Neural Denoising for Deep-Z Monte Carlo Renderings

dc.contributor.authorZhang, Xianyaoen_US
dc.contributor.authorRöthlin, Gerharden_US
dc.contributor.authorZhu, Shilinen_US
dc.contributor.authorAydin, Tunç Ozanen_US
dc.contributor.authorSalehi, Farnooden_US
dc.contributor.authorGross, Markusen_US
dc.contributor.authorPapas, Mariosen_US
dc.contributor.editorBermano, Amit H.en_US
dc.contributor.editorKalogerakis, Evangelosen_US
dc.date.accessioned2024-04-30T09:09:17Z
dc.date.available2024-04-30T09:09:17Z
dc.date.issued2024
dc.description.abstractWe present a kernel-predicting neural denoising method for path-traced deep-Z images that facilitates their usage in animation and visual effects production. Deep-Z images provide enhanced flexibility during compositing as they contain color, opacity, and other rendered data at multiple depth-resolved bins within each pixel. However, they are subject to noise, and rendering until convergence is prohibitively expensive. The current state of the art in deep-Z denoising yields objectionable artifacts, and current neural denoising methods are incapable of handling the variable number of depth bins in deep-Z images. Our method extends kernel-predicting convolutional neural networks to address the challenges stemming from denoising deep-Z images. We propose a hybrid reconstruction architecture that combines the depth-resolved reconstruction at each bin with the flattened reconstruction at the pixel level. Moreover, we propose depth-aware neighbor indexing of the depth-resolved inputs to the convolution and denoising kernel application operators, which reduces artifacts caused by depth misalignment present in deep-Z images. We evaluate our method on a production-quality deep-Z dataset, demonstrating significant improvements in denoising quality and performance compared to the current state-of-the-art deep-Z denoiser. By addressing the significant challenge of the cost associated with rendering path-traced deep-Z images, we believe that our approach will pave the way for broader adoption of deep-Z workflows in future productions.en_US
dc.description.number2
dc.description.sectionheadersSampling and Image Enhancement
dc.description.seriesinformationComputer Graphics Forum
dc.description.volume43
dc.identifier.doi10.1111/cgf.15050
dc.identifier.issn1467-8659
dc.identifier.pages18 pages
dc.identifier.urihttps://doi.org/10.1111/cgf.15050
dc.identifier.urihttps://diglib.eg.org/handle/10.1111/cgf15050
dc.publisherThe Eurographics Association and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.en_US
dc.subjectCCS Concepts: Computing methodologies->Ray tracing; Image processing
dc.subjectComputing methodologies
dc.subject>Ray tracing
dc.subjectImage processing
dc.titleNeural Denoising for Deep-Z Monte Carlo Renderingsen_US
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