One-click caustics, ease of use features.

In the world of Chaos, one press release is never enough. No, the company sends them out like little soldiers one after the other. Most recently, Chaos Czech, formerly the Render Legion group, which was acquired by Chaos in 2017, has chimed in. They’ve announced the Corona renderer 3ds Max and followed it up with a new Corona rendering for Cinema 4D.

This latest version of Chaos’ technology includes one-click caustics that enables designers to add naturalistic lighting effects from surfaces like glass and water, with more speed and accuracy … sparkly stuff.

“Caustics are a missing link of photorealism, holding us back from achieving natural looks in some of our most common environments,” said Adam Hotový, Vice President at Chaos Czech. “With one-click caustics, the Cinema 4D community can now start fooling viewers with less effort, achieving a level of photorealism that was inaccessible before.”

He’s right, caustics enable the patterns of light that reflect and refract off transparent surfaces. The examples Chaos provides are pool water, diamonds, and wine glasses, which I suppose tells you what they’ve been thinking about this summer. Traditionally caustics take a toll on the hardware and slow down the process. That’s why water has always been a telltale feature for graphics quality.

Caustics are enabled in all Corona Renderer features including LightMix so artists can get the effects they want by playing with caustics, color, and light intensity, etc.

Chaos has established a Chaos Research as a new division to exploit the talents of the Render Legion team and it will be led by co-founder Jaroslav Krivánek.

New features include:

• Interactive Viewport Enhancements—Artists can now start using Corona IR in any Cinema 4D viewport. Once there, they can select objects; move, scale or rotate objects; or even use camera/perspective movement controls from within the viewport.
• Fisheye Camera—The Corona Camera Tag has been updated with a new fisheye projection mode with all the controls needed to create eye-catching interior and exterior shots.
• Intel AI Denoising—The new Intel AI denoiser is primed for any CPU and final renders. This completes a pipeline that pairs well with the NVIDIA AI Denoiser, previously announced for interactive rendering.
• Layered Displacements—Cinema 4D-only feature lets users blend displacements within layered materials with ease.
• True 3D Volume Materials—“Inside Mode” within the Corona Volume Material now allows for the creation of true 3D volumes and non-heterogeneous materials such as fog and mist.
• Multiple Corona Suns—Artists can now create as many Corona Sunlight sources as they wish. This is especially effective for creating noon, evening, and night images in Corona’s LightMix, as artists can depict multiple times of the day, all from one render.

There is more information and pricing available on the Chaos Czech website.

The Corona Renderer is available through a subscription for $24.99 a month. Trial versions are available at https://corona-renderer.com/download.

What do we think?

Keeping track of Chaos is not at all an easy task. Chaos Group has come to be a force in pushing rendering technology through its V-Ray products and now through the work of Chaos Czech. This Spring, the Chaos Group has announced an updated V-Ray renderer for 3ds Max, which adds swell effects to lighting and more control over lighting and shading. And, the company is perfecting its cloud-based rendering tool, Chaos Cloud. The company’s integration into the two leading game engines Unity and Unreal have also ensured its heavy use in gaming.

With the acquisition of the Prague-based Render Legion, the Chaos Group deepens its expertise in rendering, especially in architectural rendering where the Prague team has been particularly active. At the time of the acquisition, Chaos Group said it plans to keep the group intact in Prague, and with the establishment of Chaos Research, they’re building that group as well. The company says the new group will be concentrating on pure research and looking at future capacities three to five years out. This new research group will ally with academia. Krivánek is also a professor at Charles University in Prague.

For people who didn’t get a chance to go to Total Chaos in Sofia, Bulgaria, this year in March, Total Chaos is coming to Siggraph in 2019.