It’s time to explore the individual aspects of Corona, and we’ll start where it all begins, with lights. The whole process of creating lights is designed to give artists complete control over their scene, while being fast and intuitive.

The most advanced procedural Sun and Sky is the PRG Clear Sky model, which uses real world data to calculate the look of the sky. It gives you access to the following features:

• Procedural Clouds: Add clouds that you can easily animate, which respond to the color of the sky and sun and which can cast shadows on the scene below. You can even add animated airplane trails.
• Volume Effect: An “aerial perspective” effect so you can fade background trees, buildings, mountains, etc. realistically into the atmosphere.
• Altitude: Whether you are creating a beach cottage at sea level, the top floor of a towering skyscraper, or a mountain-top getaway, your sky will give you physically accurate results for the look.
• Turbidity: Set whether your sky should be clear or overcast.
• Horizon Blur: This one is not based on real-world physical data, but instead gives you artistic control over how sharp or soft the horizon line should be.

Did you know - There are other options for the Sun and Sky, and historically, Chaos Corona was the first production render engine to implement what was previously the most accurate sky system available – the Hošek-Wilkie sky. These older, optional Sky models are still available in the latest versions of Chaos Corona, for compatibility.

You can save your LightMix setups for reuse from any camera or viewpoint within the scene, so you can instantly reuse those light setups in different renders from the same scene. LightMix is your answer to getting a daytime scene, a nighttime scene, different lights turned on and off, and more - all in one render.

You can also save the separate light passes for compositing or animating later in post-production, which means a single frame can be turned into an animation where the lighting changes.

Take a look at the Interactive LightMix in action in our tutorial videos:

No sampling parameters

There are no sampling parameters that you would have to set by trial and error. Lights will always work as expected.

Corona Lights and Corona Light Material

There is no difference in behavior between a Corona Light object and a geometry object with the Corona Light Material applied – both of them have almost the same options and deliver the same results, so it is up to the artist to use what is more convenient!

Lights and rendering speed

In Corona, there is very little penalty for using mesh lights which have a high polycount. They will perform as well as low–poly ones with the same shape. Also, directional and IES lights render almost as fast as regular diffuse lights.

Adaptive Environment Sampler

Introduced in Chaos Corona 6, the Adaptive Environment Sampler ensures efficient, accurate, and speedy rendering of HDRI lighting from the environment. It's thanks to the Adaptive Environment Sampler that you no longer need to use portals in Chaos Corona, getting results that are just as good (or better) in the time (or faster) without the pain and effort of setting up portals for your interior scene!