellent.  Thank you for the prompt and honest response.  I think I will continue vray training and work with corona on the side so that it stays familiar with me.  Hopefully one day this renderer will take the throne as it looks so promising.  Thank you again!!

[fellazb]

Well I made a (nearly) total swich to Corona from being a Mental Ray (arch viz)user. First the interior shots triggered me, but now I've started using it on exteriors as well with good results.

I still have to figure out a clever way of a proper render workflow by using render elements and the other nifty features that are available in A6, but the ease of use is kinda addictive. I'm glad I didn't spend time and money on Vray 3.0 as I don't see real benefits for my workflow with Corona. 

My main concern with Mental Ray was the ridiculous amount of increase in rendertimes when using certain render elements (adding one element could add twice the amount of rendertime). Autodesk never seemed to bother since it's been that way along time and I'm glad to use this powerful feature with this tremendous piece of software.

[Juraj]

Ultimately they are almost identical in workflow and material system. I won't do a comparison as it's against my beliefs, but you're not making any radical decision that would
complicate your life in freelance.

Regarding universal spread of Vray across industry, this actually won't matter to you if you freelance in Archviz in regard to end-clients. If by freelance you mean also sub-working for other CGI studios remotely,
that's not true freelancing but yes, that it would matter to learn industry standard, which is Vray. Your end-clients (those only worthy of having outside of quality agencies ) don't care and in 95perc. of case don't know what software you even use,

[racoonart]

Regarding universal spread of Vray across industry, this actually won't matter to you if you freelance in Archviz in regard to end-clients. If by freelance you mean also sub-working for other CGI studios remotely,
that's not true freelancing but yes, that it would matter to learn industry standard, which is Vray

(I knew you would write something to this thread :D)
Sure, for completely independent freelancers it doesn't matter which software they use. But from my experience the last couple of years I would really recommend to spend some time in a studio doing 3d/archviz to learn it. I don't think it's possible to learn all those important production things by yourself, at least if you want to achieve a certain amount of quality.
About automotive, I know some people working in this industry for clients like audi, mercedes, bmw etc (and done a little bit myself). Those corporations normally work with very few studios doing extremely high quality visualizations (with measurements of different carpaints and what not). They almost never switch their suppliers because there's so much research in there. So automotive may not be easy to do as a freelancer.

[Juraj]

True and I agree. I almost always only regard "archviz" (although I dislike to use the term and even consider it unified industry), which is bastard child of CGI and ultimately, the easiest discipline among all, both from technical and bussiness standpoint.
Of my "whole" (well, it's just less than 3 years) career I spent in studio 5 days, after which I was kicked out and kickstarted my own way. While the beginnings were funky I think I managed to learn purely by self and built a rather petit bussiness model,
currently centered around 3 people at most times, but with rather high margins, something I am proud of. So I am very much aware my advice is almost never universal. (I've noticed just now he asked about architecture and
 and vehicles...so my fault missing that)
It doesn't mean though that I don't in fact, miss the experience. I so much long for it, but I am just past the point at which I can do it. I would pay generously to experience, maybe just walk around and talk to directors in companies like Hayes Davison and D-Box. I absolutely agree it would facilitate lot of things, importantly production values as you write, but I also believe it's possible to do without. After all, so many others have done it that way, across various fields.

Hey, if you ever want to discuss that automotive viz industry, hit me up somewhere, like on FB, or I'll come for beer visit, I have long time fascination towards it (but not intention to do it outside of maybe one hobby project in lifetime.

[blank...]

My main concern with Mental Ray was the ridiculous amount of increase in rendertimes when using certain render elements (adding one element could add twice the amount of rendertime)

Risking to get kicked out of the forum for explaining things about different renderer, but here it goes :D

Vray has something called "include in anti-aliasing" (probably not in those words, i don't know...), and mental ray has "contrast all Buffers". The thing is, one renderer has this thing off by default, the other doesn't. And to make things worse, it's not exposed in GUI.
Solution is "mental ray render optimizer" which exposes many MR options for user to take advantage of. Google it and use it (if you plan on rendering anything with MR ever again).

