v4.11.2

HIGHLIGHTS:

• NRD: improved robustness
• REBLUR: improvements

DETAILS:

• NRD: clarified importance and valid usage of CommonSettings::frameIndex
• NRD: added more debug checks for user provided CommonSettings
• NRD: SetCommonSettings returns INVALID_ARGUMENT if validation of user provided settings fails. It happens only at the end of the function. The return code is informational and doesn't affect function body. In debug builds a failed check invokes assert with a description of the problem
• REBLUR: HistoryFix-ed data should not sneak into fast history for low roughness specular (test 115)
• REBLUR: roughness based confidence should affect "vmb" max accumulated frames (actually it's a NOP due to fallback to "smb" logic)
• Integration: logging goes into files instead of stdout
• Integration: added frameIndex validation

v4.11.1

HIGHLIGHTS:

• improvements

DETAILS:

• REBLUR: cleaner specular disocclusions (tests 65, 66)
• REBLUR: reduced fluffiness and boily look (tests 216, 205)
• REBLUR: reduced overall specular "fatty look" bias, observed under glancing angles (tests 12, 186)
• REBLUR: tweaked antilag default settings (to be more on the safe side, no changes in the logic)
• REBLUR: more flexible cameraAttachedReflectionMaterialID support, allowing relative camera motion
• RELAX: hooked up CommonSettings::cameraAttachedReflectionMaterialID

v4.11.0

HIGHLIGHTS:

• NRD: added GetMaxAccumulatedFrameNum helper, emphasizing the importance of time-based accumulation, also added DEFAULT_ACCUMULATION_TIME constants for all denoisers
• NRD: added cameraAttachedReflectionMaterialID to CommonSettings (currently used by REBLUR only), helping to deal with mirror reflections of objects attached to the camera. It's a suboptimal solution, future releases will address this problem better
• REBLUR/SIGMA: stabilizationStrength replaced with maxStabilizedFrameNum for consistency with other accumulation related settings and GetMaxAccumulatedFrameNum helper. The progression 0, 1, 2, 3... 9 is more understandable than 1.00, 0.50, 0.33, 0.25... 0.10
• improvements and bug fixes

BREAKING CHANGES:

• settings related (please, read UPDATE.md)
• NRD_FrontEnd_UnpackNormalAndRoughness returns materialID in the same range, as it was passed to NRD_FrontEnd_PackNormalAndRoughness

DETAILS:

• NRD: added GetMaxAccumulatedFrameNum helper to the main header
• NRD: added cameraAttachedReflectionMaterialID to CommonSettings (currently used by REBLUR only, WIP longer term)
• NRD: NRD_FrontEnd_UnpackNormalAndRoughness returns materialID in the same range, it was passed to NRD_FrontEnd_PackNormalAndRoughness
• NRD: improved code reuse between REBLUR and RELAX, reduced divergence
• NRD: improved per frame rotators (better noise properties)
• NRD: interface polishing (no functional changes)
• RELAX: added clamping to user provided "max accumulated frame num" values
• RELAX: reduced memory usage of DIFFUSE denoiser (had a dummy allocation)
• RELAX: diff-spec lobe fraction replaced with one shared fraction (simplified settings)
• RELAX: partial refactoring to match overall NRD style
• REBLUR/RELAX: hot/cold branch sorting
• REBLUR/RELAX: improved parallax computations, affecting many aspects of specular tracking
• REBLUR/RELAX: improved curvature computations
• REBLUR/RELAX: added forgotten initialization of gStrandThickness constant (oops!)
• REBLUR: minor performance opts
• REBLUR: fixed minor regressions related to migration to stochastic bilinear filter for RGBA1010102 oct-packed normals (since prev data repacking is gone)
• REBLUR: stochastic bilinear gets replaced with native bilinear if normals are interpolate-able
• REBLUR: slightly decreased hit distance sensitivity in case of 0 roughness
• REBLUR: slightly reduced lobeAngleFraction default value to squeeze more normal details (using the old default is OK)
• REBLUR: lobeHalfAngle uses code from GetNormalWeightParam (reduced code entropy)
• REBLUR: adjusted virtual parallax based confidence to be a bit more aggressive
• REBLUR: improved screen space sampling (now used in more shaders without IQ loss, improves perf, WIP)
• REBLUR: GetGeometryWeightParams should not become more strict if history is long (the rest is handled by normal weights)
• REBLUR: minimized deprecated GetBilateralWeight usage
• REBLUR: relaxed maximum value of slope scaling for disocclusion threshold
• REBLUR: improved antilag (which didn't do much last year), also made almost FPS independent, tuned to "not hurt"
• REBLUR: finally fixed ancient and ugly issue leading to "bright lighting crawling", caused by unbiased (bright) fast history selectively accelerating the biased (fireflies suppressed) main history
• REBLUR/SIGMA: "stabilization strength" settings replaced with "max stabilized frame num"
• SIGMA: removed unnecessary checks in spatial filters
• SIGMA: "closest viewZ" replaced with "longest MV" logic in the temporal stabilization pass
• SIGMA: history copying decoupled into a separate pass
• SIGMA: added disocclusion tracking to get rid of ghosting
• SIGMA: fixed ugly white outlines (suboptimal weighting scheme between dense and sparse passes)
• SIGMA: tuned defaults settings
• SIGMA: introduced screen space sampling to better respect low-discrepancy based per frame rotators
• updated docs
• updated dependencies
• refactoring

v4.10.0

HIGHLIGHTS:

