Animation: Denoise .vrimg's then save to .exr's?

[DanSHP]

So I've got a sequence of .vrimg's that I want to denoise via the standalone program. The question is, how do I tell the denoiser to save out the denoised .vrimg sequence to an .exr, sequence for comp in AE? Have I gone about this the wrong way? There doesn't seem to be anything online about it?!

[guillaumelepage]

I believe you have to run the "vrimg2exr" program to convert your vrimg to exr. That might be your solution!

[^Lele^]

So I've got a sequence of .vrimg's that I want to denoise via the standalone program. The question is, how do I tell the denoiser to save out the denoised .vrimg sequence to an .exr, sequence for comp in AE? Have I gone about this the wrong way? There doesn't seem to be anything online about it?!

Why did you render to VrImg?
Just curious.

[DanSHP]

Why did you render to VrImg?
Just curious.

Yeah, I thought about that too. I had already pressed render though. I'm assuming you can render out multi layered .exr's with denoiser elements, and denoise in standalone that way? I haven't used multilayered .exrs before, how would one go about this (in general) and with animations?

Cheers!

[DanSHP]

Interestingly enough, Inho has posted something in relation to this recently.

[^Lele^]

That could be a bug, or it could be the denoiser isn't meant to work with lossy (read: jpg-like) compression.
Remember the denoiser gets the noiseLevel RE, but that makes sense only BEFORE the lossy compression is applied.
After compression, what was a pixel with so much noise could be something else.

[DanSHP]

That could be a bug, or it could be the denoiser isn't meant to work with lossy (read: jpg-like) compression.
Remember the denoiser gets the noiseLevel RE, but that makes sense only BEFORE the lossy compression is applied.
After compression, what was a pixel with so much noise could be something else.

I'm trying to run the standalone denoiser on a sequence, starting "A.0000.vrimg". In terms of sequence denoising, this can be done to a bunch of .vrimg's right?

The web page help section states, in order for the denoiser to work a file name should end with .0001, 0002 etc. I run the command and on the file and it just performs a denoise on that one frame and doesn't then move onto the next one as it should. Is this a limitation with .vrimg's? Does this process only work on .exr's?

[DanSHP]

Here is the command prompt and folder containing the vrimgs. It does A.0000.vrimg but then does not move onto A.0001.vrimg

[DanSHP]

Okay I found another Chaos group help page that seems to explain the exact same process but provides more detailed instructions. You do no need to put in A.0001.vrimg, simply A.????.vrimg.

I initially followed the instructions in the link below...

https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/...l+%7C+vdenoise
"For example, if the images in the sequence are named anim_0001.exr, anim_0002.exr, etc. and are located in the folder c:\renderoutput, the full command will be
vdenoise -inputFile="c:\renderoutput\anim_????.exr""

The first link can be interpreted as suggesting that anim_???? is anim_0001

Second link. Specifically the part highlighted in bold!

https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/...l-Installation
Input File... – Specifies the .vrimg/.exr image or sequence of images to denoise. Wildcards (?) can be used to define a sequence. For example, if the images in the sequence are named anim_0001.exr, anim_0002.exr, etc., the question mark (?) replaces the digits in the sequence's file names. In this case - anim_????.exr

All cleared up now!
Cheers!

[^Lele^]

3.6 versus Next docs, yeah...
Keep Next as the better source, docs for it are done by our kicka** team in Sofia, which has new talent (and such talent too.) onboard...
Anyhow, glad it worked out (i think an * will work too, but don't quote me on this, try it!)!

[DanSHP]

3.6 versus Next docs, yeah...
Keep Next as the better source, docs for it are done by our kicka** team in Sofia, which has new talent (and such talent too.) onboard...
Anyhow, glad it worked out (i think an * will work too, but don't quote me on this, try it!)!

Yes * does work too!

[^Lele^]

ah, ofc i entirely forgot about this.
As of the Next release, running vdenoise from windows explorer, will present the user with this:

[anthonyh]

Looking at that interface, it could use a preview option ? Might be nice to see the result before committing.

[DanSHP]

ah, ofc i entirely forgot about this.
As of the Next release, running vdenoise from windows explorer, will present the user with this:

Yes this confused me as we are still on 3.6!

[^Lele^]

Looking at that interface, it could use a preview option ? Might be nice to see the result before committing.

A preview how?
A crop, like f.e. DxO does, at 100%?
Any image minification would smooth the result, so preview of a big image wouldn't be usable if zoomed to fit the screen resolution.

Right now, the easiest way is to (for a sequence) specify a frame interval of 1: provided you rendered to a specified noise threshold, and the renderer could hit that threshold across the sequence (sampling was high enough), the results on a frame ought to be identical on all the others.

If you need realtime operations to figure out parameters (and likely, the acceptable noise threshold for your renders), they can be had from within max/maya, after the render has completed.
I'd rather not we blew the utility into a fully fledged application, just yet, with the new VFB on its way (whenever that would be.).