[fellazb]

My main concern with Mental Ray was the ridiculous amount of increase in rendertimes when using certain render elements (adding one element could add twice the amount of rendertime)

Risking to get kicked out of the forum for explaining things about different renderer, but here it goes :D

Vray has something called "include in anti-aliasing" (probably not in those words, i don't know...), and mental ray has "contrast all Buffers". The thing is, one renderer has this thing off by default, the other doesn't. And to make things worse, it's not exposed in GUI.
Solution is "mental ray render optimizer" which exposes many MR options for user to take advantage of. Google it and use it (if you plan on rendering anything with MR ever again).

It would be wise to keep this thread on-topic, so we both don't risk getting kicked out :) Anyway, I spoke with MasterZap about this and he also mentioned about this and complained that it wasn't in the GUI. Fact that they know it but don't "fix" it tells me enough about their priorities and keep neglecting customers opinion. Enough on that...

So back on topic: Corona perfectly suits my needs for arch viz and therefor I'm not planning to use MR anymore, expect for specific (toon) effects and animations where MR comes in handy from time to time. I'd like to hear if Corona is planning to do more with specific toon shading or texture baking (that would be awesome to try) for a more global approach of this renderer.

[Ludvik Koutny]

You do not need to worry about discussing other renderers :) You wont get kicked... we're not like that :) I wanted to reply same thing someone was just faster. MR render elements in Max are indeed slow due to the idiotic decision from Autodesk, to make Contrast All Buffers option enabled by default. It is still possible to disable via string options though... I will try to find out the string and post it here once I have it :)

[racoonart]

Hey, if you ever want to discuss that automotive viz industry, hit me up somewhere, like on FB, or I'll come for beer visit, I have long time fascination towards it (but not intention to do it outside of maybe one hobby project in lifetime.

Thought you weren't reachable via fb ;) Added you there. But I fear I can't tell you anything you don't know already. I was just involved in some mercedes project for about a month - which was only used for their internal training.

[The Syndicate]

I come from an architecture background and am fairly new to viz within a professional setting myself, but I thought I'd drop in my two cents anyway.

Almost any rendering engine can get the job done, and the "best" software will vary from job to job depending on what is needed. I've had fine results with Revit's gimpy version of Mental Ray, 3DS Max Mental Ray, 3DS Max V-Ray, old versions of V-Ray with Rhino, cheesy but quick animations from Lumion, Keyshot for architecture, and of course, Corona.

I believe that once you really learn one or two engines (particularly materials) and really understand common workflows, that knowledge will translate to other engines. I find that things I've learned with even Revit rendering (or hell, even Accurender 3 rendering that I did as a student!) apply across the board in one way or another because the concepts are generally the same.

V-Ray material tutorials will still go a long way with understanding Corona's shaders; Bertrand Benoit's Materialism article is a great place to start if you haven't seen it already (http://bertrand-benoit.com/blog/2012/04/15/materialism-1/). If you can get a hold of the second printing, Alex Roman's From Bits to the Lens book is also a great resource as far as rendering "theory" might go. Of course, the best way is to just play around and experiment!

[hairston630]

Thank you all so much for the valuable input (and a big thank you to anthonyyue for that materials guide!!!).  Yes, I would like to do independent freelance, however, I want to be realistic.  I dont want to just assume that im going to jump right into it.  If going into a production environment and working for another company will make me a better artist then I will go that route. 

[Ondra]

I dont want to just assume that im going to jump right into it.

You will ;)

[Alex Abarca]

In ArchViz you have some freedom, especially when it comes to workflows and the tools you use in your practice. In most cases Visualizers don't offer their  client the files that produce the renderings, mainly because of the complexities of the render setups plus the staging that we go through create them. Also, in most 3d visualizations, elements like materials, objects, backdrops, landscape and even lighting is proprietary of the artist who is creating it. So ArchViz is a democracy in that sense.

For a renderer choose wisely...choose a renderer with good support, widely distributed, and one that you rock on.