• SIGMA: notable IQ improvements (less flickering in motion, better responsiveness)
• REBLUR / RELAX: improvements and bug fixes
• NRD integration: API changes, dictated by new optional features

BREAKING CHANGES:

• no changes in NRD \O/
• Integration: read UPDATE.md

DETAILS:

• NRD: deleted unnecessary curvature flattening if delta between normals is close to normal ULP
• REBLUR: eliminated repacking for normal-roughness
• REBLUR: improved specular tracking
• REBLUR: improved "vmb" specular tracking on moving objects
• REBLUR: fixed and improved logic for ReblurSettings::responsiveAccumulationRoughnessThreshold
• RELAX: fixed lots of places without UnpackViewZ
• RELAX: made ViewZ FP16 compatible
• SIGMA: improved penumbra size weighting scheme
• SIGMA: TS - fixed rare potential 1 pixel leaks
• SIGMA: TS - proper early out in regions with hard shadows
• SIGMA: TS - less flickering in motion
• Integration: added a few checks to increase robustness
• Integration: the constructor replaced with an initialization struct
• Integration: exposed demoteFloat32to16 option
• Integration: exposed promoteFloat16to32 option
• Integration: removed the need to pass format (modern NRI allows to query it)
• Integration: refactoring, rotating around replacing Nrd prefix with nrd:: namespace
• updated docs

v4.9.4

HIGHLIGHTS:

• Cmake: minor improvements
• updated deps

v4.9.3

HIGHLIGHTS:

• bug fixes and improvements

DETAILS:

• REBLUR: fixed potential edge smoothing
• updated docs
• updated deps

v4.9.2

HIGHLIGHTS:

• improvements and bug fixes

BREAKING CHANGE:

• MemoryAllocatorInterface renamed to AllocationCallbacks

DETAILS:

• NRD: fixed NRD_STATIC_LIBRARY
• REBLUR: improved MV patching (if enabled)
• updated docs

v4.9.1

HIGHLIGHTS:

• improvements and bug fixes

DETAILS:

• NRD: improved per-frame random rotations offer better distribution of samples across frames (barely visible in OCCLUSION and SIGMA)
• REFERENCE: split-screen and resolution scaling related bug fixes

v4.9.0fix

HIGHLIGHTS:

• GCC: fixed compilation
• updated GitHub workflow

v4.9.0

HIGHLIGHTS:

• NRD: exposed CommonSettings::strandMaterialID and CommonSettings::strandThickness to improve denoising on hair and grass
• REBLUR: improved IQ without stabilization pass
• REBLUR: improved behavior in disocclusions and in case of a short history
• REBLUR: improved specular tracking
• REBLUR: exposed new settings hitDistanceStabilizationStrength and fireflySuppressorMinRelativeScale
• improvements and bug fixes

BREAKING CHANGES:

• REBLUR: changed usage of maxBlurRadius and its default value, old values should be multiplied by 2

DETAILS:

• NRD: improved comments in main headers, added missing info
• NRD: added optional NRD_FrontEnd_TrimHitDistance to NRD.hlsli
• NRD: added NRD_GetNormalizedStrandThickness helper to NRD.hlsli
• NRD: exposed CommonSettings::strandMaterialID and CommonSettings::strandThickness
• NRD: exposed NRD_USE_HISTORY_CONFIDENCE, NRD_USE_DISOCCLUSION_THRESHOLD_MIX and NRD_USE_BASECOLOR_METALNESS macro switches allowing to disable almost dead and rarely used code
• SIGMA: fixed very rare 2 pixel wide bleeding (introduced by Temporal Stabilization pass under special conditions)
• RELAX: fixed disocclusion threshold scaling
• RELAX: added missing "rect origin" offsets to IN_DIFF_CONFIDENCE, IN_SPEC_CONFIDENCE and IN_DISOCCLUSION_THRESHOLD_MIX inputs
• REBLUR / RELAX: slope scale should not make disocclusion threshold > 1
• REBLUR / RELAX: hooked up strandMaterialID and updated disocclusion threshold logic
• REBLUR: exposed ReblurSettings::hitDistanceStabilizationStrength allowing to control AO/SO responsiveness in the temporal stabilization pass and to reach parity with OCCLUSION denoisers if set to "0"
• REBLUR: exposed ReblurSettings::fireflySuppressorMinRelativeScale (was previously a macro)
• REBLUR: relaxed temporal stabilization pass on strandMaterialID
• REBLUR: improved specular tracking by optimizing "smb" based accumulation
• REBLUR: improved firefly suppressor (making REBLUR more usable without stabilization)
• REBLUR: improved validation (highlights hitT outside of [0; 1] range)
• REBLUR: removed error estimation used for blur radius correction (barely affected image since ~v4 release)
• REBLUR: reduced ghosting on variadic roughness (more roughness details)
• REBLUR: implemented linear progression of blur radius (much cleaner disocclusions)
• REBLUR_OCCLUSION: disabled firefly suppression for hit distances (could lead to bias in disocclusions)
• REBLUR_OCCLUSION: anti-firefly is disabled in DIRECTIONAL_OCCLUSION too
• REBLUR_OCCLUSION: minor fast history improvements
• updated MathLib
• updated docs
• polishing