Corona for Blender Install guide!

So you may be wondering which versions of Corona work with which versions of the add-on which work with which version of Blender, so here is a quick guide for you.

First off, the Blender to Corona add-on is mainly developed by one guy who is doing this off his own back to allow us to use Corona with blender. He is doing an incredible job and if you have any spare cash, please support him on his patreon page https://www.patreon.com/BlenderCorona.

Corona 1.6 – https://corona-renderer.com/download/old Should come with 45 day free trial
Corona Addon – https://bitbucket.org/coronablender/render_corona/get/master.zip
Blender 2.79b – https://www.blender.org/download/

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Corona Install – Corona 1.6

Before anything else, lets install Corona. You’ll want to install Corona 1.6 as its the most compatible version with this add-on as of right now. A link can be found here to Corona 1.6. I believe it can be trialled for 45 days, or as its an older version this version actually have been made free indefinitely.

During the install, make sure to install everything as its easiest, or for bare minimum install the Corona Standalone as its the Standalone which Blender uses.

Corona 1.7 and above works, but the material preview does not work when using textures. This is a known bug and is being investigated. However, I would recommend NOT installing 1.7 because the material preview is incredibly useful as Corona does not allow for view-port preview rendering. So the material preview is a quick way to see how your material will show before rendering.

If you feel like experimenting, Corona 3.0 is available here but its key feature of AI Denoising does not work with Blender. So.. I guess maybe not install this. It does work with 3DS though.

Blender Version – 2.79b

I have found the best version of Blender is 2.79b which can be found here.
There are many other later versions of Blender but these later ones sometimes use a different version of java which cause some issues, such as the Corona nodes not being visible when pressing Shift+A in the node editor.

Corona Add-on

Step 1 – here is the link to the add-on download. Its a direct link from the Github page found here.
This is the latest version of the add-on so be sure to use this one.

Step 2 – To install go to Blender>File>User Preferences>Add-ons – Then click “install Add-on from File” at the bottom, and navigate to the file you downloaded above and install it.

Step 3 – Once the add-on has been installed, you’ll want to open the add-on preferences by clicking the > arrow.  Then navigate down until you see “Corona Path” – You’ll want to open the folder of your Corona install. Mine was “C:program filesCorona”

Step 4 – Next you’ll need to write the name of the Corona Executable. I know the add-on automatically writes something like “CoronaStandalone.exe”, but for me my corona install was called just “Corona.exe”
Simply look inside your program install folder and look what the name of your Corona program file is called. I’m sure it will simply be Corona.exe.

The final step, at the top make sure you select Corona renderer as the renderer (currently it would say Cycles Render”

Then you’re ready to go! Make sure all your objects have materials though or it won’t render.