Standalone denoiser tool issue with lens effects

[tmbarker531]

Hi, I'm testing out denoising an animation and ran into an issue with the lens effects-

My frames have been saved out as .vrimg files with "save VFB color corrections to RGB channel" checked, I was assuming that would also save the lens effects to the RGB channel but it didn't. So when I tried denoising the frames in the stand alone denoiser tool, in the "select denoise elements" dialog box I selected the effectsResult channel to be the main element in order to get the lens effects baked into the denoised image. Once they denoised I used the VRImage to EXR converter but when I try to select the the effectResults channel from the available channels drop down it isn't there. The denoising process seems to have gotten rid of the effectsResult channel altogether. I opened the denoised vrimg file in the frame buffer in max and the effectsResult channel is missing. I redid the process with the RGB channel selected as the main element in the select denoise elements dialog box and that correctly denoised the RGB channel as expected but it didn't have the lens effects included.

Is there something I'm missing? I need to be able to denoise the animation with the stand alone tool in order to use the frame blending feature but at the same time still retain the lens effects and VFB color corrections.

I'm using vray next update 1 for max 2018, also the lens effects mode is set to "image only" from the drop down, not sure how that might effect all of this.

Thanks for any help!

Tyler

[hermit.crab]

To do what you described, you would have to add the lens effects through the 'vdenoise.exe' tool (through cmd). You can do that by doing the following:

1. Render out your image sequence with a VRayDenoiserRE (set to generate elements only) and the retained VFB color corrections
2. Export a .vrscene, with the already set lens effect parameters that will be used for generating the lens effects in the standalone tool
3. Open the 'vdenoise.exe' tool in cmd (by dragging and dropping the .exe) and write the following commands: -inputFile= sequence location -lensEffectsParams=vrscene location (make sure you replace the frame number with ???? for the tool to denoise the sequence). You can get all the available commands with -help.

How it should look like:
"C:\Program Files\Chaos Group\V-Ray\3ds Max 2018\bin\vdenoise.exe" -inputFile=C:\Users\Alexander\Desktop\filename.???? .exr -lensEffectsParams=C:\Users\Alexander\Desktop\lense f fectsparams.vrscene

[tmbarker531]

Thanks for the detailed reply! I just tried that and I got a warning saying: unrecognized parameter "lensEffectParams". Attached is a screenshot of what I entered, any idea what the problem is?

[hermit.crab]

I've misled you by making a typo - the command is 'lensEffectsParams'. Sorry!

[tmbarker531]

Great, that worked perfectly, thank you!

[tmbarker531]

I've misled you by making a typo - the command is 'lensEffectsParams'. Sorry!

I have another question that just came up, I sent an animation over the weekend and forgot to check "save VFB color corrections to RGB channel". Is there a way to apply VFB exposure/color corrections during the cmmd line denoising process in a similar way that the lens effects could be applied? What would the command be?

[hermit.crab]

There isn't a way to apply color corrections similarly to the upper mentioned method.

However, what you can do is the following:

1. In an empty 3ds max scene, load the sequence through a bitmap node (ticking sequence would create a .ifl file) and set its mapping to 'Screen'. Use this node in the environment map slot in the 'Environment and Effects' window.
2. In the V-Ray render settings, turn off the GI; untick 'Filter maps' in the global switches; set the bucket sampler to min. subdivs=1 and turn off the max. subdivs; set the output in the 'V-ray raw image file' (tick the 'Save VFB color corrections to RGB channel').
3. Set your color corrections in the VFB
4. Render (it should be quite fast)

[simplychen]

Sorry, didn't mean to hijack this thread tmbarker531, but decided to not to bombard the forum with similar questions.

hermit.crab Are there palns to update the standalone denoiser tool to automatically include EffectResults pass in lieu of going about it through the command prompt?

[hermit.crab]

simplychen Not sure if I understood correctly. You mean the lens effects (and the resulting EffectsResults pass) to be included in the GUI of the vdenoise.exe tool, is that correct?

[simplychen]

hermit.crab that is correct!

Right now the command prompt seems to be doing the trick as a workaround. It may be more apparent to users if it's 'exposed' and implemented via the GUI. Otherwise, adding the tip to the denoiser help doc could be beneficial as well.

just my 2c.

[hermit.crab]

simplychen Thanks for the feedback. I'll make a note for our developers to consider this suggestion.