[Addon] Super Image Denoiser 4.0.0 (SID)

Super Image Denoising - up to Blender 3.6

SID denoises your images with far greater detail compared to the built in denoiser!

Addon based on compositor nodes, perfect for render farms!

!!! All further Developents will happen in the Pidgeon Tool Bag !!!

To get SID for blender 4.0, download the Pidgeon Tool Bag:

https://pidgeontools.gumroad.com/l/PidgeonToolBag

Main features:

• Add a powerful denoiser with a single click!
• Denoise your animations with one of two Temporal Denoiser!
• Choose the quality and performance of the Super Image Denoiser!

Easy to use:

1. Select your denoiser type and quality.
2. Click "Add Super Denoiser".

A video tutorial on how to use SID 4.0:

Your render will be denoised after the render is completed.
The built in denoiser will be disabled.

See the difference in detail and render time!

Far more details will be recovered from your noisy images.

Comparing Nvidias OptiX, Super Image Denoiser and Intels Open Image Denoiser side by side.
Every frame was rendered with the same machine and the exact same settings.

You need to render far fewer samples with SID to achieve the same quality as you would with OptiX or OID, saving you hours of render time in the process!

Animations Denoised with SID:

Super Image Denoising

Pick between three denoising qualities!

The quality you select decides how fast the denoiser processes the image, and how much detail is preserved. You can chose between these options:

• Standard: Uses the most basic denoising setup, the same as enabling OpenImageDenoiser
• High: A more complex denoising setup, a perfect compromise between speed and quality
• Super: Best quality for, perfect for final renders.

Only denoise what you need!

Improve your render times by selecting which passes will be denoised.
This is important as not to waste performance!

By default diffuse and glossy surfaces will always be denoised.

• Emission: Do you have emissive materials in your scene? Like lamps, glowing surfaces, lights?
• Transmission: Enable it for glass or other materials that are glass like!
• Environment: It should be enabled when you see the environment in your render, the HDRI or Sky.
• Volumetric: If you have volumetric clouds, fog, smoke and everything that uses a volume shader!

You can spot if you missed a certain material if it is black after denoising.

Advanced features!

Multi-Layer EXR:
Some of you might prefer to do your image editing in external software, or want to edit the layers individually.
To do that, you can simply enable "Multi-Layer EXR" in the Advanced tab and an EXR-File will be created next to your output image.

If you never worked with a disassembled image before, you can use this handy guide to reassemble your rendered image:

Adding the Super Image Denoiser!

Using the "Add Super Denoiser" button you can add the Super Image Denoiser into your scene, look in the compositor to see it.

"Refresh Super Denoiser" is the button to press after you changed some settings in SID, or want a fresh, unedited version again.

Super Image Denoiser - Temporal

Denoise your renders with data from the previous and next frame!

Temporal Denoising can drastically reduce "flickering", artifacts caused by the denoiser interpreting pixels in a different way in different frames. This issue happens with every denoiser out there. Temporal data can reduce this issue!

Image working directory!

SID-Temporal needs a folder on your device where it can temporarily store data, render images to, and store the denoised images in.

Final output file format:

In this setting you decide which file format SID-Temporal should finally save your images in. This will be the end result.

• PNG: If you plan to no longer edit your images and want a clean image sequence. The files are small and uncompressed.
• JPEG: If you want to have a quick preview, fast saving files with artifacts, very small file size. Has compression artifacts.
• EXR: For the advanced users that like to edit their renders after the temporal denoising. Large files with zip compression.
• TIFF: This is the second highest quality option, suiteable if you want to edit the frames later. Takes color management into consideration.

Image directory:

This is where SID-Temporal will create three folders

• Noisy: A folder to store the rendered Multi-Layer EXR files.
• Preview: Here the optionally selected preview files will be saved, they are denoised with the quality option you selected.
• Denoised: After SID-Temporal finished denoising your images, it will save the files in the previously selected format here.

Smaller working files:

The EXR files saved after rendering can take multiple MB per frame, so you can reduce the file size, at a slight cost of quality, by enabling "Smaller working files". It will save the files in 16bit EXR instead of 32bit.

Generate preview images:

EXR files can not be previewed by some operating systems natively, so generating preview images helps to see the progress the rendering has made so far.

