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Corona includes its own Virtual Frame Buffer (VFB) window and interface that has been tuned to the most common needs of artists and can provide a very decent post-production experience and results.

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The Corona VFB 2.0 is only available starting from Corona 12; older Corona versions use the Corona VFB (legacy)

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Starting from Corona 12, the VFB 2.0 is the default Virtual Frame Buffer.

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Switching from VFB 2.0

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to Legacy VFB

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It is possible to switch from the new VFB 2.0 to the Legacy VFB. Here is how to do it:

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  • Navigate to the Corona menu → Preferences → VFB Settings → VFB Version and use the dropdown list to select the desired VFB version.
    Note: Alternatively, you can manually navigate to the Cinema 4D preferences → Renderer → Corona → VFB Settings → VFB Version
  • Once the VFB Version is selected, reboot Cinema 4D.
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Corona VFB 2.0 Buttons

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Saves currently displayed image to a selected file.

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Clicking the "arrow" icon next to the Save

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Saves currently displayed image to a selected file.

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Pressing and holding the "arrow" icon next to the Save button displays the following available options:

Save – Saves currently displayed image to a selected file.

Save all – Saves each render element as a separate file using a specified file format.

Save CXR – Stores all the information from the VFB (all render elements, including the LightMix, tone mapping, denoising data, etc.) inside a single CXR file.

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Sets the VFB content to the host app frame buffer.

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Copies currently displayed image into clipboard. 

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Erases currently displayed image.

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Activates mode for editing the render regions. 

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Pressing and holding the "arrow" icon next to the Render Region button displays the following available options:

Disable All – Disables all selected regions.

Delete all – Removes all selected regions.

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Activates pick mode for selecting objects and setting of camera focus point.

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Hides/shows tools sidebar.

Save– Saves currently displayed image to a selected file.

Save all–Saves each multipass (including the Beauty pass) as a separate file using a specified file format.

Save CXR–Stores all the information from the VFB (including the multipasses, the LightMix information, tone mapping,

denoising data, etc.) inside a single CXR file. To learn more about saving CXR files visit our Help Center.

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Copies the VFB content to the host app frame buffer.

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Copies currently displayed image into clipboard.

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Erases currently displayed image.

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Activates mode for editing the render regions. 

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Clicking

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Stops the rendering process without discarding any additional data or post-rendering actions.

This is the same as the "Stop rendering..." button in the Cinema 4D Picture Viewer window

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When denoising is enabled, pressing the Stop button stops the rendering process and proceeds to denoising post-rendering actions.

Pressing and holding

the "arrow" icon next to the

Stop

Render Region button displays the following available options:

Cancel – Stops the rendering process, discards denoising or post-rendering actions, and skips saving output files (if were set up).

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Starts the production rendering process.

Pressing and holding the "arrow" icon next to the Render button displays the following available options:

Render – Starts rendering process.

Start IR – Starts Interactive Rendering.

Resume last – Resumes last render.

Resume file – Resumes rendering based on a previously saved CXR file.

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This drop-down list allows selecting the multi-pass to be displayed in the VFB.

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This drop-down list allows performing zoom actions.

Lock IR resolution – This checkbox locks the image aspect ratio when the IR is running.

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Disable All – Disables all selected regions.

Delete all – Removes all selected regions.

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Activates pick mode for selecting objects and setting of camera focus point.

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Hides/shows tools sidebar.

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This drop-down list allows performing zoom actions.

Zoom in – Zooms the image in.

Zoom out – Zooms the image out.

Zoom to 50% – Zooms the image to 50%.

Zoom to 100% – Zooms the image to 100%.

Zoom to 200% – Zooms the image to 200%/

Lock IR resolution – This checkbox locks the image aspect ratio when the IR is running.

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Keyboard shortcuts are available for zooming actions.

Ctrl + + – Zooms in

Ctrl + - – Zooms out

Ctrl + 0 – Zooms the image to 100%

Double-click (LMB) – Changes the VFB size to match the image size.

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Start Interactive Rendering – Starts the Interactive rendering feature.

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Stops the rendering process without discarding any additional data or post-rendering actions.

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When denoising is enabled, pressing the Stop button stops the rendering process and proceeds to denoising post-rendering actions.

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Clicking the "arrow" icon next to the Stop button displays the following available options:

Stop – This is the same as the "Stop rendering..." button in the Cinema 4D Picture Viewer window. (this is the default action for the Stop button)

Cancel – Stops the rendering process, discards denoising or post-rendering actions, and skips saving output files (if were set up).

