Useful article
January 12, 2023

Corona render settings full explanation. Part 1

Today we will look at the Render Setup in Corona.

To call the Render Setup window, press F10 or click on the button on the toolbar (a teapot with a gear).


Before you start working in Corona, you need to set it as the default render engine. Don't forget to install the Corona renderer on your computer.

Go to the Common tab and expand the Assign Renderer drop-down scroll. The items on this scroll allow you to set the render engine for rendering, for displaying materials in the Material Editor, and the render engine for the specific Realtime or Pseudo-Realtime mode of rendering the scene right in the projection window.

Click on the triple dot next to Production and also Material Editor (if the lock button is unchecked) and select CoronaRenderer from the list.

We see several tabs in the window. The first tab Common will be posted in a separate blog post. In both V-ray and Corona, this tab looks exactly the same. The purpose and function of all the buttons are the same.

So let's move on, to the second tab.

Scene

General Settings

Show VFB - shows the framebuffer (render window). If you accidentally closed the last renderer, this button will open it.

Start interactive - start interactive renderer, useful when adjusting the light in the scene. All changes will be immediately visible in the framebuffer.

Setup LightMix - LightMix settings. Very handy thing, even after the end of rendering you can edit how the light sources will affect the original picture.

- Instanced Lights - group lights in LightMix by type "dependent on each other" (similar to each other). That is, all dependent lights will be in one group, and will be controlled in LightMix as one.

- Grouped Light - grouped by Group (standard grouping of objects) lights will be controlled in lightmix as one.

- Individual Lights - each lamp is a separate element in LightMix. The most expensive method for computer memory.

- Iincluded in denoising - special attention should be paid to this checkbox. It allows you to automatically enable noise reduction for all elements of the LightMix. This is very convenient, because before you had to do it manually.

- The Add hidden lights checkbox even adds hidden lights to the LightMix.


Open Material Library - Open the Corona material library. If you don't want to create your own materials, you can just use Corona's.

Reset settings - reset all Corona settings to defaults.

Progressive rendering - Corona uses a progressive rendering method. So the whole picture will be improved pass by pass. This is in contrast to V-ray, where you can render on bins.

Progressive rendering limits - the number of passes after which the rendering will stop.

The value 0 disables the limitation, and the rendering will continue until the time or noise limit is reached, or until the rendering is stopped manually.

Pass limit - rendering limits by passes (passes). On average no more than 150

Time limit - rendering time limits

Noise level limit - rendering limits on the noise level

Note: you can enable all the "limiters" at once. But in this case, the rendering will end when the first limiter will be reached. For example: the time interval of 4 hours is reached, and the noise level of 3% is not reached.

Save/Resume rendering

Save CXR - saves the current rendering to the hard disk with additional data, so the rendering can be resumed later or opened with the Corona image editor.

Resume from file - Resumes a render from a file previously saved with Save CXR. In addition, you can save the noise reduction settings and use it for further processing of the image in the Corona image editor.

Resume last render - resumes the last render.

Render overrides

Render hidden lights - render hidden light sources (remove the check mark to quickly hide light sources, for example, by throwing them on a new layer, and then disabling or hiding the layer. That way the lights will be on a hidden layer and will not work).

Mtl. Override - assigning a single material to the whole scene. That is all materials of the scene when rendering will be overwritten by the one you put here. You can also exclude objects that will be overwritten by this material so that they, for example tulle, mirror or glass, remain transparent or with reflections. We exclude those objects that we don't need to overwrite in a single color for the whole scene.

Preserve - settings for overwriting to the gray standard material. What to include and what to exclude.
about that here: https://blog.render.courses/MtlOverride

Render only masks (disable shading) - when active, only rendered elements will be rendered. Very helpful if you forgot about an element, say ZDepth. Checked the box, specify render-element and quickly rendered it.


Denoising

Denoise mode: presets noise reduction.

Sometimes even 100-200 passes do not save you from noise. You can use noise reduction.

There are 4 options for denoising:

Non - completely off.

Only remove fireflies - noise reduction only for illuminated pixels.

Full denoising - full noise reduction.

Gather data for late - noise reduction for the CXR file (we mentioned above).

Denoise amount - degree of noise reduction.

Denoise radius - the radius of operation of the noise reduction.

Render selected

Mode - presets objects exclusion from the render.

Disabled - the mode is disabled.

Include/exclude list - the list of objects excluded and included in the rendering.

Viewport selection - selected object in the viewport.

Object GBuffer ID - render by ID.

Scene environment

Use 3ds Max settings (Environment tab) - use the environment configured by Max (key 8).

Single map - use the Corona environment. Sometimes in the scene you just need to turn on the light, put this marker. You can load the map (Sky or HDRU).

Overrides

Direct visibility override - overwrites what we see in the scene environment on the background. For example you can put an HDRI forest in this section and you will see the forest in the background (or through the open window).

Reflections override - overwrites what we see in reflections on surfaces that have reflections.

For example, you can put an HDRI of mountains into this section, and you will see mountains in the reflections of a glossy laminate.

Refractions override - overwrites what we see when we look through objects with transparent materials on them, such as glass.

This way you can use completely different maps for lighting, reflections and refractions.

Global volume material - Corona material is added here to reproduce fog.

Have a good rendering!
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