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Tip for tough-cookie denoising
when i tried using mcjDenoise to de-noise this image, sections of the image didn't get denoised. So, i made an image named myimage_alb.jpg which is a copy of myimage.jpg, then i gaussian filtered it 2 pixels-wide then i de-saturated it almost entirely, i say almost because if you make it B/W your paint program may save it as a B/W jpeg. then i told mcjDenoise that, yes i wanted to use the albedo image, And last but not least, i clicked on the "input image is sRGB" checkbox https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts9/mcjdenoise
Ha, I like it. Fake albedo, I will just use it the way it is. It does a great job. It would be nice if albedo was something the opengl render engine could do for us. Thanks for the tip
BTW, this feature update works a dream!
600 png's that would have been ~10M each in 48bit were 2M each with no quality compromises - and that's just one 10 second snippit... and just the left eye...
it all adds up, especially when archiving each workflow-stage.
gracias!
--ms
Hi friends,
What would be the suggested workflow to implement this tool?
Render > Denoise >PS Postwork > PS Sharpen > Denoise?
the second nenoise is possibly not useful, though maybe ,aybe it can soften the sharpened edges
I would agree. From my experiments, it looks like the intel 'denoise' tool is very-much designed to manage that very specific sort of noise generated by many rendering engines (iray/cycles/octane/...) as they converge. While the denoise program does have an effect on most anything run through it, my own experiments indicate that there are other more traditional noise filters (PS/PaintShop/GIMP/etc.) that work 'better' on non-render type noises like film grain, etc.
What I find this tool buys me, is the ability to cut an IRAY render down to the first 80% of its convergence in 20% of the full-convergence render time!, and I can now clean it up to 95%+ of my desired final quality with the denoising tool. Bottom line, this render/denoise process effectively cuts my render times by 80% to buy me 95%+ of the quality I would like (100% isn't practical for me in terms of time). As an animator, this makes otherwise impractical projects viable using affordable/available hardware and practical time-frames.
My workflow is to simply test-render with IRAY until I get *just enough* quality (scene dependent!) to get an acceptible result out of the denoising stage, and consider that result my 'master' for any follow-on postwork or compositing.
Whether you're using simple IRAY-CPU, or 2080GTXs or Titans w/SLI inter-connects, the benefits are available to everyone in terms of time-savings.
(in other words, mCasual rocks for putting this toolkit together...)
hope this makes sense,
--ms
Again it is somewhat frustrating that I can't experiment at the moment but when I tried the Intel denoiser (not using mCasual's tool) I found it to have the same problem as the IRay denoiser in 4.11: detail was merely smeared out. Images looked like these photoshop retouched faces of older people with the facial lines absent. Agreed that in some cases, animations with the subject at a distance were acceptable but anything where the figure occupied full frame looked sub-par IMHO. I just was not happy with losing all that detail.
Good point - I can see that being a very real issue in some scenarios. For me, it's grain vs smear... In some scenes, I prefer the smear. One of the problems I have with the IRAY grain is that it kind of holds a pattern across the entire scene, meaning that its not random grain like an old movie, but like grain on a dirty lens that stick with the camera, and this is pretty noticable in both static and panning scenes, where the denoice smear isn't as 'sticky', so I suppose that's part of my decision process.
The one thing that I can't afford is more than a few minutes per frame, or I'll never get anything out the door - so each tool like this is a win for choices.
cheers,
--ms
Which is exactly why I'm trying to get my head around exporting animations to Blender for rendering in Eevee. Or, more drastically, to animate in Blender too although I think that's a step too far into the dark for me just now. Perhaps when I get more familiar with Blender, I might give it a go but I would hope for a comprehensive "Blender Bridge" to have evolved by then. Right now my head is in a spin trying to glean the differences and advantages between mcjTeleBlender, Diffeomorphic DAZ Importer and OBJ/MDD export.
