11/10/26

Corona 16 can light Gaussian splats with scene lighting

Soft Corona

Chaos has released Corona 16 for 3ds Max and Cinema 4D. The announcement was published on the company's forum on November 4, 2026. The main change concerns visualization artists who place their project into a scanned environment. Gaussian splats can now be relit: the splat cloud takes lighting from the scene's light sources. The building model and the environment shot around it are lit by the same light.

The rest of the new features also save geometry and manual work. Parallax Interiors depicts a furnished room behind a window on a flat polygon. Parallax Displacement provides surface relief that requires less memory than geometric displacement. The background is now set directly in the render window. A beta version of the AI Assistant has appeared.

The scanned location and the model are lit together

Splats existed in Corona before this version too. Back in April 2026, Chaos published a blog tutorial on building a splat scene for 3ds Max: the footage is processed in Postshot, and the splats are then exported for rendering in Corona. The ability to take scene lighting has only now arrived. The company describes it like this:

"Your scene's light sources now also light Gaussian splats, so 3D models can be placed in real captured locations and will look naturally lit."

That is how the company itself describes the new capability on the product page. Along with relighting, three things were added to splat workflows:

a clipping mask that can trim unneeded parts of the scan;
support for the SPZ format, which heavily compresses splat data;
rendering native Gaussian Splats from 3ds Max — this capability is only in the 3ds Max version.

Exactly how the light already baked into a splat during capture is handled, and whether relighting has limitations, is not specified in the published materials.

A room behind a window on a single plane

The new Parallax map (in Cinema 4D it is the Parallax shader) creates the appearance of a furnished and lit three-dimensional room behind a window on a flat polygon. Ready-made samples of such interiors are available in the Cosmos library.

Parallax Displacement was added as a separate option in the Corona Physical material. According to the developers, such relief may need less memory at render time than geometric displacement. The list of known limitations states that with layered materials and decals, parallax displacement is automatically disabled and ordinary displacement is used instead: in those combinations it behaves unpredictably. The preview build notes also mentioned that the surface silhouette does not change with parallax relief.

Background without Tone Map Control, and export to Vantage

A background image is now added with one click directly in the VFB. Post-processing does not affect it, and the shot stays as it was captured. Previously Tone Map Control had to be used for this; now that step is unnecessary.

Export of Corona materials to Chaos Vantage and the operation of Vantage Live Link have been noticeably improved: more Corona materials and features are supported. In 3ds Max, Chaos Scatter is now exported to Vantage without outputting every individual instance, so export and live link work faster.

AI Assistant is still in beta

In Corona 15, Chaos built Veras into the renderer. Through it you can send a frame from the VFB and try out moods, styles and materials without touching the geometry. Version 16 introduces its own AI Assistant with beta status. It offers tips on working with the program, suggests how to improve a render, picks a sky based on a reference image, and assembles a scatter from a simple text request. Another housekeeping addition is the first version of Chaos notifications, which can be configured.

Whether the assistant spends Chaos AI credits is not stated in the published materials. That detail matters: under Chaos's terms, using AI credits deprives the buyer of the right to a refund.

How much it costs and where to get it

Corona 16 is available by subscription on the product page. Prices per license with annual payment:

Solo — €375 per year (€31.25 per month): up to 15,000 Chaos Cosmos assets and materials, 100 Chaos AI credits per month;
Premium — €490.80 per year (€40.90 per month): more than 18,500 assets and materials, 500 credits per month;
Collection — €934.80 per year (€77.90 per month): more than 22,000 assets and materials, more than 4,000 Anima characters in 3D/4D, real-time ray-traced rendering via Vantage, 1,500 credits per month.

Prices are listed excluding taxes; the subscription renews automatically until canceled. Every license comes with a 14-day money-back guarantee, provided no AI credits have been spent. There is a free 30-day trial with all features. Full change lists are published separately for 3ds Max and Cinema 4D.

Who will find this useful right away

Judging by the makeup of the release, Chaos is bringing to a workable state the splats that were already in Corona as a way to drop in a real location. Without relighting, a splat was probably good mainly as a backdrop: the model's lighting had to be matched to the capture's light by hand, and when the time of day in the project changed, the backdrop no longer matched the model. The clipping mask and compressed SPZ address two other everyday problems of scan scenes: excess parts of the cloud and heavy files. The biggest beneficiaries, apparently, will be artists visualizing exteriors and developer projects who shoot the site and want to show the building in its real surroundings.

Parallax Interiors and Parallax Displacement target the same audience: on facades and large sites, the number of windows and square meters of relief easily inflate a scene. How convincingly parallax holds up in close-ups and at sharp camera angles will have to be tested on your own projects, and parallax displacement does not work with layered materials and decals.

The AI Assistant warrants more caution. It is a beta, and it saves time mostly for newcomers: tips on the program and render analysis are needed less often by an experienced visualization artist than sky selection and a quick scatter. At the same time, spending AI credits rules out the option of getting your money back for the license. It is wiser to try the assistant in the 30-day trial and only then pay for a subscription.

Which Corona 16 feature will you try first?