Whats Next?Its too early to make promises as to what next year will look like, but we can share the things we are considering.First, we do expect a Corona 12 Update 2 version sometime toward the end of Q1, though this will not have many (or any) new features and will be a maintenance release (part of the reason we still called this one Update 1, knowing that an Update 2 will be needed). After that release, it will be back to business as usual in terms of naming and release cycle, with Corona 13 planned for the middle of the year, and 14 toward the end of the year.What gifts might Corona 13 and 14 bring? Well, most likely improvements to the Live Link as we refine this initial implementation and look into adding rendering animations from your DCC in Vantage. We also want to investigate the possibility of developing a Toon / NPR shader, as this is one of the most requested items on our Ideas Portal.Were listening to feedback from you on some new items that debuted in V-Ray 7, such as Gaussian Splats, to see how much interest there is in those coming to Corona.Weve heard whispers about AI image enhancement and PBR material generation. Imagine this happening in the clouddigital assistants upscaling a preview or generating material options in seconds without bogging down your machine. Although still in development, these would be exciting additions.Corona is now on Chaos.comJust a quick reminder that since Corona 12 released, all things Corona can now be found on Chaos.com. You can access the latest versions, Corona Benchmark, blog articles, customer stories, and more on Chaos.com.As a reminder from our last release, a few pages you may wish to bookmark include:Corona homepageWhats new in CoronaCorona BenchmarkDownload CoronaCorona Community ForumThe Chaos Blog (featuring all Chaos products, including Corona)Additional smaller improvements in Corona 12 Update 1General(3ds Max and Cinema 4D)Added Max Photon Repeat parameter into advanced settings that influences noise of caustics.(3ds Max)Added support for ForestPack Ivy Generator.Added a decal arrow pointing in the Decal projection direction. The arrow will scale with the size of the Decal object.Added Depth of Field range indicator for 3ds Max Viewport, when Corona Camera is selected.Added aLock Aspect Ratio button to CoronaBitmap.Added a Fit to bitmap button to CoronaBitmap, available when the Lock Aspect Ratio is not active.(Cinema 4D)Scene conversion improvements: Added conversion of V-Ray Standard material.Added possibility to convert V-Ray and Cinema render settings to Corona render settings.Added option to save CXR file directly in Save tab in render settings. This should work in batch rendering or when rendering takes.Added Film Offset X, Film Offset Y and Focus Distance to Camera Listers.Vantage(3ds Max and Cinema 4D)Added basic support for exporting Triplanar shader.When exporting to Vantage, Corona exports to a running Vantage application if there is one, instead of starting a new one. When Vantage is not installed, an error is shown to the user.VFB(3ds Max and Cinema 4D)VFB 2: Added a Separate IR button instead of the dropdown menu option.VFB 2: Place new history items at the top of history instead of at the bottom.VFB 2: Added the option to load multiple CXRs into VFB history at once.VFB 2: The correct render stamp is shown when loading or comparing images.VFB 2: Camera Tone mapping override is now correctly displayed in VFB when editing CXR and returning back to VFB.(3ds Max)Added option to system settings to disable overwrite confirmation dialog when using history autosave.History autosave now also saves animations.(Cinema 4D)CXR files can now be drag&dropped directly into VFB2 to load in history tab (was already possible in 3ds Max).Installation Changes(3ds Max and Cinema 4D)Updated licensing server to 6.2 and Cosmos to newest version.Removed the Corona Material Library component from Corona installer. If you do not have it installed already, a download button will be shown on opening the Corona Material Library from inside 3ds Max or Cinema 4D.Command line arguments were changed. You can use -auto instead of -acceptEulaAndInstall. For more command line arguments use -help.Added new Legal Agreements dialog, which is shown only after "--auto" installation (when the eula/privacy policy is not shown).Note: The new installer requires SSE 4.2, released in 2008 for Intel and 2011 for AMD, so any machine newer than 13 years old should be unaffected. This would be around one tenth of one percent of users at our estimate, and some of those may be using an older Corona version anyway since Corona itself needs SSE 4.1 already.