We are pleased to announce that Corona Renderer for Archicad Alpha 2 is released!
We’ve been developing this version of Corona Renderer for a while; Alpha 1 was just for internal testing, but Alpha 2 is now ready for you to test!
Since this is an Alpha version, it is far from feature complete, and there are very likely some bugs in the software, so please keep that in mind (especially if considering using it for any commercial projects! You are welcome to do so, but be aware that there may be crashes, instability, missing features, etc.)
We need your testing and feedback to make Corona for Archicad into everything you want it to be, and we appreciate any testing that you can do for us!
The plugin is already quite advanced and supports:
Note: The current Alpha is for Archicad for Windows; in the future, we may develop a version for macOS (if you know any macOS developers, point ’em to our jobs page!)
If you want a quick introduction to getting started with Corona for Archicad, we’ve created a tutorial for you to walk you through everything you’ll need to get up and running:
If you want to get straight to the download, you will find the latest version at:
Read about the first public release of Corona for Archicad!
Here’s what you can expect in the first publicly usable version:
If you’ve not heard of Chaos Corona before, here’s the quick guide to what it is. Corona is a high-performance (un)biased photorealistic renderer, which focuses on being:
If you’ve used, seen or read about Corona for 3ds Max and Cinema 4D, these features will be familiar to you – however, if you’ve never heard of Corona Renderer before, below we give you a comprehensive introduction to how it will revolutionize your workflow!
Interactive Rendering (IR) is a game-changer for your workflow, making sure that we make YOU faster as well as your renders (after all, your time is much more important than your machine’s!)
IR lets you see how everything will look in your final render, but with near real-time feedback, removing the need for repeated test renders. This means:
Corona is a progressive renderer, which means it starts with a noisy version of the image which then cleans up with every pass of the rendering. Denoising is a feature that lets you stop rendering earlier and remove any remaining noise in a quick postprocessing step. You can see how it works in the image below, rendered for only 4 passes:
It’s simple to use, does a great job of preserving detail while removing noise, and as a result you can often save up to 50% to 70% off of your render time!
The Corona VFB brings together many aspects of Corona into one convenient window.
You use it for:
Corona aims to reduce or even remove the need to open up some external image editor after rendering, and lets you adjust and tweak the image right in the VFB.
Even as you are rendering, you can:
The Corona Material is a one-stop material that lets you create anything from stone to metal to glass to wood… whatever your project needs! We even have our own custom Material and Texture editors, including a range of objects you can use in the preview, plus you can rotate the preview to check how the material looks from any angle.
Already in Alpha 2, we have the Corona Sun (based on sunlight in Archicad and fully configurable), and partial implementation of the Corona Light (at present, IES and other advanced features have not been implemented).
The default sky can also be disabled, or overridden with a texture so that you can use HDRI images to light your scene. Common methods for mapping textures to the environment are implemented.
All Archicad geometry is supported, so will render as expected without having to make any adjustments, changes or concessions. Alpha 2 also has excellent support for native Archicad lights, including non-physical “fakes” such as semi-transparent or missing shadows, no falloff, etc.
You can think of the Corona Image Editor (CIE) as a standalone version of the Corona VFB – save any render to the .CXR format (Corona EXR), and you can adjust that image at any time without having to re-render or open Archicad.
This includes all the post-processing settings, using LightMix, and adjusting denoising. You can also load and save post-processing settings and LightMix settings to exchange them freely in either direction between the CIE and the VFB in Archicad.
Sometimes you need full control of a render in post-production, which is where Render Elements come in. They let you create special separate passes so that you can adjust various components in your image (such as tweaking reflection brightness, or the strength of bounced light), and you can use them to apply special processing too (such as masking out individual objects, adding depth of field or fog, etc.)
Archicad does not natively support render elements, but Corona has a comprehensive range of them – in fact, Corona for Archicad supports the same list of render elements as any other version:
The full list of Render Elements is below:
If (or at this point in development, more likely “when”!) you find a bug, or if you want to request a certain feature, or UI layout, or anything else, please visit the Corona Render for Archicad boards on the forum.
When reporting a bug, please tell us:
Now that you are excited after reading everything that is already implemented even at this early stage, here’s that download link again!
Just so you are familiar with the naming conventions, the next step will be work on daily builds for Corona for Archicad Alpha 3. Once we have that stable and all the planned features for this next step are in place, there will be a final version of Corona for Archicad Alpha 3.
We’ll keep with Alphas, as many as we feel we need, until everything is nearing feature complete, and then move to Betas.
As to which features we’ll implement next, a large part of that is up to you! Give us your feedback on what you most want to see implemented. Our current plans are to implement good proxies, import external 3D assets, and rework the Material and Texture Editor (probably using a nodal editor) – other than that though, we are looking to hear your suggestions!
We’re very excited to be bringing Corona to a whole group of new users, and providing them with THE best rendering option for Archicad! We’d like to thank you for signing up and providing us with your valuable time for testing and feedback – you’re helping shape the future of Corona!
THANKS! Jan Spacek, Tom Grimes, Jarda Křivánek and the Corona Team!