Corona Vs. FStorm: Which One To Choose? | 3ds Max

Yo guys, today on ‪@RenderRam‬ I'll cover my personal opinion on Corona vs. FStorm, it's really hard to choose which one is better? But what ever decision you make - YOU WIN!
00:00 Intro
00:26 Corona vs. FStorm
5:30 GPU Memory usage with FStorm
7:49 Conclusion

[@RenderRam]

Just to make one thing clear, Corona and Fstorm are not the only options to choose from, there are rendering engines like V-Ray, Redshift, etc., that do an equaly good job!

[@josemendiola8165]

Corona and Fstorm are better than V-ray without a doubt

[@JuanGomez-op7cw]

@@josemendiola8165 Why do you think Corona is better than V-Ray?

[@shoxruxbekabduraxmonov6958]

Is GPU Render on F-storm faster than cpu render corona?

[@shekur911]

@@shoxruxbekabduraxmonov6958 1 rtx4090 in fstorm = 20 amd R9 5950x cpu in corona.

[@bgtubber]

I really appreciate this comparison! I love the simplicity, speed and realism of Fstorm and I want to see it succeed as a render engine. I've been a V-Ray user for as long as I remember. It's very powerful and feature rich, but dang, Fstorm looks mighty fine too! I will try it out now that got a 3090. BTW, I thought that the image on 7:17 is a real life photo! 🤯 You've got a sub. I'm eager to see more Fstorm stuff.

[@oscart2813]

Any chance you can share some ideas on how you set up the glass tile in fstorm?

[@iskrenmarinov9737]

Damn that mattress looks great!

[@BOPISbewitya]

can you share your fstorm settings? or will you give us an indepth video on what settings to tweak it? Thanks

[@WaspMedia3D]

Wow that was fast! Thanks for covering this! Cheers! EDIT: One more thing with Corona and complex shaders - I have noticed it heavily impacts render time. I have a super complex skin shader in one of my projects, that uses multiple UDIM textures, then I also have a layer for tattoos (so I can removed them or add them as needed), and one for dirt, SSS maps, dynamic bump maps for skin stretch / compression, dynamic displace maps for cellulite on compression, well you get the idea. Of course for any final animation render I would have to spend time optimizing, but it would take time, but if I didn't, the renders would be painfully slow. Working with very complex shaders is definitely one of Corona's weak points. I find that the Corona built in de-noiser works reasonably good to preserve details, but you have to be well under 10% noise for it to be able to tell the difference between noise and detail, so you are still rendering for a fair chunk of time. I also have used the denoiser on full, with a high radius value, on a VERY noisy render (a few passes), and you get a sort of stylized cartoon effect - works well for that "cartoony" look, or for maybe concept art - not good for archvis though ...

[@RenderRam]

Damn that sounds complex and sexy at the same time, you have some examples of that? Would love to see that in action

[@WaspMedia3D]

​@@RenderRam I'm working on polishing a few things so I can start showcasing the project a bit. The whole project is very complex - probably unnecessarily and ridiculously so, lol, but I like to push the envelope. I will start with showcasing a few of the features, and the other things I spoke with you about earlier (sub-skin sliding), and if it generates some interest I'll probably work on some tutorials, hopefully I'll have a demo for this project within a couple weeks, depending on how much time I can put toward it. You'll be the first to know ;) I'll probably post it on Stack as well, I see you are there also.

[@wolfen69]

My 2 goto renderers, especially fstorm. It's just no nonsense simple and works. Key is understanding cascading mix materials. You can do anything then.

[@xRaptorScreamx]

Wont VRAM get used more by textures rather than polys? Also how would VRAM usage be, in a large project, like interior rendering or big 2 floor housE?

[@wtony101]

New to FStorm, but man.. it is pleasure to use.

[@wtony101]

@@a.d.9729 Had no need for caustics so far... Generally, you see that effect very rarely.

[@neoneil9377]

I am a Vray user since its launcehd and always loved it, but....... after using corona 6 for the first time i instantly realised one thing, corona gives me the look instantly without any effort as compared in Vray. I have also used Octane but I have to agree Octan is viciously fast in look dev and final renderings as well and results are as good as in corona but some how i still struggle in octane to achieve final look of lighting and how the surface behaves on lighting in most conditions, Corona wins for me.

[@shekur911]

octane suxxx. f-storm better and faster.

[@johnny5132]

thanks for this. As for your issue in corona material changes in the VFB - i have the exact same CPU and mine is instant - so there must be something else going on for you.

[@RenderRam]

Hi Johnny, if you hear from someone what might be the reason, please let me know!

[@michakuminek4537]

I might know the answer. What kind of coolings that you guys have?

[@lemming77gode]

I wish there was one of them available in Blender. Thank you for the video, another very good one.

[@KiseloMliako]

The tiling on the wall looks inverted on the FStorm render image ... Problem with the normals?

[@RenderRam]

It’s not inverted, tilles are made from a see-trough glass material

[@maritamachado8710]

Fstorm forever!

[@JuanGomez-op7cw]

Hey man. Curious to know how you managed to convert the scene from Fstorm to Corona. I haven't had any luck when trying to convert scenes between these two engines.

[@RenderRam]

It was a manual conversion unfortunately since Corona’s converter doesn’t support FStorm.

[@righteousrebel6387]

I don't know, the fstorm results with me for some reason give a way more realistic feel to the renders, has anyone tried the 4080/4090 and compared the times woth the 3090?

