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Using it is very easy. You only have to activate it and the denoised image will be calculated during the render or at the end. You will see it as any other channel along with the main, not-denoised render.
In this video, you can see the main features and improvements:
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User Interface
You can launch a render with Denoiser either from Maxwell Studio, Maxwell Render or any plugin. You will find very similar options on all the platforms and products.
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In plugins, its location may change from one to the other but it should be close to the main render options.
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Denoiser options section
Regardless of where you use the denoiser, you will find the same options:
Enabled | Activates or deactivates denoiser calculation for the next render. |
Apply Denoiser | In this drop-down menu you can choose to calculate the denoised image at each SL step starting with the one set in the spinbox (8 by default) or only at the end of the render. |
Use GPU | If on, the denoised image will be calculated using the GPU (much faster usually), if not it will use CPU. Check its section below for more information. |
Tiling | This feature makes Maxwell calculate the denoised image by tiles or pieces instead of trying to calculate it all in one go; this reduces memory requirements a lot. The Size spinner lets you choose the maximum tile size that will be used. Check its section below for more details. |
Auto Configure | This option sets all the required channels and options automatically so the denoiser can work; it comes in two flavours: Fast and Accurate (explained in its section below). |
Denoise Shadow | This option allows to additionally denoise the shadow channel (it’s only available with "Auto configure" set to "Accurate", as it requires the Shadow channel to be active). |
FINE-TUNING OPTIONS | |
Color Influence 1 | Controls how much high-frequency detail of the render pass will be retained; this affects how the edges are handled. Low values mean more feature preservation <> High values mean more smoothing. |
Color Influence 2 | Controls how much mid-frequency detail of the render pass will be retained; this affects how color information is handled. Low values mean more feature preservation <> High values mean more smoothing. |
Feature Influence | Controls the influence of the extra passes (Normals, Position, Reflectance and Shadows). Low values mean more feature preservation <> High values mean more smoothing. |
Final Pass | Controls the influence of the final pass that affects color differences. Low values mean more feature preservation <> High values mean more smoothing. |
Filter Radius | Defines the area around the pixel taken into account when calculating its color. It can change the overall look of the smoothing and how the noise is handled. Again, low values mean more feature preservation, but also constrains the information available for the calculation <> High values mean more smoothing. |
Firefly Remover | This will detect and reduce the spread of high energy pixels (very bright pixels that usually come from SSS materials or caustics). |
Workflow
In order to use the Denoiser, you only have to activate it before launching the render. Maxwell, by default, will activate some extra channels that help the Denoiser distinguish the objects' shapes and textures so it preserves as many details and features of the image as possible.
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| Note |
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In the case you get an error message when using CPU about OpenCL ICDs, it means Maxwell cannot find valid OpenCL drivers installed on your machine; usually, those drivers are included with your graphics card drivers, so I would try updating it could be useful to update the drivers to the latest. If that doesn't help, it will probably be solved by installing this Intel's OpenCL runtime package: Windows: opencl_runtime_18.1_x64_setup.msi Linux: opencl_runtime_18.1.0.013.tgz This could also solve the error "OpenCL exception" shown when using the latest AMD processors. |
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The Feature Influence parameter(from 0 to 1; default: 0.6025) controls the influence of the extra passes (Normals, Position, Reflectance and Shadows). If you are losing detail on the textures, this is a good parameter to lower down, so the information in the channels takes more relevance (as the textures usually show up in the reflectance channel).
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