(Cinema 4D)Similar-looking installer is now used both on Windows and macOS.Size of macOS installer was reduced to half of its original size. Note that the macOS installer is still twice as big as Windows one as it contains version for both Intel CPUs and Apple Silicon.Bug Fixes in Corona 12 Update 1Crash Fixes(3ds Max)Fixed issue where showing VRayMtl in material editor without VRay installed leads to crash when Corona is active renderer.(Cinema 4D)Fixed crash in some scenes when CPU limit was set to non-default values.Fixed crash when exporting some specific configurations of the native Cinema 4D Layered shader into Chaos Vantage.Fixed crash when exiting Cinema 4D when the Node Material Editor is open.General(3ds Max and Cinema 4D)Fixed issues with decal/media and heterogeneous media when material-based medium resolving is used.Fixed computing of curves operator histogram - histogram now updates during rendering and is computed from an edited item as well, not always from the main render.Fixed Bloom&Glare missing when saving multiple elements with B&G.Fixed incorrect order of render elements in case the Rest render element was not the last one.(3ds Max)Small behavior fixes of the button used to select the node for fitting PatternMod crop box.Fixed issue where animated texmaps would in some cases render without animation.Fixed Memory Report dialog preventing render from completing, it is closed automatically for render to finish.Fixed changing of "Locked IR resolution" when rendering with docked interactive.Fixed animated camera unexpectedly changing position when switching target on and off.Fixed issue where camera name in Tone Mapping disappears after editing history item and rendering again.Fixed issue where fitting decal and then changing the size with locked aspect ratio would result in incorrect decal aspect ratio.Fixed issue where Cosmos lights were imported with wrong units.Fixed issue where some OSL maps (e.g. those using user-defined attributes) were not working properly.LUT path is no longer converted from local to UNC after arbitrary UI operations.Paths to assets used in Corona Material Library downloaded from Cosmos are no longer converted from mapped drives to UNC paths.Fixed issue where debug.log file is created in 3ds Max project folder.Fixed 3ds Max hotkeys being wrongly reenabled after clicking from Cosmos to another Corona spinbox.(Cinema 4D)Performance fixes for UI freezes on some high-core CPUs.Fixed updates of rigged geometry in IR (and so also in Live Link).Fix of some Cosmos lights having incorrect rotation after import.Fixed some minor memory leaks.Solo node shows correct state after scene load.VFB Fixes(3ds Max and Cinema 4D)Fixed issue where clicking on Save in VFB would not save the currently displayed image, but the rendered image instead.Show image comparison splitter at the center even when zoomed in + draw also overlay A/B when zoomed in.(3ds Max)Fixed not being able to maximize the VFB while IR was running as it re-adjusted its size.Responsiveness has been improved when using the docked VFB.Caustics Fixes(3ds Max and Cinema 4D)Interactive rendering restarts are now faster when using Caustics solver.Fixed issue where caustics did not work correctly with Slicers.Fixed issues in Caustics solver when Camera physical size is enabled - specifically incorrectly shaded caustics and shadows cast by the camera box.(3ds Max)Fixed issue where caustics did not work correctly with Phoenix Foam.Scatter Fixes(3ds Max and Cinema 4D)Scatter is now uninstalled with Corona, but only if V-Ray of corresponding version is not found.(3ds Max)Fixed issue when a selection of non-defined map channel could affect scatter distribution.Fixed issues with value precision sensitivity of scattering in some scenarios and improved consistency of scattering results across various scatter integrations.OCIO Fixes(3ds Max)Fixed issue where OCIO would convert everything to black when alpha is NAN.Fixed issue where saving values over 1 to PNG/JPG with OCIO would give incorrect results.OCIO config path from the environment variable "OCIO" is used only when the respective mode is selected in Color Management settings.Try Corona 12, update 1If youre an existing Corona user, download Corona 12 here, and please share your feedback, questions, and results in the Corona Forum. Wed love to know what you think, and were even more excited to see what you create!For those not yet using this easy-to-use renderer thats capable of producing incredibly realistic results, try it out for free.Thanks to everyone who tested the Corona 12, update 1 release candidates and shared their feedback. We appreciate your support and hope you enjoy using the latest version!