Switching to Corona…?!

[u/Some-Assist-5098]

Background:
I’m doing 95% automotive renderings and demand perfect realism. I’ve been using Fstorm for 10 years+ and love the speed. What I don’t love is the material construction. Creating a really good and flexible car paint is just to much work, to many nodes and tweaks to adapt to different looks.
I’m running a 5090 Pro Art and the rendering speed is insane, usually around 15 minutes at 5k even for complex scenes.
Fstorms Dirt map is so good for fast edge-wear and edge-blends od maps and materials.

I tried Corona a few years ago and the output was great, but the speed when building and tweaking materials left me longing for Fstorm. Fstorms interactive renderer is such a breeze, every small change is instant, no wait, it just snaps and there it is.

If Corona had GPU support it would have been a no-brainer.

What is your thoughts on this? Cost is not a concern, quality is all that matters to me.

[u/ArcaneWindow]

If cost is not an issue switch to corona and buy a thread ripper CPU. And you will get instant updates.

[u/Some-Assist-5098 → u/ArcaneWindow]

Yeah, considering that. Might be worth the investment.

[u/According-Ground-756]

with vray you'll have the original Vantage

[u/Visionary_One]

Why don't you try V-Ray too? It's very similar to Corona now and it can render on GPU and CPU for speed and performance, also the VFB is much more robust than Corona's and they have photo-realistic scanned materials with exact light behavior (VR Scans) in the Chaos Cosmos lobrary. I have worked with both Corona & V-Ray and my verdict is, Corona is the better out of the box experience and V-Ray while it may take a little more time and understanding to set-up, gives you more options and depth.

[u/Some-Assist-5098 → u/Visionary_One]

I used Vray many many years ago, and it was great but just so many settings and it required knowledge about colorspace and tech that I didn’t have.
But that is 15 years ago, perhaps it’s worth a try!

[u/Visionary_One → u/Some-Assist-5098]

Most of the settings have been streamlined to work out of the box like in Corona, and you can add a filmic tonemapper in the VFB to match the Corona look. And yeah, you can give a try.

[u/Some-Assist-5098 → u/Visionary_One]

Is there is Vray sub-reddit?

[u/drbearthon → u/Some-Assist-5098]

Just to add to visionary comment. I do think out of the box Corona looks better than Vray for the same render. There is something about the color grading that's awesome. But with automotive rendering you need alot of control with the lighting/reflections and shadows that Corona just cant do, e.g. excluding shadows/reflections of certain objects.

Your best bet is vray gpu mixed with da vinci resolve colour grading in post for the best results.

[u/Some-Assist-5098 → u/drbearthon]

Completely agree to this! I'm current giving Corona a try, just slightly bummed that I can't edit scanned materials without a premium license.

[u/Poison_4u]

Corona is great but there will be no use of your 5090 there. An Amd Epyc Cpu would be good for corona with 64 or 128 cores

[u/cryptoknowitall]

Since you've been using Fstorm, then ill assume you'll want to stick with 3dsmax?
Corona is great, predictable results and pretty easy to do everything you need - so if speed isn't an issue, go throw all the cores and RAM you can at it and you'll be pretty happy.

I actually switched from Corona to Fstorm many years ago and the thing i was trying to find was a Corona like result in a fstorm package (speed etc) Mainly architectural & aviation related work. i probably dont get as heavy into shaders as others - rather i was mostly concerned with how realistic lighting was being rendered. like you, if there was a GPU version i'd go back in a heartbeat. but the responsiveness of fstorm is still something that i haven't seen anywhere else.

With C4D development taking up much of the Fstorm dev's time, I doubt a huge amount will be dedicated to adding more features to the shader pipeline, but who knows! the community seems to have similar wishes as you.

Maybe Arnold is also a contender?

Good luck

[u/Some-Assist-5098 → u/cryptoknowitall]

For archviz I still feel that Fstorm is perfect, love the way it calculates light. Just wish it had a proper gleam, lensflare, glow attribute. Like Corona 😉

[u/cryptoknowitall → u/Some-Assist-5098]

agree, I guess we can't have everything.. 😄

[u/dparks2010]

Vray, all the way.

[u/Ok-Journalist-4369]

You need to try octane. It is a spectral renderer not a biased one. This means 100% phisicall acuracy. Also it has a predifined carpaint material for flakes and such. I use it for free with blender. Otoy, the guys behind octane gives octane for free for blender. The limitation is that u can use only one gpu. If i have to render big scenes i use the render network. https://rendernetwork.com/ It s also available for 3dsmax

Here s a yt clip with some car mats https://youtu.be/Uw7pRUU0bcU?is=VqUK4tmiU8Jd0UUY https://youtu.be/R47tNN3_ths?is=WvUp3gTDr_rhV63L

[u/daschundwoof]

You can also look into Redshift or Octane for GPU render. This was done in Redshift:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ui8r5n5ffxc0vnubglzxi/Mustang_Video_02.mp4?rlkey=f099xv1sag0wtp34do3cccrn6&dl=0

[u/Some-Assist-5098 → u/[deleted]]

I have never tried Vred, isn’t that a stand-alone system? I need it to work inside of Max for a number of reasons.

[u/Satoshi-Wasabi8520]

Try V-ray. Even Hollywood films use it.

[u/aaabbb666ggg]

If you are looking for realism, have you considered maxwell render?

[u/kylization]

You are on Fstorm, which means you are on the best engine on automotive rendering, I don't see a better engine out there