V-Ray Denoiser for Animation, seperate Render Elements?

[sebbiej]

Hi,

I'm using the VDenoise tool to denoise an animation that I've rendered out, it's working well so far but the EXR's that it produces don't contain the denoised elements, only a final RGB result... Is it possible for it to produce an EXR with the denoised Reflect/Refract/GI/Specular/Lighting passes, for compositing later?

I've tried using the following script in the tool, but it still only made an RGB image: C:\Program Files\Chaos Group\V-Ray\Maya 2018 for x64\bin>-inputFile="\\FILEPATH.0136.exr" -elements=1

Many thanks,

Seb

[yolov]

Depends on the version of the denoiser that you're using. The latest versions use the -denoiseElements=all flags instead. You can either choose to denoise 'all' render elements or just some of them (for example: -denoiseElements="RGB Color";"GI" etc).
Also, for animation, you need to replace the frame numbers in the input file with question marks (as many as your frame number padding is). In your case, it should be FILEPATH.????.exr

Here's the docs on the tool: https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/.../Denoiser+Tool

Let me know if this works.

[sebbiej]

Many thanks, Yolov.

I'm running it now with the -denoiseElements=all tag, it seems to be denoising, but I don't think it's creating all of the elements still... I seem to have a different version of the denoiser to what is in the docs, as I haven't got GUI. The build of mine is from March 20 2018.

[yolov]

The GUI does almost the same as the command-line interface, you should be all set with using the command-line. The denoised elements should be written in the place of the original ones in the output image. I.e. the output image will only contain the denoised version of all channels.

[sebbiej]

I've tried it a few times now, with -denoiseElements=all after the file path, with no joy...

I think I may have gone wrong with the initial render, I had the Type set to "Single pass denoise on RGB only". Should I have had it set to "Denoise render elements seperately"?

I've completed this render now with denoising just working on the RGB channel, and I've got to say it works amazingly well, its a great feature to have! Thanks for the help, Yolov.

[yolov]

What V-Ray version is this?
I would suggest setting the mode to 'only generate render elements', then leave type to 'single pass'.

[wizzackr]

On a sidenote: What settings (as in error threshold) would you recommend to set the sampler to if one intends to denoise after the fact?
Was wondering how much time could be saved and have no personal experience to judge how noisy a frame can be to still yield usable results after denoising.
Cheers,
J

[yolov]

If the image is really noisy, the denoiser will blur out things way too much or produce artifacts, meaning it needs some samples to work with. It's very scene dependent, so any general suggestions for render settings are hard to make.
Basically, adding the denoiser also adds a noiseLevel render element - white is noise, black is clean. Ideally you would want the noiseLevel to be grey and black , where grey is consistent accross the image with no white spikes (white menas too few samples).

[vlado]

vdenoise can denoise render elements only in the beta version of V-Ray Next. You can just use the denoising tool from there. The denoiser that comes with V-Ray 3.6 can't denoise render elements.

Best regards,
Vlado