Recorder - Pathtracing with denoiser AND accumulation with recorder?

Unity Engine
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1

Hi guys

Its great that we can use accumulation with recorder, however, when I’m using denoiser, either Intel or nvidia denoiser, it works for a single frame in viewport, but how are we suppose to use it with recorder?!?

For example I have pathtracing with 128 samples and intel denoiser (or nvidia)

In recorder however, I set accumulation to 128 samples, however it goes to next frame without letting the denoiser do its thing…

Unity 2023.1 alpha 11
Recorder 4.0.0 release

2

Hey @newguy123 ! I just did a couple of tests and can’t seem to reproduce this problem on my end.

Just to double-check:

  • Are the recorded images on disk also missing the denoising or only what appears in the GameView during the recording?

  • Are you recording from the Recorder window or a Recorder clip (on a Timeline)?

  • Which Recorder Type are you using (Movie or Image Sequence)?

3

Hi @cguertin

  1. Images on disk is not denoised. In game view during recording I also dont see any denoising
  2. recorder direct from menu, not in a timeline
  3. image sequence

Here’s my settings with Intel denoiser (switching to NVidia makes no difference)
8468474--1125218--upload_2022-9-27_9-27-55.png

And here’s my recorder settings:

8468474--1125221--upload_2022-9-27_9-32-59.png
8468474--1125221--upload_2022-9-27_9-32-59.png882×763 57.2 KB

This is just an initial quick test with jpg images. Eventually I will need to export EXR with various AOV

4

Thanks for the additional information! I tried the same setup and somehow the resulting images are always denoised.

8473751--1126181--UnityRecording_denoise.jpg
8473751--1126181--UnityRecording_denoise.jpg2553×1401 393 KB
8473751--1126178--recorder_0000.jpg
8473751--1126178--recorder_0000.jpg1920×1080 211 KB

I’m a bit stumped on what else could be preventing the denoise from working correctly in your case. If you haven’t tried already, would it be possible to redo your test in a fresh project? For example the HDRP template project available through the Unity Hub.

5

is your camera animated @cguertin ?

I have mine as a child of an animated object imported via fbx from max

I’ll try importing that object into the demo scene and redo the test and let you know the result…

6

Edit - updated

I just did a quick test and I seem to be getting similar issues. It was working for me for a percentage of the time, then stopped denoising. (120 frame animation and stopped denoising around 68 frames).

I was using timeline, the recorder and cinemachine. No other plugins.

PT settings 128
Accumulation 128
FPS on both timeline and 24
Preferences TimeLine - playback locked to frame

I can upload the video if you it helps

1 Like
7

Hey everyone, just want to update that we haven’t forgotten about this. I’m still going back to the issue from time to time but somehow haven’t been able to reproduce the problem on my end yet.

@newguy123 , were you able to validate if this was also happening in a new project? I did multiple tests on my end with animated cameras and still no luck :frowning:

@Mark_29 I’m not sure if you noticed but when the denoising stopped mid-recording, did the non-denoised images appear to have 128 samples or only 1 sample (very very noisy)?

8

Hi @cguertin sorry I have not had a chance to look at it again. I’m back in traditional DCC and rendering at the moment with other projects. However I’m hoping to revisit this very soon as I also need to get pathtracing and accumulation working with 360 rendering. We do a TON of 360 traditional rendering and would be awesome if I could move this to Unity

9

Hi @cguertin - I am not 100% sure. I will need to try it again and see. In the timeline and the editor it was trying to “denoise” and it did, but the actual frame saved to the pro res was definitely 100% not denoised. I can try it again and upload a video.

  • Is there any particular release you want me to try out? (beta or alpha)
  • Is there anything else you want me to look at specifically?
10

For tracking on our end, what Unity and Recorder versions are you using?

One theory we have a the moment is that denoising might be stopping when the Unity Editor window is minimized, or another software window is in focus. It should still be able to render “in the background” there might be something weird around this.
Another similar scenario could potentially happen if the GameView window becomes hidden mid-recording.

It’s not a solid lead yet but it’s something I would try to keep a note of if the issue happens again.

11

Recorder 4.0.0

1 Like
12

SOLVED!

I had this same problem - no denoising when using acumulation and rendering pathtracing. The culprit turned out to be DLSS. I had it enabled on the camera that was rendering. Once I turned off DLSS, the denoiser worked on every frame rendered with Recorder.

I hope the Unity team looks into this, because DLSS is very useful in this application. It significantly speeds up rendering with virtually no loss in quality. And we need all the help we can get!

1 Like
13

Ah… Although you really don’t need DLSS with path tracer, but it may be the cause for me too … . I sometimes have DLSS on my camera for AA on RTX (not path tracer) when I was doing the renders. WIll go and double check to see if fixes the issue. Thanks for the info