Motion blur!

SID-Temporal is the only temporal denoiser for blender that supports motion blur!
The settings on SID-Temporal are similar to the compositor vector blur node settings.

Advanced settings!

For everyone seeking to fine tune SID-Temporal, we have the advanced options!

Overscan: Renders additional pixels around the image, this helps with rapid movements or camera shake.

Multilayer EXR: Just like SID-Regular, SID-Temporal supports Multilayer EXR denoising!

Preview Render: This is a setting meant for debugging and should not be used for final rendering!

TED-Filters: The TED-Filters are our revolutionary technology that detects any errors that might have happened during the temporal denoising and corrects them!

Start denoising!

SID-Temporal uses a two step process.

You first need to render the noisy frames with step 1.
After that you will notice that all your images are being saved to the "Noisy" folder in the directory you specified.

Following step 1 you need to complete step 2 to see the images with temporal denoising appear in the "denoised" folder.

Keep in mind, that due to limitations of temporal denoising, 1 frame in the beginning, and 2 frames in the end will be cut off, and you have to manually compensate for these.

Compositing is still in development. For now, export as EXR and import the denoised EXR range into your compositor.

OptiX - Temporal!

The third denoiser type supported by SID is OptiX Temporal denoising.

This uses Nvidias proprietary denoising technology to denoise your renders with OptiX and temporal data.

Beware that the denoising quality of OptiX Temporal is usually worse than SID-Standard.

With step 1 a Multi-Layer EXR file will be rendered into the image directory you specified.

Complete step 2 to replace the Multi-Layer EXR files in the specified folder with the EXR files denoised by OptiX Temporal.

Compatibility!

Blender versions SID is compatible with:

3.1 - 3.6

We support a wide range of blender versions!

Render engines SID is compatible with:

• Cycles
• LuxCore (coming back soon)

Due to frequent changes in the render engines, we cannot keep up with everything that is new or has changed.
If you encounter bugs, or would like to have us extend SID to your preferred render engine, please let us know!

BETA Release!

The current BETA for SID v5.0 includes:

• Compatibility with Blender 4.0!
• Improved performance
• Cleaner UI
• More features
• Easier to use

Compatibility with Blender 4.0

Blender has reworked the way node groups work and the API behind it, so we took this opportunity to rework SID from the ground up!
This means, the new BETA version, and the following SID v5.0 release will not be compatible with Blender 3.6 and below.

Improved performance

With the many years of experience since then, and all the gathered knowledge, we improved SIDs UI and denoising performance.

Cleaner UI

We gave SID a much needed UI overhaul, making it easier to use, as it now includes an icon for every setting, for easier recognition!

• Instead of the denoiser types beneath each other, they are next to each other.
• Diffuse and Glossy passes are available to select
• All passes are in a 2x3 grid, not clogging up too much width.
• Advanced settings are in a clearly visible category, showing that they are technical settings.
• Everything has Icons, making it easier to understand what a setting does from first glance!

SID - Temporal is much easier to use, as every setting is in a category, reducing the confusion caused.

More features

Previously, you had to click "Refresh SID" whenever you change a pass. This was tedious and unnecessary things to keep in mind.
If you forgot to enable a pass, and already rendered the image, you had to re-render the entire image! Now no more!

If you now deselect a pass, it will be an undenoised pass, rather than a black pass!
To enable denoising for that pass, simply enable the pass, and it will be automatically denoised too!

Are you unsure what passes you need? The Detect Passes scene will look through every material in your scene and world, to enable or disable the passes you require for clean denoising!

Multilayer EXR is now much easier to use too! Clicking the button will already add it to your scene, connect it to SID, and be right next to the SID node, if you need to make any changes!

It includes all passes, denoised or not. And depending if you set SID to high/super before adding it, it will also use combined/individual passes!

Much more compact SID node

In previous versions, when adding SID, it would only connect other nodes that had the render layers "Image" output.

With SID v5.0 SID will automatically connect its render pass outputs to whatever the render layer node was connected to.

This is an update log, and will be updated to suite the latest developments of the BETA Version.

Both SID and SID-Temporal are implemented in the BETA version and are useable.

If you find any bugs, have feedback, or ideas, feel free to let us know in our Discord Server.

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