Anyone using denoising passes from Blender?

I was wondering if anyone that uses Fusion to composite Blender renders uses the denoising passes and if you do, how do you incorporate them into the node tree.

This is usually my node tree to composite a multilayer EXR sequence from Blender:

Compositing setup.png (383.86 KiB) Viewed 1867 times

This one has some extra stuff that I needed for this particular case, but basically it's Diffuse, AO, Glossy, Transmission and Emission, which I separate into R, G and B to have more control over it.

But then I have these passes, and I'm not sure how to incorporate them into my node tree:

Denoise passes.png (45.63 KiB) Viewed 1867 times

Usually when I use the remove noise node I apply it to some of the diffuse or the glossy passes, especially the latter, which is the one that gets the most noise if not using the Blender denoiser. But when I see the image in these denoising passes, some don't have anything and others have an image, but it's not an image particularly noisy, so it's a bit hard to tell how to use them exactly, unless it's some very specific FX that I don't know about.

Anyway, if anyone uses these nodes and can educate me I would appreciate it.

if you have time for testing give this a try: [DEV] Intel® Open Image Denoise 2 Fuse

https://www.steakunderwater.com/wesuckl ... php?t=6253

if you have time for testing give this a try: [DEV] Intel® Open Image Denoise 2 Fuse

https://www.steakunderwater.com/wesuckl ... php?t=6253

Sure thing. It may be a couple of days, but I'll be sure to give it a try.

if you have time for testing give this a try: [DEV] Intel® Open Image Denoise 2 Fuse

https://www.steakunderwater.com/wesuckl ... php?t=6253

Sure thing. It may be a couple of days, but I'll be sure to give it a try.

Well, it took me more than a couple of days, but I finally tried it, or attempted at least. The instructions are a bit difficult, and it gives me an error when I try to use it.

But regardless of this specific denoiser, is there no denoiser in Fusion itself that can make use of the Denoising passes from Blender? The Remove Noise effect in Fusion is not that great, it seems more like a simple blur, and the only extra input it has is for an effect mask. I plugged the output of the three denoising nodes from Blender into it (one at a time), but it didn't make any difference.

The Blender denoising passes are mostly for use in the Blender compositor.
None of Fusions native nodes support that sort of denoising. I have been asking for many years for the full Denoising nodes from Resolve be added to Fusion Studio Standalone... but even they do not use any of the extra Denoise outputs from Blender.
The OIDN v2 node (mentioned by KrunoSmithy above ) actually works fine for me on CGI (and even some digital camera footage) without the extra channels, (it is not yet in Reactor, but available as a Beta on the WSL forum) . It does seems to have the correct inputs but may or may not behave as expected.
https://www.steakunderwater.com/wesuckless/viewtopic.php?t=6253

The OIDN v2 node (mentioned by KrunoSmithy above ) actually works fine for me on CGI (and even some digital camera footage) without the extra channels, (it is not yet in Reactor, but available as a Beta on the WSL forum) . It does seems to have the correct inputs but may or may not behave as expected.
https://www.steakunderwater.com/wesuckless/viewtopic.php?t=6253

Yes, I downloaded it and tried to use it, but the installation steps are not super clear on that thread, and basically I ended up with this nice chunk of log:

Code: Select all

...uses/Miscellaneous/oidn-2.3.3.x64.windows/bin/oidn2.fuse:471: attempt to call field 'oidnNewDevice' (a nil value)
stack traceback:
...uses/Miscellaneous/oidn-2.3.3.x64.windows/bin/oidn2.fuse:471: in function <...uses/Miscellaneous/oidn-2.3.3.x64.windows/bin/oidn2.fuse:444>
ChannelBooleans3 cannot get foreground image at time 95
ChannelBooleans4 cannot get Parameter for Background at time 95, layer [Main]
MatteControl1_1 cannot get Parameter for Background at time 95, layer [Main]
ChannelBooleans5 cannot get Parameter for Background at time 95, layer [Main]
ChannelBooleans9 cannot get foreground image at time 95
ChannelBooleans10 cannot get Parameter for Background at time 95, layer [Main]
...uses/Miscellaneous/oidn-2.3.3.x64.windows/bin/oidn2.fuse:471: attempt to call field 'oidnNewDevice' (a nil value)
stack traceback:
...uses/Miscellaneous/oidn-2.3.3.x64.windows/bin/oidn2.fuse:471: in function <...uses/Miscellaneous/oidn-2.3.3.x64.windows/bin/oidn2.fuse:444>
ChannelBooleans3 cannot get foreground image at time 95
ChannelBooleans4 cannot get Parameter for Background at time 95, layer [Main]
MatteControl1_1 cannot get Parameter for Background at time 95, layer [Main]
ChannelBooleans5 cannot get Parameter for Background at time 95, layer [Main]
ChannelBooleans9 cannot get foreground image at time 95
ChannelBooleans10 cannot get Parameter for Background at time 95, layer [Main]
CustomTool1_1 cannot get Parameter for Image 1 at time 95, layer [Main]
CustomTool1_1 cannot get Parameter for Image 1 at time 95, layer [Main]
Glow1_3 cannot get Parameter for Input at time 95, layer [Main]
CustomTool2_1 cannot get Parameter for Image 1 at time 95, layer [Main]
Saver1 cannot get Parameter for Input at time 95, layer [Main]
Saver1 failed at time 95

So I probably didn't install it the way it's supposed to be. I posted on that thread to see if anyone can point me in the right direction.

I did try the OIND that is in Reactor, which is version 1, but it seemed to me that the denoising was a little excessive for my taste. I don't like super clean videos or film, I love film grain and some visual "defects" that make the renders look more authentic. Of course if the noise in the render is too bad, that stands out like a sore thumb. And usually the noise is way more evident in the Glossy Direct and Indirect passes.

So my goal is to denoise a little bit, but not to the point where it looks blurry, just to the point where it feels like part of the film grain, which I add later in Resolve.

Denoising Albedo should probably be the diffuse pass denoised but the others are more likely to be used by denoising algorithms. I hear what you mean about mixing the back the non-denoised pass, I usually either just turn up the render passes to get the noise to an acceptable level (obviously time consuming). Or as I often only do minor changes to the render pass I use mathematics to work out how to alter the particular passes I need to use (Start with the final pass and make changes using only the passes that are need to change effectively using inverse mathematics to get the desired result, it can get messy) which also has the advantage of lowering the overhead of processing all the passes vs. the full image plus a couple of other passes. Because of this I can then just mix the noisy and denoised image at the top of the process to get the mix how I want.

It is a sort of all or nothing node. v2 (and v1) just eliminates all noise.

The Install looks like this for me (the fuse (oidn2.fuse) is in C:\Users\(yournamehere)\AppData\Roaming\Blackmagic Design\Fusion\Fuses\oidn21 with the guts of OIDN in the \win subfolder ) :

As you can see , it has been there for a while - so maybe try downloading an older version of OIDN from Github, and try that if the latest one isn't doing as it should.

Screenshot 2025-05-26 183107a.png (67.55 KiB) Viewed 742 times

Try mixing the noisy image with the denoised in a Dissolve and use the Mix slider to control the strength of the denoise.

It's pretty likely that those extra passes for denoising from Blender are intended to be used with the Renderman denoiser. I'm not aware of anyone having ported that to Fusion, but I haven't been watching real closely, either, so I may well have missed it.