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Starts the production rendering process.

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Clicking the "arrow" icon next to the Render button displays the following available options:

Render – Starts rendering process. (this is the default action for the Stop button)

Resume last – Resumes last render.

Resume File – Resumes rendering based on a previously saved CXR file.

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This drop-down list allows selecting the multi-pass to be displayed in the VFB.



Post Tab

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Saves current postprocessing settings into a file.Loads postprocessing settings from a specified file.

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Auto Adjustment

Exposure – Calculates optimal exposure based on rendered values without tone mapping. To see what exposure values is generated, remove exposure operator(s) in tone mapping and bake auto exposure into tone mapping.

White balance – Calculates optimal white balance based on rendered values without tone mapping. Bake to see the generated value.

Update during animation – If enabled, auto adjustments are calculated for each frame of sequence rendering. When disabled, auto adjustments are calculated only for the first frame of the sequence and stay unchanged.

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Tone Mapping


The Tone Mapping rollout lists the currentlyadded Tone Mapping Operators. By default, it includes the following operators:

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  • Simple Exposure

  • White Balance

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    Starting from Corona 12 Update 1, the White Balance operator has been deprecated and is now called "Legacy White Balance." The new White Balance operator uses Bradford's chromatic adaptation formula, which makes it more accurate and in-line with industry standard.

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Tone Mapping

The Tone Mapping rollout lists the currently added Tone Mapping Operators. By default, it includes the following operators:

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Saves current postprocessing settings into a file.Loads postprocessing settings from a specified file.
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  • Simple Exposure
  • White Balance
  • Green-Magenta Tint
  • Contrast
  • Saturation
  • ACES OT

"+" button – – Displays the list of all available Tone Mapping Operators and allows to add one.

Reset button – Resets the current Tone Mapping Operators stack to the default configuration.

Presets button – Displays the list of built-in tone mapping presets.


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Bloom & Glare

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Compute After Render – Enabling this checkbox allows –If enabled, the Bloom & and Glare effect to be computed only after the image rendered is completeis computed at the end of the rendering process, instead of during the whole rendering.

Size – Increases/decreases Bloom & Glare size.

Bloom Intensity – Increases/decreases bloom intensity.

Glare Intensity – Increases/decreases glare intensity.

Threshold – Controls the minimum brightness which is considered for the Bloom & Glare effect. Increasing the threshold applies Bloom & Glare only to the brighter pixels. Reducing it allows the Bloom & Glare effect to be applied to pixels that are less bright.

Color Intensity – Controls how saturated the Bloom & Glare effect is. Higher values mean higher saturation.

Color Shift – Changes the hue of the coloring added to the Bloom & Glare effect.  

Streak Count –  – Defines the number of streaks for the glare effect.  

Rotation – – Rotation of the glare effect in degrees.

Streak Blur – Decides whether the glare streaks should be sharper or more blurry.

Custom aperture – Enabling this checkbox allows the use of the Editor button to fine-tune advanced Bloom & Glare options. 


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Sides – Sets the number of aperture blades used for custom aperture. When disabled, the circular aperture is used instead.

Rotation – Rotation in bladed aperture in degrees.

Streak Blur – Controls the blurring of the glare streak perpendicular to the streak direction.

Occlusion – Enables occlusion of part of aperture shape.

Ratio – Controls ratio of the aperture being occluded, with the minimum value meaning no occlusion and the maximum value meaning full occlusion.

Rotation – Controls the rotation of the occlusion in the degreesthe degrees.

Curvature – The arc of occlusion with the minimum value being straight line and the maximum value being full arc.

Arc – The arc of occlusion with the minimum value being straight line and the maximum value being full arc.

Symmetric – When enabled, occlusion is applied symmetrically from both sides of the aperture.

Reset all – Resets the setting to default value.


Peripheral Grating – Enables grating along the sides of the aperture shape. This creates "halo" effect around lights in render.

Lens Scratches – Simulates scratches over the lens. Regular scratches can create additional glare effect, while irregular ones will effect affect shape and blur of existing glare effect.

Lens Dust – Simulates dust particles over the lens. Dust can create effect similar to bloom that is affected by overall pattern of generated particles.

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Times

Scene parsing – How long it took to get the data from the native application format to the internal Corona format. Excessive times (more than a few seconds or tens of seconds for complex scenes) can be caused by running out of RAM, using slow network drives, complex scatters and geometry models, etc.

