We have discussed this multiple times and people have made various suggestions - the easy solution is: have an option to remove the denoiser layers and reduce file size.
There is a 3rd party utility I can run to strip these layers, but I would prefer not to have to do this, because it’s just ANOTHER step in master files and another frame sequence.
I had a bit of a heated debated with Leli about this, who said it wasn’t possible, or would take a lot of resources - but in fact there are some types of layers that the denoiser removes anyway, so, it shouldn’t be that difficult.
I really don’t know why this isn’t a priority - it would massively improve the efficieincy of how EXR sequences are handled, and it would likely save us all a shit tonne of hard drive space.
For now those options are hidden. We wanted to add the necessary changes to the V-Ray internals before the official release and we’ll add proper UI later on.
There’s a MAXScript option in the VRayDenoiser render element in Max that can be tested with a script like this
(assumes you have only one denoiser render element).
This will make the denoiser skip writing the auxiliary denoiser channels to files - only the denoiser result.
Use it at carefully - there are no checks whatsoever yet so setting it to true might lead to unexpected results. For example if the denoiser is set to ‘Only generate render elements’ and this option is set - result files will not be denoised and will not have the render elements.
Changes both to Max and the Standalone denoiser in that regard are in the works
Thanks for the reply. Hang on, so can you explain where to use this - this has to be run in 3ds max? and then when you run the standalone denoiser later it knows not to write the unneeded layers?
Why don’t you you just make it so the standalone denoiser does this automatically?
No - the option affects only renders done in Max. Once rendering is done - the output file will NOT contain denoiser elements - only the denoised result.
Ok then, then this is something else from what we have been asking or all along the, correct?
Because this would mean we couldn’t use the standalone denoiser on those files later, particularly for temporal denoising (which is why people use the standalone denoiser).
Could you give us a timeline for when the standalone denoiser will be fixed.
I’m sorry to say, but this feels like as has often happened in the past - that Chaos is over-complicating a simple fix by trying to be over ambitious.
I bet it would take a competent programmer 2 hours to just fix the standalone desnoiser to not write those files down into the output, and this would literally be a thing that is out there working now saving thousands of gigabytes of data and making our animations more efficient RIGHT NOW.
Please, could someone please just do that first? because that will function absolutely fine without having to mess round with Vray.
This is a great step in the right direction and its awesome Chaos is thinking about it.
Hopeful to see an easy implementation for it in both Max and stand alone denoiser tool.
We don’t use the stand alone tool so would love to see a simple checkbox in render elements to not write the garbage passes and jobs done!
(hopefully not waiting for Vray 8 to see it though, pleeeease)
Perhaps you could do it with an environment variable as a quick fix. I know gui programming is annoying, but a simple envar check in standalone denoiser could the strip the denoiser channels when writing…
Sorry to say the in max option is not useful here either, as we always denoise afterwards to be able to adjust the amount and our use the temporal option (though the Intel denoiser often seems to do a better job, even though it lacks temporal).
I have tested the maxscript and got a bit of a reduction in file size.
Using intel denoiser:
It appears to have stopped the bumpnormals pass from writing, but the vraydenoiser pass is still going in, so half way there!
Just need the option to not write that one too and we’ll have a truly lean EXR.
Not sure if you’ve looked at the competition like Octane or Arnold before, but their customers can just tick/untick what goes into an EXR.
Perfect implementation
