Corona vs Vray | What Is the Best 3ds Max Renderer For Beginners?

Corona Vs Vray

When I first started out 3D designing, I got my first modeling software which was 3DsMax and then I needed a professional realistic renderer. The two most popular ones that I came across were Corona and V-ray, but I was not sure which one was the best for me? After having tried out both in this blog, I will explain why I think Corona would be the best choice for a beginner.

Let’s get started.

The Price

The first thing I am going to talk about is the price, because let’s be honest it’s something we all definitely take into consideration. I am going to be discussing the educational price and the normal price. So first, the normal monthly price for V-ray is $80, which is roughly €70 and for Corona it is €25. The educational license for V-ray is $99 per year and for Corona it is €25 per year. So as you can see Corona is significantly cheaper, which is very beneficial when you are first starting out and you are already having to invest in computer parts, software and a renderer.

Corona Vs Vray Post Production

Similarly, to V-ray, Corona has post-production settings but from my experience Corona’s adjustment features are much more user-friendly and have a lot more functionality off the bat. For example, Corona has something called ‘Bloom’ and ‘Glare’, which creates realistic visible rays from light sources like a sun. Also, it comes pre-installed with a ‘LUTs’, which are just colour grading filters that you can put over your renders. V-ray does have an option for LUTs, but you have to find and download them yourself.

Material Library

Another great benefit of choosing Corona Vs Vray is that it has its own material library, which gives you the opportunity to practice applying materials without having to spend hours learning how to create them yourself – which is very difficult as a beginner. There are many categories of materials such as glass, wood, stone, etc. These all can be applied with a single drag and drop.

Lighting

Corona also has a very unique feature called ‘Light-Mix’. This makes it incredibly easy to control the lighting in your scene whilst rendering, without having to go back and forth to change the lighting and render again. This saves you so much time and allows beginners to really experiment and learn how to apply lighting in different scenes to match the mood and feel that you are going for.

Settings (Corona Vs Vray)

As a beginner, render settings can seem quite intimidating as there are many tabs and menus to adjust. Luckily for Corona users, there are very little changes that you have to make to start seeing great renders. Corona also has many extra convenient tools such as the ‘Corona Converter’ that can change an entire V-ray scene, with V-ray lights, materials and skies to Corona ones. Another tool that I always use and find very helpful, is creating a Corona camera from my active viewport. Instead of creating and adjusting it manually, which can take a while to get it perfect. Corona Vs Vray

The quality and speed of Corona in my opinion is just as good as V-ray and maybe even better. You can also read some articles that are linked below to learn what Corona does with their software to achieve such great results.

If you are a beginner considering trying out Corona and you found this information useful, there is a 45 day free trial below where you can download it and try it out for yourself!

Corona 45 Day Trial: https://corona-renderer.com/download

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