Hey guys & gals,
We are doing a little survey to better understand how people use V-Ray vs Corona; we have our own observations of course, but some direct feedback from you will be very helpful for us to improve the products.
Adam already posted this on the Corona forum as well; I’m quite curious to see what comes out. Also feel free to share any thoughts here.
Best regards,
Vlado
I’d love to use Corona, but it’s not available for Modo.
I hope you will consider a Modo plugin 
Same reason I have long wanted to give Corona a go but it isn’t available on Modo, so maybe you add it and we buy it.
I own both, and prefer Vray.. we render most of our projects on GPU ,and if we need to render on CPU for whatever reason we stick to Vray
Vray is faster, has better IPR with debug shading options and more shading features.
Advantages of Vray,
-Adaptive Dome Light, HDRI lighting is easier to use without the need for portals, and interiors are much faster to render.
-Best IPR in the industry, with isolate select and other debug shading modes.
-Bucket modes, for better CPU utilization, less network traffic with DR, less memory consumption with high res renders…etc
-Metalness option for PBR workflow and achieving physically accurate metals.
-GGX tail falloff control.
-ALSurface material.
-Vray HairNext material with Glint and Glitter controls
-Vray Volume scatter shader, supports random walk SSS
-VRscans which we use in every project.
-Mappable radius for Vray’s dirt.
-ChaosCloud
-LC GI for speed and things like Auto exposure/white balance , adaptive lights, adaptive domelight..etc
-Vray Next GPU
-Perpetual licensing
-More frequent updates and bugfixes.
Advantages of Corona,
-Light Mixer
-VFB post processing/tonemapping
-Cheaper rental
-material library
Vray’s disadavatages,
-Bump mapping result changes based on render resolution, will need to change bump delta scale for every material whenever I change render resolution- if I ever want things to look the same
-Triplanar still doesn’t work with normal maps
-Volume scatter shader doesn’t work on GPU, other models cannot achieve the same results
-Fast SSS2 doesn’t support GGX or glossy frensel.
-Still no Secondary environment overrides on GPU
-Displacement consumes a lot of memory on GPU, it needs to be optimized.
-YOU CANNOT BUY OR UPGRADE VRAY ONLINE, YOU STILL NEED TO GO THROUGH A RESELLER
Great idea, Vlado! Just completed the survey. I use both but keep gravitating back to Corona. A few reasons why:
Features:
-Corona denoiser seems to do a better job keeping detail and dealing with glass. It’s also easier to use being integrated nicely into the VFB. It also has Intel denoiser as a nice backup option.
-Speaking of glass, we always get more realistic glass in Corona. Not sure why this is. I’ve bumped trace depth, added fog, and reflect on back side but I always feel like Corona gives a more realistic effect.
-Lightmix. I know people knock this feature but seriously, it’s amazing. And for final high res renders there’s a ‘Scene’ button where you bake the settings into the scene and can then disable lightmix.
User Experience (just a few examples, there are more):
-Optix is a checkbox in the performance tab and this checkbox only applies to IPR. Optix turns off automatically for production unless you enable it for that specifically. For me that’s a cleaner integration than adding it as a render element and juggling that with the HQ denoiser.
-Vray log scrolls endless messages at you and it’s tough to read. Corona log pops up only when there is an issue, and usually has a clickable link for more info on their helpdesk. Sometimes it even has an automated fix (Normal map gamma for example.) That is just super nice.
-VFB is just so nice. Scroll easily through LUTs, turn on and off denoising, etc.
-Material preview is more realistic with reflected light from the ground, etc.
-Region rendering is so nice, multiple regions, etc.
-Stability. Corona pretty much never crashes on me, even with the daily builds. Next GPU crashed on me a fair bit, especially as I got towards my memory limit.
-Waaaaaaaay easier to purchase and manage license.
What we like about Next:
-GPU speed…it’s crazy fast with 2x2080 Ti’s!
-Clipper
-Potential for RT core integration
-Metalness
-Faster with Forest Pack heavy scenes
-Chaos Cloud
Corona lacks GPU, so that’s what is keeping me away from there 100%. I have had to use it to finish up a few projects because of issues I was having with V-Ray NEXT, so for CPU, it just works when NEXT wasn’t. Converting from V-Ray to Corona is seamless, however, the other way, not so much.
I’ve played around and subscribed to Corona for a year or so, and I really like the lightmixer, LUTs and multiple render regions, as well as the growing material library. It is more straight forward to use in general, and I kind of feel renders look better out of the box than in Vray, especially if I convert a Vray scene into Corona. Unfortunately I don’t have the time to keep myself abreast on two different renderers and not supporting GPU makes it in my view a dead end. I want to explore Unreal more in the future and Vray is more aligned with the Unreal option and GPU rendering.
Having said that I find it annoying that the two engines keep progressing differently, like the new caustics in Corona that I would love to play around with in Vray. It would make much more sense to me if Chaos had one team developed a core engine that both Vray and Corona shared, and then had Corona as a more entry level option. I understand that may not sound so motivating for the Corona team per se, but I can’t believe that users really feel there is a massive difference in render quality between them, so in effect the user interface and business model is what attracts the Corona user. Sharing a core would give all users the best of both worlds while eliminating the confusion we feel now.