[@shekur911]

4090 up to 2.5 times faster

[@Lupaz77]

I'd be interested in comparing metal specifically between Fstorm and Corona. I did test on my own and I could swear Fstorm is much better at metallic surfaces (flat surfaces). EDIT: Or even metallic shaders among different engines, including PBR viewports like substance

[@marcinchester4949]

In one of my projects using Fstorm I had 210 million polygons and it was still going strong (around 11Vram used on RTX3090) You just have to instance stuff and you will be fine :)))

[@RenderRam]

With instancing, I think record was a few billion polygons with FStorm

[@IskanderVFX]

I used FStorm since the first betas.... like before the man implemented displacement but the lack of denoise and possibility to use procedural max standard maps made go back to V-Ray

[@ayogaramsai]

How can we convert corona materials into fstrom materials? Is there any possibility?

[@RenderRam]

Fstorm has a converter, go into render settings (F10) and near the bottom you have converter

[@ayogaramsai]

@@RenderRam oh thank you

[@chamixone]

What do you think about Arnold vs these two?

[@RenderRam]

Haven’t used it unfortunately, but I’ve seen Arnold do some pretty sick stuff in VFX

[@Andredy89]

all of that renderers are tooo long to render. I was needed to create 2 min archviz video. I used Cycles X on gpu and got around 1 min per frame. Anyway in took 2 days to render... Thinking of to switch to UE5. 13 min on one frame....no no no)

[@punmije]

Did you try Maxwell renderer maybe?

[@RenderRam]

I did but it was about 15-16 years ago, no idea how it’s developing today

[@punmije]

​@@RenderRamI think they lost a lot of users because people are switching to fast GPU-based rendering engines, such as Unreal Engine. However, it is still considered the most accurate unbiased rendering engine out there. The results are amazing, but I think it has been left to degrade. By the way, I'm really impressed by Fstorm. I've never tried it, but it seems very, very nice.

[@nois3535]

Fstorm dont have caustics and light mix, corona is king of architectural visualization engines

[@rothauspils123]

What about Vray?

[@RenderRam]

Also an equaly good rendering engine! Unfortunately last time I used vray was 6years ago, and can’t do a quality comparsion

[@rothauspils123]

@@RenderRam I want to switch to a different engine like Fstorm or Corona but my entire library is using Vray. How did you deal with that?

[@RenderRam]

@@rothauspils123 Corona’s converter is a bit laggy, sometimes converts instantly, and sometimes freezes for a few minutes, conversion is ok, but it doesn’t support fstorm materials, luckily most of the objects from the web are by default in corona, but like said, conversion is descent fstorm has an amazing material converter, super quick 1 click conversion, and 80% of the time I don’t need to change anything in converted material, supports both vray and corona

[@natee9496]

Ironicly I tried Fstorm with Vray Next because I already owned Vray3.6 and was considering upgrading. I tried one of my biggest New York Scenes with booth renderers and at the time Fstorm just knocked it out of the park and Vray and some render problems when it came to GPU. But maybe Vray today has fix most of those GPU problems.

[@user-gc2kw7ze6z]

вата фак ок гугул спосибо за обзор мен

[@graphiydesign]

Wow your threadripper and 3090 computer need to render 16min for a bathroom scene like this… I render it around 12min 4K resolution… in Vray. Haha but my pc config i710400 with gtx1060super, poor spec… office pc I am thinking of switch render engine, to see if the speed can go even faster. Which one would be better?

[@RenderRam]

Hi, sorry I should have mentioned, original resolution of these images was 5000x4000px About switching, it basically depends on your current hardware and setup you got. You can download FStorm and try it for free with watermark, and you can download Corona and use a trial to check which one suits you better. Judging by your hardware, I believe Corona would run faster with that i7 than GTX1060 with FStorm Both rendering engines can do magic

[@graphiydesign]

May I know your computer spec? I am thinking of buying threadripper pc, thanks. Nice rendering and tutorial!

[@ynadle1111]

OMG seriously! I am a corona user and holy SH!T is it laggy. it wastes so much time and i thought it was only my machine. its so crazy how laggy the plugin is when editing materials while real time rendering. honestly annoying and if someone figures out why it is so laggy and how to fix it i will love them for life!

[@RenderRam]

Hoping that you'll love me for life... I heard... if you lower amount of threads (slowing down your render speed) will increase material editor performance. - I haven't noticed anything when I lowered it to -5. But my friend had a massive material editor speed improvement. You can try it prnt.sc/-X-UAoERazXF

[@ynadle1111]

@@RenderRam youre my favorite person! thank you so much, like seriously! i will try this! i am currently running a threadripper 3990x i noticed the material editor running super laggy when i switched from intel CPU to AMD a couple years ago... i dont know if that has anything to do with it. anyways i am serious when i say i learn so much from your videos and i am immensly thankful for your tip. trying it now! i am slowly watching all of your videos as i work on my projects haha!

[@RenderRam]

@@ynadle1111 hahaha thank you for your support! means a LOT! But when it comes to CPUs... I do remember 2-3 people mentioning that issue on AMD CPUs... but since 2-3 people + me is not a big number, I can't say for sure that AMD is the problem

[@ynadle1111]

@@RenderRam i have always had this feeling it may be AMD CPUs... i hope corona devs figure something out... at least i know i'm not the only one

[@tobiaswiedemann7946]

FStorm doesn´t support caustics....and also not in the near future. Tha´s a MAJOR flaw - you need caustics for photorealism.

I use pcon planner that have ospray engine. A really beautiful software. For faster rendering for video or fast service I use D5.

[@fastlearner292]

That's FAR from being a major flaw. Caustics are the most useless thing to ever exist.

[@shekur911]

rtx4090 up 20x times faster. cpu amd R9 5950x. fstorm rulezzz

[@davideghirelli5856]

lol, 1 hour in threadripper and rtx 3090.. seems like you did something wrong