Ultimate Denoiser STRESS TEST in Unreal Engine 5.1 - Path Tracing

Unreal Engine 5.1 has two Denoisers to help clean up noise in path tracing.

In this video, we'll be using the NVIDI OPTIX denoiser and Intel's Open Image Denoiser to reduce the amount of noise in our virtual production scene. This is a 100 sample STRESS TEST in Unreal Engine 5.1 to see the impact of each denoiser on our path tracing renders.

Denoising is very important for those of us making cinematics or path traced renders in unreal, especially for animation, cinematics or virtual production. It is possible to denoise afterwards in softwafe like after effects or Davinci but the results may cause issues because video noise is very different to the type found in vfx renders. For instance getting rid of fireflies can be an issue that traditional video denoisers arent equipped for.

So it's quicker and potentially better quality to get the denoising done in the engine than in post. So that just leaves the question, 'which denoiser should I use when rendering with path tracing in unreal engine 5.1?'

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[asonish]

I can’t remember where I read it (cycles documentation?) but these denoisers were created for very different purposes. Intel is about denoising final frames for that extra level of polish while the optix denoiser is a more general solution that also helps to make viewport perf closer to real time. The gist I read back then: use optix to get higher frame rates while editing in the viewport, but use open image for final frames.

[JJChalupnik]

Great breakdown. Thanks for this video.

[snitntw]

Your video was worth watching. Thanks for the analysis.

[dani_zi]

Thank you, Joshua! Nvdia denoiser works pretty well in my renderidgs

[barmaleevmax]

Hey! Thanks for the tutorial.
I have nvidia denoizer blurring the image much more than intel. If I render with 2048 samples, after nvidia it looks about the same as if there are only 128 samples on the render. Why is this?

[nmatthes]

Could you do a tutorial about pathtracer in general?
I have a problem: I have a scene with 100.000s of trees if I render the pathtraced image in editor mode... it all works fine (of course it takes time) but it can calculate 2048 samples and the single image in the end looks crispy.
But If I try it in renderque even after only 120 samples... the gpu crashes? But why? Why does it work in preview (with a very high quality) and give me a very very good looking result but it does not work when I do the same process in render? Why isn't it just possible for the renderqueue to process the images as in the editor, and then some kind of save them as a screenshot and go on to the next frame?

[antonburov]

Hi thanks for the content! Please take a tutorial on how to import an animated camera (tracking camera) into Unreal Engine and with it how to add a person cut out on a green screen (who was shot on that camera) to unreal engine 5 just as a preview for a reference point, so that you can create a 3D environment around him and then make a composite in nuke or in after effect, sorry for my English)

[hytalegermany]

Hello there! I have one question about path tracer: When I render Path Tracer my PC crashes. But if I in editor mode change to path trace, wait until the screen has loaded and is finished, then take a screen shot, then go one frame further and on and on it works.
But why does the one thing work and the other not, both seem to have same image quality and when rendered I approached same resolution as preview?
Is there a way to automate this procedure? Or is there a way to tell my computer: Yoo if you can do this, then you should also be able to render it! It is the same task!

[Enzait]

Would a denoiser in post look better than these?

[bobsteven]

Intel Open Image denoiser is also based on ai. All the denoisers for renderers are.

[jdd_cgi]

There is an option to enable or disable the temporal denoising - you don't mention in your video if you actually enabled it!

[burakdag]

I just need to reduce noise in the metahuman hair. For some reason it is super noisy. Unfortunately denoiser does not fix it. Do you have an idea how to solve this?

[caporacetuning]

does this also work in realtime? for a game maybe

[MetalGearMk]

From my own experience Intel is a better denoiser for still image renders, you don't lose all the details unlike the Nvidia denoiser.

[Fikarblackproject]

anything to fix the issu for path tracing?

[khov]

What happens if you use amd CPU and GPU ?

[namesurname]

Unreal 5.3.2 it's crashing when I render with this Denoiser on

[BarryLester]

both denoisers are too aggressive in UE5 and pretty much useless when it comes to denoising animation sequences. my favorite denoiser is the arnold Noice denoiser that ships with arnold renderer. unfortunately, it needs a Z, N, and diffuse albedo passes to work and I can't feed exr sequences exported from MQR to Noice.