Geometry – How long it took Corona to prepare the geometry for rendering. This includes computing displacement, building, and acceleration structure, and preparing the lights for sampling. Excessive times (more than a few seconds or tens of seconds for complex scenes) are most often caused by using too detailed displacement, using too many textured lights, or running out of memory.

UHD cache precomp – How long it took to calculate UHD cache. The time depends on resolution, scene complexity, and UHD cache settings (the animation preset calculates significantly longer, but it does not flicker in animation).

Rendering – Total elapsed rendering time.

Denoising – How long the denoising took. Denoising is optionally computed after rendering. Its running time is dependent only on resolution (number of pixels) and the number of render elements to be denoised - it has to run from scratch for each element.

Estimated remaining – If any render limit is set (time, passes, or noise level), Corona computes the best possible time estimate. If no limits are set, '—' is shown, and the user has to stop the render manually.

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The real remaining render time can differ, and this estimate is frequently updated.

TOTAL elapsed – the total elapsed rendering time.

Scene

Primitives unique – Numbers of unique (non-instanced) primitives in the scene. Primitive means a single triangle, hair strand, etc. Each such primitive is stored in the memory, so this number is directly proportional to the RAM usage (1 primitive takes up about 200 Bytes).

Primitives displac. – The number of unique (non-instanced) micro triangles created by displacement in the scene. Each such object takes a certain amount of memory but is generally an order of magnitude smaller than regular triangles.

Primitives inst. – The number of primitives in the scene after instancing allows storing a single object in the memory just once and placing it into the scene multiple times with almost no additional memory usage. This is extremely useful e.g. for forests, grass, etc.

Geometry groups – The number of unique geometry groups in the scene. One geometry group roughly corresponds to one separate mesh/object in the source scene, not counting instanced meshes. This number does not significantly influence the performance/memory usage, with a single exception; high values (thousands and more) can slow down the preprocessing phase.

Instances – Number of geometry groups in the scene after instancing is applied. Each instance takes about 1000 Bytes of memory.

Lights (groups) – The first value is the total number of light-emitting primitives in the scene and the second value is the number of instances that contain these primitives. High values usually mean a scene with complex illumination, where slower rendering is to be expected. Only true light emission counts - neither self-illumination, nor Light material with Emit light off count.

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Instancing is disabled for the light-emitting primitives, so applying Light material to a heavily instanced geometry (such as a forest) can cause a surprising increase in the preprocessing time and memory usage.

UHD Cache

Records – Numbers of discrete points in the scene for which the illumination is computed during preprocessing and which are used for the interpolation during rendering. Complex scenes and animations, where higher precision is required, cause this number to increase, which in turn makes the precalculation slower.

Success rate – The percentage of rays that were accelerated using the cache. This is the effectiveness of the cache, e.g. 70% meaning that 7 out of each 10 rays were accelerated. The higher this number, the faster is the rendering as more rays are accelerated.

Performance

Passes total – The total number of passes computed. One pass in Corona means that each pixel received on average 1 sample. The number of passes directly influences the quality of antialiasing, the depth of field, and the motion blur effects. Smaller images accumulate passes faster as there are fewer pixels to process. Also if Rays/sample is too high, then too much work is spent per pixel, causing the number of passes to stay low, which slows down the antialiasing/depth of field/motion blur computation. A limit for the number of passes can be set in render settings.

Noise level – An estimate of the remaining noise level in the image. A limit for the noise level can be set in render settings. Around 2% is usually being enough for the final images, 5% for the final images with denoising, and anything higher than that being suitable for the previews.

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Unlike the number of passes that increases linearly in time, the noise level decreases nonlinearly: the necessary time to halve the error (for example from 10% to 5%) is 4 times longer.

Rays/s total – The average number of rays computed per second since the render started. Rays/s is a measure of the brute force computation power of the renderer. Comparing rays/s between different machines is a good way to compare their CPU performance. The number is also higher in simple scenes when using simple materials. Too low of a number (lower than usual for the machine) can be due to problems with CPU overheating, running out of RAM, other CPU utilization problems, or just having too complex materials/shaders.

Rays/s actual – Number of rays computed in the last second. Rays/s is a measure of the brute force computation power of the renderer. Comparing rays/s between different machines is a good way to compare their CPU performance. The number is also higher in simple scenes when using simple materials. Too low of a number (lower than usual for the machine) can be due to problems with CPU overheating, running out of RAM, other CPU utilization problems, or just having too complex materials/shaders.

