Denoise and post production

[Remi.V]

The new denoiser is really a great tool which can save a lot of time. But so far this only works for the beauty pass as far as we have understood or have we missed something?

In terms of shortening the render times using the denoiser, we do meet a challenge as our pipeline consists of using the render elements and comping back the beauty in post. Since the render elements don't seem to get denoised, we have to keep rendering the needed passes in order to get rid of noise in our renderings.

Have we missed something or is this still not a feature?

[FrostKiwi]

The new denoiser is really a great tool which can save a lot of time. But so far this only works for the beauty pass as far as we have understood or have we missed something?

In terms of shortening the render times using the denoiser, we do meet a challenge as our pipeline consists of using the render elements and comping back the beauty in post. Since the render elements don't seem to get denoised, we have to keep rendering the needed passes in order to get rid of noise in our renderings.

Have we missed something or is this still not a feature?

No, you got it right.
Denoising is not yet supported for Render Elements. Although it is missing in the Corona roadmap for 1.5, it was mentioned that the dev team is looking into implementing it in Corona 1.5.

[Ondra]

it is basically just a matter of "if you are willing to pay the processing time and memory penalty, we can do it" ;)

[maru]

Would it be possible to store the data needed for denoising in some file (it is already stored in Corona EXR?) and then force Corona to use it with whatever is loaded into the VFB? So you could load denoising data, load beauty/other pass, and push DENOISE NOW? It could be even usable on some post-processed images.

[Remi.V]

Thanks for clarifying this :-)

We really hope to see this feature in future releases then. The indirect pass is always the most noisy pass which needs much more time to clean up in comparison to other passes so being able to denoise this would be gold!

[FrostKiwi]

The indirect pass is always the most noisy pass which needs much more time to clean up in comparison to other passes so being able to denoise this would be gold!

I'm got a feeling this is false logic.
Wouldn't that mean, that we are artificially creating an interpolating GI method, with image space blurring. So basically a worse version of Irradiance Cached GI... which is also a more or less planned feature of Corona...

[Ondra]

Maru: yes, possible. We might do a standalone application for that actually - we are already developing an application that will open Corona EXRs and offer the Corona tone mapping for them, might as well add denoising.

Actually we will probably drop irradiance caching completely and focus on other stuff...

[FrostKiwi]

Actually we will probably drop irradiance caching completely and focus on other stuff...

ohh, too bad, could have been fun equivalent, to how archViz flythroughs were handled in Vray with static lighting, but I guess it really is too big a chunk of dev sweat and tears to implement.
...So are we inventing Approximate Screen Space Gi? (Ass-Gi)

[Ondra]

I would gladly do it, unfortunately, there is the issue that to have the best possible irradiance cache, you need to change a LOT in direct lighting engine (basically you need to cache parts of direct lighting and not others, which complicates the code exponentially) Actually I got an idea, let me think :D

[FrostKiwi]

Actually I got an idea