Denoise Render Elements Separately In V-Ray Next

[cmascari]

The denoiser in V-Ray 3.6 had an option to select 'Type'. This option is missing from V-Ray Next. This single feature was the only way I could ever get glass and reflections to look good with the denoiser. Without the ability to select 'denoise render elements separately' the glass and mirror materials in the denoised image are always blurry. Is there someway to achieve the same functionality in V-Ray Next? Was it replaced with something better? For both the glass and mirror materials I selected 'Affect Channels : All Channels' for the reflections and refractions.

I copied the applicable section from the old V-Ray 3.6 Manual below:

Type – Specifies whether to denoise only the RGB Color Render Element, or others as well.

Single pass denoise on RGB only – Does a single pass at denoising on only the RGB Color Render Element, using other elements like the diffuse filter only to guide the denoising process. This method is better at cleaning up noise, but may loose small texture details or may blur too much areas of the image where multiple effects are visible at the same time (f.e. reflections and refractions through glass materials). This mode requires fewer additional render elements and you can use the Depending on denoising type setting of generate render elements to generate just the needed ones for this mode.
Denoise render elements separately – Denoises the lighting, global illumination, specular, reflection, refraction and atmosphere render elements separately and combines them into one denoised version of the RGB image. This method preserves texture details better, but with low settings might fail to clean up some types of noise. Note: This mode can only work correctly if no color mapping is applied to the render, so that the mentioned render elements add up correctly to the RGB image.

Any rendering speed increase I am experiencing switching to V-Ray Next is kinda getting wipped out by having to up my settings to get rid of the noise since I cant use the denoiser. Your help is much appreciated.

Thanks,
Chris

[slavcho.brusev]

Hello,

In V-Ray Next the Denoiser has been greatly improved and should be better than both Types(Single pass denoise on RGB only and Denoise render elements separately) no matter if its denoising reflective or refractive materials.
However if you have an example where this is not the case, could you please share it with us at support@chaosgroup.com so we can investigate it in detail?
If this is alright, please use the Pack Project tool(Extensions > V-Ray > Pack Project) to make an archived copy of the project and send it to us via email or file-sharing service of your choice.
Please include screenshots to better illustrate the differences.

Thanks!

[cmascari]

Hello Slavcho,

Thanks for the response. I ended up figuring out how to us the render elements in V-Ray Next after my original post. As can be found in a related post of mine in the GPU forum section, denoising a GPU rendered image continues to produce blurriness. From that thread, it is my understanting that this is a limiation of GPU rendering. If that is indead the case then I wont waste your time sending you the model because the reflections and refractions in the denoised image rendered on CPU looks great. The problem is I am GPU rendering and the reflecitons and refractions look all blurry on those renders.

[slavcho.brusev]

Hello,

After switching to GPU engine please go to Settings > Render Parameters > GPU Textures and switch the Resize parameter to Full-size textures.
Please confirm if this resolves the issue on your side.

[cmascari]

Hello Slavcho,

I had already changed that parameter. I have tried both Full-Sized textures and On Demand Mip-Mapped. It has no effect on this problem. The texture doesnt look blurry before the denoiser runs. The denoiser blurs it.

[slavcho.brusev]

In order to continue to investigate could you please share with us the project at support@chaosgroup.com?
Please include a link to this forum thread in the email.

[slavcho.brusev]

Hello,

Thank you for the provided files!
The issue stems from the fact that the Diffuse render element is not rendered correctly in some cases when the GPU engine is used.
The workaround to this is to replace the GPU Diffuse render element with a CPU one in a multichannel EXR using a post composing software.
You can speed the render process on CPU by disabling the GI.
After you replace the render element use the vdenoise standalone tool(https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/VNFR/Denoiser+Tool) to denoise the image.

[tsvetomira.girginova]

Dear cmascari, hello.

The issue has been resolved in V-Ray 6.
You are able to find more information here:

It was relevant to all V-Ray integrations.
You are able to receive proper results on V-Ray GPU with V-Ray 6 for 3dsMax hotfix 3 (6.00.20), V-Ray 6 for Rhino hotfix 1 (6.00.01) and later versions.
Mentioning only two host platforms, but you are able to find the exact build for others too if you navigate along the V-Ray Core version (should be =/> 6.00.20).

Best regards,
TS