While the latest news surrounding Corona for SketchUp may have been announced way back in 2018, we are still seeing search activity on Corona for SketchUp. Here’s a little bit about what happened, and some alternative suggestions.
In early 2018, the team behind Corona admitted that the SketchUp plugin was not successful due to a small team of developers undertaking work before moving on to other projects. Little progress was made and some development roadblocks surfaced, which combined with limited manpower dedicated to the plugin, pulled the project to a halt.
It was around this time as well that Chaos Group released version 3.6 of their highly successful V-Ray for SketchUp plugin. After seeing where their own project was at, and comparing it to Chaos Group’s offering, the Corona developers decided it best to concentrate their efforts into Corona for 3ds Max and Corona for Cinema 4D – especially as the Corona team have since joined to become part of Chaos Group themselves.
It is a possibility that a unified API for Corona and V-Ray, or a universal export format may appear at some point, but this is far from an official plan so don’t hold out hope on this one.
Corona for SketchUp Alternatives
Fortunately, there are a wealth of renderers for SketchUp.
V-Ray for SketchUp offers easy photo-realistic rendering for artists and designers in architecture, interior design, film and games design as well as visual effects and much more.
Maxwell Render is available as a plugin for SketchUp as well as a standalone package. Maxwell Render provides unbiased rendering for stunning lighting and realism.
KeyShot is a standalone render that can be used with SketchUp files. This is ideal for photo-realistic product shots.
If you’d like to know more about which render is best for you, contact us or find out more at CAD Software Direct.