Yeah, just having the bones work in blender will be a huge plus. I have tried evee already and the only thing that stops me is content and shaders. If I can get animation working well in blender with my poser and daz figures I will forego using iclone 7 for animations and just use blender. I don't want photorealism I want speed.
What's going around in my head right now is a workflow including animation in DAZ Studio, animated cloth sim in Marvelous Designer and all of it rendered in Blender. How to go about that workflow is the big question. I want the animated G8 figure wearing the (animated) clothing and rendered at speed in Eevee.
+1 for integrating in Daz studio. just like other of his scripts. They also should install by default
It would be a pain if I have to rework the bones for animation. Small animations for movement are usaually no problem, because it is just body movement and background noise. The real issue is close up scenes were main charcters are speaking and interacting. This is the hard work,fixing the facials bones to integrate with voice over. This is just a hobby, and I don't want to spend alot of money! I hope that someone with pro needs will probably make a tool like iclone has for facial voice animation for blender and if they are willing they will share it. Otherwise I will just use the one in iclone and splice in those frames.
Yeah, no sound for me yet. That's another challenge awaiting me but for now I'm just concentrating on moving limbs and trying to make the movement look natural. Some soft body physics would be more of a priority in future releases, from my point of view.
This is awesome! Many thanks - what a timesaver!
This is terrific. It's like magic with images!
thank you very much. this tool works perfectly
It's really nice, but it has limitations. A recent render had a lot of ambient light and shadows. This is what it looked like before denoising.
This is what it looked like before denoising:
And this is what it looked like after:
Where there's not a lot of detail on the right side, especially in the top right, I ended up with a lot of artifacting. I tried a few different png settings, but ended up with similar results. Is there a setting that would eliminate this problem?
I would just fix it in Photoshop. Or GIMP if you don't have Photoshop.
I downloaded both the mcjDenoise and the imagemagick, but I have no idea how to use it....
There's a link in the OP that explains it.
You have to install the mcasual script inside daz studio in scripts folder and you access it there(I would create a custom action for easier access). You have to download and install the denoiser opendenoiser, and image magic and point the script to where you installed both files. Then render for a few mins and use script to denoise your render in your render folder from within Daz studio. This will create a denoised image and not overwrite original. All this is on his web page.
DOes it have to be the DAZ Studio Render Folder? I haven't used the script yet but I never render to the default folder, I always choose my own target folder.
No. When you run the script you hit the button to choose the image to denoise, it opens up a dialogue that lets you pick an image. You can browse to wherever. It doesn't even have to be a render.
Thanks, that's excellent.
Does it require anything special other than min requirements for iray and Daz studio?
if you can run Daz Studio, you can run the script and there is no further requirement
the script runs two programs ( they do all the work )
one is imagemagick, which i'm 99% sure runs on any computer
the other is Intel's Open Denoise utility
and according to their History notes, "CPU requirement = SSE4.1" which is probably most Computers since 2006
I notice that you can input images as HDR. Can one use this on EXR canvases then? And can you get high dynamic range images out?
just now i tested the hdr option and it doesnt seem to work maybe i dont have the latest imagemagick ..
now do i have an exr image ... yes ... and denoise doesnt work, imagemagick has problems with it ...
here is the trace/log for my hdr and exr failed attempts
...
INFO: Loading input
Error: invalid PFM image
....
looks like the way i ask imagemagick to convert the hdr/exr files to the pfm format produces pfm files that Intel's denoiser utility rejects
------------
by the way when you click the button, it produces a batch/command file in your daz studio temp folder
in my case that's C:\Users\Jacques\AppData\Roaming\DAZ 3D\Studio4\temp
if you know what that means, maybe you could fix it there using notepad.exe
i recently discovered that Daz Studio can handle pfm images and in the futur, maybe i'll have a version of the script that doesnt require imagemagick
maybe tonight ( just maybe !! ) i'll see if i can patch my script so that it can process hdr, exr and what was the other one uhh .... ibl images