How to enable and control motion blur in Corona for 3ds Max?

Updated February 20, 2024 11:17

The easiest and recommended way to enable and control motion blur is by adding a Corona Camera object, enabling the motion blur in its settings, and then adjusting the camera's shutter speed. The Corona Camera settings always have the highest priority, so even if motion blur is disabled in some other place (such as the render setup window), it will still work when rendering from that Corona Camera.

If you wish to use motion blur outside of the Corona Camera (e.g. when rendering from a free perspective view, or from other types of cameras):

Go to Render Setup > Camera > Camera > Motion blur and:

check "Enable camera" to enable motion blur generated by camera movement. This type of motion blur is useful for fly-through animations with no moving objects.
check "Enable geometry" to enable motion blur generated by scene geometry. This type of motion blur is useful for no or very small camera movement and any moving objects in the scene, like a static shot of cars on a highway.

For a complete motion blur solution, select both.

Frame offset:

One of the parameters affecting the appearance of the motion blur effect is the frame offset. It defines the offset (in frames) from which the motion blur effect is calculated. A value of -1 means that motion blur is calculated from the moment right before the current frame up to the current frame, a value of 1 means that motion blur will be calculated starting from the current frame looking at motion that comes next, and a value of 0 (the default value) means that motion blur will be calculated exactly centered on the current frame, looking at motion that comes slightly before through to slightly after the current frame.

Transformation/Geometry segments:

Quality of the non-linear rigid (transformation) motion blur. Increasing this value increases the quality at the expense of some rendering speed and memory usage. Setting this value too low can result in movement stutter and/or artifacts.

Note: It is recommended to keep the Transformation/Geometry segments at their default values.

Motion blur's appearance is affected by photographic exposure controls (see examples section below).

Motion blur quality

The quality of motion blur is mainly dependent on anti-aliasing (AA samples). To focus computing power more on anti-aliasing than on GI-sampling, you can decrease "GI vs. AA balance" and/or "Light Samples Multiplier" values - see: Where are supersampling / antialiasing controls in Corona?

Shutter curve

Shutter curve allows you to fine tune the movement and look of how the motion blur results will appear in your rendered image. You can adjust the aspect of the motion blur by modifying the shutter curve. This simulates how fast or slow the shutter opens for each frame and enforces a good sense of motion on your subject. A more detailed explanation about this phenomenon - Camera Motion Blur Shutter Curve.

Various types of Shutter curve results can be seen in the examples below.