Samples/s actual – Number of pixel samples computed in the last second. This is the rate of how fast the anti-aliasing, depth of field, and motion blur are computed. This number is the rays/s statistic divided by rays/sample.

Rays/sample – How many rays are needed to compute a one-pixel sample. This is the measure of the shading complexity of the scene, with high numbers meaning that a lot of work needs to be done to compute each pixel. This can be caused by using too complex shaders (with ambient occlusion and rounded edges), materials having too high albedo, or using too high GI vs. AA balance.

VFB refresh time – Shows how long the VFB window takes to redraw last time.

Preview denoiser time – Shows how long it took to denoise the VFB image.

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History Tab

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Button

Description

Store Current VFB – Stores the contents of the – Store current VFB in contents into the history.

Loads content of a selected CXR file in the History –

Loads a previously saved

Load CXR file into the history.

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Using the Corona VFB 2.0 allows for comparing images with different resolutions or aspect ratio.

Clear A/B – – Disables the history comparison and shows the current render only.

Show currently rendered image – Restores the last rendered image into the VFB. This option is only available if another image stored in the History that is different from the last rendered image is loaded for editing.

Delete All – – Deletes all items from the history and from the HDD.

Show with original postprocessing – Shows the stored content with original postprocessing.

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Additional actions can be performed on each individual image stored in the History. Available actions for images stored in the History are:


Show and edit this image – Reloads reloads the selected image and editing its parameters one more time in the Post tab. 

Save current render element – Saves the selected image stored in the History to a specific location.

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Resume in rendering – Resumes rendering for the current scene using the selected image as the new starting point.

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Clear item – Clears the selected image from the History but not from the HDD.

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Delete item – Deletes the selected image from the History and also removes it from the HDD.
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Using the Corona VFB 2.0 allows for comparing images with different resolutions or aspect ratio.

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LightMix Tab

element saves the selected image stored in the History to a specific location.

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Resume in rendering of the current scene using the selected image as the new starting point.

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Clears the selected image from the History but not from the HDD.

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Deletes the selected image from the History and also removes it from the HDD.

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Uploads this item to the Chaos Cloud.
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LightMix Tab

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After at least one LightSelect and one LightMix multi-passes are added to the scene, the interactive LightMix controls become active in the LightMix tab.

Additional actions can be performed for the LightSelect passes as follows:

ButtonDescription

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Bake currently set Lightmix colors/intensities into the scene lights.

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Save settings of the current displayed light mix element to a config file.

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Load light mix settings from a config file to the currently displayed light mix element.

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Enables all entries if some are disabled or disables all if all are currently enabled.

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Set all intensities to 1.

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Set all colors to white.


Additional Tips:

  • LightMix colors can be copied by dragging and dropping a color swatch onto another swatch.

  • LightMix colors can be reset to pure white by right-clicking on a swatch.

  • You can also right-click on the light names on the LightMix list in the Corona VFB to select a specific light in the scene, add that light to the current selection, or remove that light from the current selection.


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When using the Corona VFB 2.0, multiple Lightmix multipasses can be loaded, allowing different setups for each Lightmix element.

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Collab Tab

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Starting fromCorona 12 Update 1, Collaboration features from Chaos Cloud are supported in Corona for Cinema 4D. With the Collaboration tools, you can easily share drafts and final renders with customers and team members. The Collaboration tools from Chaos Cloud also support mark-up discussions, version control, and more, allowing for efficient and seamless project coordination in real-time.

To learn more about how to useCollaboration features from ChaosCloud, please visitthis page

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When using the Corona VFB 2.0, multiple Lightmix multipasses can be loaded, allowing different setups for each Lightmix element

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 After at least one LightSelect and one LightMix multi-passes are added to the scene, the interactive LightMix controls become active in the LightMix tab.

Additional actions can be performed for the LightSelect passes as follows:

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Bake current Lightmix settings into the scene lights – Bakes the current Lightmix settings (intensities and colors) into the current scene lights.

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Save current Lightmix settings to a config file – Saves the current Lightmix settings into a config file.

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Load Lightmix settings from a config file – Loads Lightmix settings from a previously saved file.

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Enable/Disable LightSelect elements – Enables or disables all configured LightSelect elements. If all entries or some of them are disabled, then this enables all of them. If all entries or some of them are enabled, then this disables all of them.

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Set intensities to 1 – Set all intensities to a value of 1.0

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Set colors to white – Sets all LightSelect colors to pure white color. Each LightSelect element can be manually adjusted using the individual color box to launch the Corona Color Picker. 
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