This page provides information on the Corona Converter, its settings, and usage.
Overview
The Corona Converter is a tool you can use to convert scenes made with other renderers to Corona. It automatically converts materials, maps, lights, and more. It is installed with Corona by default and can be launched using:
The dedicated Corona Toolbar icon.
The quad menu after right-clicking in any viewport.
The converter works only if you have both Corona and the other renderer installed on the machine where you are using it. It is fine to use the trial or even expired trial license of the other renderer. For example, if you are converting V-Ray materials to Corona, you need to have both Corona and V-Ray installed on your computer.
From Corona 12 onwards, the converter also supports converting 3ds Max Physical Materials to Corona Physical Materials.
Options
General Options
Add prefix to converted material – Adds a prefix to name of all converted materials.
mr. Area Light/Lights to Corona Light(s) – Converts mr Area Omni Light and mr Area Spot Light to CoronaLight.
Bitmap(s) to CoronaBitmap(s) – Converts Bitmap texture maps to Corona Bitmaps.
Enable "Thin shell" if translucent – Enables Thin shell parameter of the converted material, if the original material was translucent. Physically based materials in Chaos Corona are only allowed to use translucency effects when describing objects with Thin Shell.
Switch to Chaos Corona – Switches active renderer of the current scene to Chaos Corona.
V-Ray specific options
Convert VrayHDRI(s) – Converts VRayHDRI texture maps to standard Bitmap texture maps.
Convert V-ray proxies – Converts V-Ray proxies to Corona proxies (opens a pop-up dialog with further options during the conversion).
V-Ray specific objects, lights, and materials are supported only if V-Ray renderer is installed in 3ds Max.
Individual tools
Reset Compact Material Editor materials – Resets all Compact Material Editor materials to default CoronaPhysicalMTL(s).
Show statistics – Shows statistics about CoronaPhisicalMtl(s) in the scene.
Convert by class – Converts specific unsupported materials classes to default CoronaPhysicalMtl(s) (e.g. missing_mtl or Maxwell materials).
Selected objects' maps in viewport
Show – Workaround for displaying diffuse maps in the viewport.
Hide – Workaround for turning display of diffuse maps in the viewport off.
Disable CoronaRoundEdges maps Legacy behavior – Disables Legacy behavior of all CoronaRoundEdges maps.
Fix CoronaNormal "Incorrect gamma" warnings – If some CoronaNormal node displays Incorrect gamma warning, tries to fix it by switching its add gamma to input option on or off. Only works if the input texture's gamma is either 1.0 or 2.2.
Convert VRayDispacementMod(s) to CoronaDisplacementMod(s) – Converts VRayDispacementMod(s) to CoronaDisplacementMod(s).
Bitmap(s) - > CoronaBitmap(s) – Converts Bitmap texture maps to CoronaBitmap.
CoronaBitmap(s) - > Bitmap(s) – Converts CoronaBitmap(s) to Bitmap(s).
Set normals filtering
None – Set all CoronaPhysicalMtl and CoronaSkinMtl materials to use normal filtering mode 'None'.
Linear – Set all CoronaPhysicalMtl and CoronaSkinMtl materials to use normal filtering mode 'Linear'.
Roughness mod. – Set all CoronaPhysicalMtl and CoronaSkinMtl materials to use normal filtering mode 'Roughness modulation'.
To learn more about normal filtering, see the New Bump/Normal filtering in Corona article.
Get help
Corona Converter documentation – Links to this documentation page.
Corona documentation – Links to the Corona documentation homepage.
Learn more about albedo – Links to the "What is albedo?" article in the Corona Help Center.
Conversion
Everything – When enabled, the Converter converts everything in the scene.
Scene materials and maps only – When enabled, the Converter converts materials and maps only.
Scene lights only – When enabled, the Converter converts lights only.
Materials of selected objects only – When enabled, the Converter only converts the materials of the currently selected objects.
Selected material editor slot only – When enabled, the Converter only converts the selected material editor slot.
Conversion selection modes convert materials and maps without breaking instancing, so be aware that other materials may be affected by the conversion as well!
Show warnings – When enabled, the Converter shows warnings during the conversion process.
Convert CoronaLegacyMtl – When enabled, all Corona Legacy Materials in the scene are converted to Corona Physical Materials. When disabled, they remain as Corona Legacy Materials.
Metalness
- Autodetect – Corona attempts to automatically detect whether a material should be converted to a metal or non-metal. This may not always be accurate, so some manual adjustments may be needed after the conversion.
- Force non-metal – All scene materials are converted to non-metals.
- Force metal – All scene materials are converted to metals.
Convert – Starts the conversion process.
Corona Converter tries to keep as many of the original settings as possible in newly created materials. For Refractive, Translucent, and Volumetric materials sometimes there will be more nodes than in the original material. Nevertheless, the Converted materials will look and render just fine.
Supported and Unsupported Items
Materials
Maps
Lights
| Category | Original | Result |
|---|---|---|
| V-Ray Lights | VRayLight | Corona Light |
| VRayIES | Corona Light (with IES enabled) | |
| VRaySun | Corona Sun | |
| VRayAmbientLight | Does not convert. | |
| Standard / Other Lights | 3ds Max Daylight System | Sunlight is converted to Corona Sun. Skylight is converted to <No Skylight>. |
| Native 3ds Max Lights (Omni, Target, Fre, etc) | Do not convert, but can be rendered with Corona. |
Other
| Category | Original | Result |
|---|---|---|
| V-Ray | V-Ray Proxy | Corona Proxy |
| V-Ray Displacement Modifier | Does not convert. |