Thanks for the feedback so far, keep it coming
With regards to the V-Ray denoiser and glass, if you enable the “Affect all channels” option for refraction in the glass material, the denoiser will do a much better job out of it as the necessary render elements for denoising will be propagated through the glass.
For the two engines progressing differently, while I see Nicinus’ point of view, it also gives us a chance to explore different ways of doing things. For example, I would like to explore a slightly different way of doing caustics than the method Corona implemented right now.
Best regards,
Vlado
I’m a corona user coming back to vray after quite some time now.
I mostly do arch- and productviz.
What I like about corona and ultimatly why I use it: (ranked from biggest to lowest impact)
- Speed - out of the box “progressive rendering” is just so much faster in corona
- translucency and SSS - so easy in corona, mild headache in vray (in that context: vray gpu not supporting translucency shortened my short venture into the gpu world quite a bit)
- Denoiser - the ability to fade it like a layer makes all the difference. Vray denoiser feels too strong most of the time and if i turn it down it looks bad. FB integration is nice too.
- IES lghts - implemented into corona light (why have a seperate object), visible lightshape for glare
- Edges Tex - corona’s round edges implementation is much more sophisiticated
- Corona Converter - so much faster and much more options
- Interface and User Experience - pick buttons for easy exclude and clear, error messages, normal map gamma check, override material options,..
- FB options like: blurring/sharpening, abilitly to control denoiser, easy LUT integration, multiple render regions
- Color Picker
- Glas material apparently?
- (Caustics)
What I like about Vray:
- IPR - fast and responsive - sadly corona’s “interactive rendering” got worse with the last updates.
- Vray Clipper
That beeing said I feel like corona is more tailored to archviz and vray is the more flexible allrounder.
It will be interesting to see in which direction these two will go.
Please don’t autodesk out on us 
Which is why it would be great to have the Corona method available in Vray right now, while you tinker away for perhaps 6-12 months on another approach. It also makes sense that Vray, as the more technical and lets face it expensive alternative, offers two different ways of doing it that likely are suited and optimized for slightly different situations. Should one prove superior it then makes sense that Corona focuses on that one.
Great, thank you for the tip! It occurs to me that this actually speaks to the ‘user experience’ that a lot of the posters have referenced. If affect all channels is the best option for refraction + denoiser I wonder if this could be the default value for refraction? Or if that’s unpopular or risky, if you did rework the message log to be more like Corona’s it could pop up with ‘We notice you are using the denoiser and a refractive material but Affect All Channels is disabled. Click here to learn more or click here to fix.’ Not so much about just this specific issue, but more as a broader mode of thought. *shrug*
EDIT: Also, this was on the GPU…does affect all channels work on Next GPU?
Hm, good question. I will have to check, but if not, we will need to figure out a way to implement it.
Best regards,
Vlado
I personally prefer the fine-grained control in Vray over the ease-of-use in Corona. This might be more of a technical artist / pipeline thing but I like to be in control and I need the not-archviz-targeted features Vray offers (which Corona still lacks). I also use Vray because it’s available on all platforms - especially soon with Houdini - and interoperability between those two DCCs is a big plus.
I also appreciate that Vray and Corona both try out different approaches and not just take whatever the other already did. That’s one of the best things that came out of the merger in my opinion.
Sorry, but I just couldn’t resist. How is that different from before, you mean?
I think because they learn from each other and try different things opposed to not knowing what and how the other was doing it before.
Before they had to just catch up to each other, both weren’t able to just explore what they wanted to explore but had to compete with each other - which meant taking the “faster”, less risky approach if necessary. Now they can just both try more fringe ideas that may not lead anywhere … but could potentially be the most awesome thing and exchange the technology if one of them is successful - or as vlado stated above, learn from it and try another spin on the idea.
And I think that is great, I just wish it could based on one core, so that all may potentially benefit. I see tremendous advantages in different approaches and gui based on market segment, but having two different products doing basically the same thing, competing with each other, from the same company just can’t be in the best interest of either Chaos or its users.
Having one core that attempts to do everything that we need for both renderers would be extremely challenging and very complicated to develop and support. V-Ray has to deal with stuff like deep output, Cryptomattes, Alembic (and maybe soon USD and MaterialX) support, shading/geometry SDK (that needs to be relatively stable for long periods of time), direct OSL/GLSL/MDL support and other somewhat exotic features, not to mention GPU rendering; also V-Ray tends to have a longer development cycle with a long support period (we still have customers using V-Ray 3.x and we must be able to fix stuff for that old version in case there are issues). Corona has a somewhat different development philosophy with its own pros and cons. Trying to force the same code base on both renderers seems to me to carry a very high risk of failure.
Best regards,
Vlado
Can someone clarify that corona is around $30 per month for workstation and 3 render nodes, and vray $278? Is that right?
No, not exactly. V-Ray’s pricing strongly favors annual licenses whereas Corona pricing does not. For example, if you prepay for a whole year, then one workstation and three render nodes of V-Ray for 3ds Max come in at 56.83 euro a month (you would get further discounts if you get more render nodes). If you really want to buy just one month license of V-Ray, then that would cost 204 euro, which is much higher. We also still sell a lot of perpetual licenses, which could be cheaper depending on how often you upgrade (a significant portion of customers are still on V-Ray 3.x which was originally released five years ago). Corona costs 25 euro a month flat for a workstation and three render nodes. Both pricing strategies have their pros and cons.
Best regards,
Vlado