What if you could render architectural scenes in seconds — without ever stopping your design flow?
With the release of Corona 12 and its new integration with Chaos Vantage, architectural visualization professionals now have access to a faster, more interactive toolkit — one that combines the realism of ray-traced rendering with the speed of real-time tools, without the need for compromise. Whether framing the perfect shot for a client or exploring design options live with a team, this new capability unlocks more intuitive ways to visualize architecture and interior spaces.
We took a deep dive into the latest versions of both applications to explore this fresh interoperability and see how it can foster new creative workflows in real-time rendering.
How It Works: Real-Time Feedback Inside Your Workflow
The Corona to Vantage Live Link, introduced in Corona 12 Update 1, allows users to connect their 3ds Max or Cinema 4D scene directly to Chaos Vantage, an industry-leading real-time renderer built for speed and visual fidelity. Once activated, any changes made in the scene — like moving objects, updating lights, editing materials, or switching cameras — are instantly mirrored in Vantage’s real-time viewport.
Enabling Live Link is simple: Within 3ds Max, users open the Render Setup, navigate to the System tab, and click “Vantage Live Link.” Alternatively, within Cinema 4D, click on the Corona tab in the top menu, navigate down to “Chaos Vantage” and then click “Start Vantage Live Link”. Vantage launches automatically, loads the scene, and begins responding live to any updates. From this point forward, artists can move freely between modeling, lighting, and composition without interrupting their workflow to export or render previews.
This integration transforms Vantage into an always-on visual companion. Architects and visualization artists can evaluate daylight scenarios, test material palettes, set up composition options, and save out high-quality preview images, all within seconds.
Camera adjustments, lighting tweaks, and object placement can all be iterated live, making this integration ideal for presenting multiple options to a client or efficiently collaborating with a design team. When it’s time to produce a final rendering, Vantage’s ultra-fast GPU engine makes it possible to generate polished stills directly from the working scene.
This all sounds compelling, but how does it translate into a real-world project? Enter narrativ, a UK-based visualization studio that works across creative disciplines.
narrativ’s Triple Test: Envisioning Architecture, Product and VFX With Vantage
To put the integration through its paces, narrativ created a series of one-minute animations focused on architectural space, product design, and visual effects. Robin Walker, the studio’s director, said each theme “was designed to push Vantage in its very own way while also showing its versatility.”
Their architectural scene — set inside a tranquil chapel with soft pink lighting and reflective materials — was selected to challenge how Vantage handled nuanced lighting conditions and surface behavior. According to the team, “The team chose this serene chapel setting to challenge Vantage’s ability to render complex lighting interactions and reflections in a highly controlled environment. And it did not disappoint.” The results are stunning, forming a remarkable exhibition of the dynamic material and lighting effects made possible by Vantage.
In another test, a rugged muscle car, complete with worn, weathered textures, demonstrated Vantage’s accuracy with fine material details — “All of the stuff we get excited by as 3D artists,” Walker explained. The resulting video is a powerful demonstration of how Corona and Vantage can produce subtle surface textures and imperfections with outstanding realism.
For their final piece, narrativ turned to The Old Gods, an in-house VFX sequence featuring a dramatic battle in a dense forest. Thousands of trees, animated elements and cinematic lighting pushed the scene’s complexity to the limit. “Given the high stakes of rendering such a multifaceted scene, this project was the perfect test to push Vantage’s real-time capabilities to their limits,” the team said.
The payoff wasn’t just visual quality — it was also creative freedom. “With Vantage, you feel like you’re there, in the scene, just shooting with a camera,” said Walker. “Without Vantage and its ultra-fast GPU rendering, along with its ability to quickly light scenes and find camera angles, this wouldn’t have been possible.”
All three animations were rendered in minutes to hours on a single machine—transforming what would typically be a multi-day pipeline into a streamlined, intuitive process.
Why This Matters for Architects and Visualization Studios
For architects and visualizers, time is always tight — especially given that clients increasingly expect to see high-end imagery early in the design process. The Corona–Vantage workflow offers a powerful new way to meet those demands without slowing down production. Instead of waiting for time-intensive renderings or settling for low-fidelity previews, users can now explore light, space and materiality in real time. That means faster decisions, better design feedback and higher-quality visuals earlier in the project timeline.
Studios are already folding this workflow into their daily process. The narrativ team, for example, now uses Vantage for early-stage clay model visuals and camera selection. “The narrativ team has already found another great use for the interoperability, using it for clay renders during the view selection for clients,” they reported, made possible thanks to Vantage’s “blisteringly fast” speed.
The software’s combination of efficiency and utility has the narrativ team convinced. “I think everyone should try it out. It has a lot of power, and the speed is unmatched,” said Walker. But the advantage of this new integration is larger still — the real-time feedback loop changes the nature of the work, according to Walker. He added: “Vantage hasn’t been all about speed for narrativ; it also allowed the team to get back to their creative roots. Anything which makes us 3D artists less of technicians and more of artists is a way forward.”
For architects and visualizers, this shift offers an exciting prospect — to bring photorealistic visual storytelling into every stage of design, from early concept to final presentation.
To try both Corona and Vantage for free, click the following links:
Hero image by narrativ.
