V-Ray VS Corona
In today’s world, the reliance on illustration and 3D modelling in virtually every walk of life cannot be overemphasized. This has increased the demand for illustration and 3D modelling software and hence skyrocketing its market value. As the day goes by, different software and utility programs are popping into the market in order to meet this demand. A stream of these tools worthy to mention are known as render engines.
Render engines bring illustrations and 3D modellings to life, they help us add textures, lighting and materials to designs. Besides that, with the right expertise, render engines will let you see illustrations and 3D designs as they will appear in real life.
That said, one of the render engines that have overtaken the market by storm is the V-Ray render engine. Since its inception, it has maintained strong standings against its competitors. But notwithstanding its popularity, other rendering software have since graced the market and have proven to be equal to the task, too. One of such software that has quickly gained wide acceptance from experts and moving towards the part to global recognition is called Corona.
So, in this article, we will be making a comparison between these two popular render engines – Corona vs V-Ray.
Before that, let’s take a look at what each engine entails.
CORONA RENDER
Corona came to light in 2012, and since then it is being used as a pure CPU based rendering engine. Two aspects that have made Corona top it demands is its ability to produce quality rendering, and the option to apply physically-based shading in a production rendering. Besides that, it can easily integrate into Autodesk 3ds Max and Cinema 4D. Another interesting fact about Corona is its ability to support un-biased path tracing as well as incorporates a UHD cache that delivers quick and detailed GI outputs. It also comes with a stand-alone frame buffer that allows you to augment your renders until you get the desired feel. Above all, its user interface and the way its tools are arrangement is synonymous with the popular Maxwell Render.
V-RAY
A gathering of designers, animators or graphic artist is not a meeting if V-Ray is not mentioned – Yes, that is how popular it is. V-Ray is built by a Bulgarian company based in Sofia, Bulgaria called Chaos Group. Since their establishment came to light in 1997, V-Ray has been utilized in almost every corner of the media, entertainment, and design industry – it works go as far as the production of movies, industrial and product design, videos games and architecture. Besides that, V-ray uses multiple tracing elements such as biased ray tracing (which includes global illumination, and photon mapping), or a Brute Force unbiased algorithm. And the number of 3d software that you can use the V-Ray plugin is almost limitless – thanks to its well-structured plugin and GPU render engine (V-Ray RT) that are used for IPR renders.
Resources
The popularity V-Ray has had in the industry has given it an edge over Corona in terms of resources. Unlike Corona, there are thousands of resources for V-Ray, this includes, 3D model templates, tutorials and supportive materials. Corona has a lesser number of experienced people utilizing it and hence the reason for its scares tutorials, materials as well as educational resources. However, this notion may not linger because Evermotion is already working hard on releasing ready-made models for Corona. Right now, Evermotion supports the integration of Corona, and it has an extended list of proprietary tools already.
CPU and GPU Render Support:
V-Ray has a higher level of sophistication in that it can compute rendering in CPU and GPU setups. Also, when in its Hybrid Version V-Ray can intuitively render files on CPU and GPU systems at the same time. Unlike V-Ray, Corona is a purely based CPU render engine and makes use of its CPU abilities to render. As technology continues to evolve, we can get to have a Corona render engine performing on GPU setups someday.
License Fee:
Even though these two rendering engines is as powerful as they are meant to be, they certainly will cost you a few bucks to hundreds of dollars depending on the features you desire to integrate. However, if you are looking at the difference from a purely financial stance, going with Corona will be a less expensive option for the regular user.
Support for Software and Plugins:
One thing that can boost the growth of any software is its ability to function efficiently within other software, and that is where plugins come in. With that said, V-Ray takes the lead in this category. It has a never-ending list of support plugins for almost every other 3D software out there. Designers who are working with V-Ray find it very easy to transition from one software to another. But Corona, on the other hand, has just been in the industry for a short time, and hence still growing its plugin base. This is going to change soon because the feedbacks Corona is currently receiving are really impressive.
Rendering Speed and Interface:
The speed of rendering is one of the essential criteria people look out for before choosing a render engine. So, let’s take a look at how each of this software will perform when placed in an Un-biased and Biased algorithm.
Before we can rightly judge the speed of any rendering engine, we have to make sure it is integrated with Ember Technology – a feature that will accelerate the speed when rendering scenes analyzed with the ray-traced algorithms.
In accordance with all that, V-Ray comes with a large pool of manual settings. Its numerous settings have given experts the ability to drastically reduce the rendering time while maintaining a better output image. So, in biased based rendering, V-RAY takes the lead while Corona lags behind yet again. However, if you compare this with the Un-biased render, the reverse will be the case. The easy-to-use interface that Corona comes with has boosted its speed.
Regardless of the difference in speed between these two rendering engines, both engines have excellent speed as well as performance. This makes it hard in this category to entirely say one is better over the other. Also, V-Ray functions optimally in Bias mode while Corona outperforms it the un-biased mode. Irrespective of that, both render engines match each other up in terms of speed and interface utility.
Conclusion:
It is clear that V-Ray with numerous resources, a wide range of support for 3D software, a massive list of extensive settings as well as its higher bias based rendering speed and its ability to also render simultaneously on a GPU and CPU setup makes it a favorite option for the rendering market. Nonetheless, this doesn’t make Corona any less useful. In spite of the fact that it is new in the market, it presents a higher rendering speed in an Un-Biased rendering. And above that, it has a lower license fee and also provides users with a friendly interface making it easy even for a novice to get their hands on.
Considering the fact that Corona is getting a full acceptance in the rendering industry and the recent news about Render Legion A.S. and Chaos group coming together, it is a sure thing that the future looks bright for Corona. Perhaps, if it eventually incorporates the ability to function in a GPU setting, it will massively grab a higher percentage of the market value and hopefully becomes the trendy engine for rendering illustrations and 3D models.
