NVIDIA Real-Time Denoiser
NVIDIA Real-Time Denoisers
The NVIDIA Real-Time Denoisers (NRD) are a spatio-temporal API agnostic denoising library that’s designed to work with low ray per pixel signals. It uses input signals and environmental conditions to deliver results comparable to ground truth images.
NRD in Ubisoft's Watch Dogs: Legion
Fast Ray Tracing Denoising Solution
Fast integration, fast real-time performance. NVIDIA Real-Time Denoisers will increase the efficiency of your art pipeline.
Designed to Work with 0.5 or 1 Ray Per Pixel
This highly performant ray tracing solution is built to provide real-time results for developers using a limited budget of rays per pixel. You can achieve exceptional denoising results using only .5 to 1 ray per pixel.
Works with DX11, DX12, and Vulkan
No matter which APIs you are using, NVIDIA Real-Time Denoisers are built to fit seamlessly into your workflow. Get started knowing that DX11, DX12 and Vulkan are all fully supported from day 1.
Full Source Code
Developers get the flexibility that comes with full access to source code. Build out and optimize NVIDIA Real-Time Denoiser to fit your unique use case.
Denoisers in NRD
ReBLUR is a denoiser based on the idea of self-stabilizing recurrent blurring. It is designed to work with diffuse and specular signals generated with low ray budgets. In fact, ReBLUR supports checkerboard rendering, producing reasonable results when casting just half a ray per pixel. Compared to SVGF (Spatiotemporal Variance-Guided Filtering), which was introduced in 2017, ReBLUR offers more realistic lighting with better temporal stability, all while being 50% faster. To see ReBLUR in action, play CD Projekt Red's Cyberpunk 2077 or Ubisoft’s Watch Dogs: Legion on a GeForce RTX GPU. As an additional feature, ReBLUR denoises ambient and specular occlusion signals for free, what can be useful in modern games.
SIGMA is a fast shadow denoiser. It supports shadows from any type of light sources, like sun and local lights. SIGMA relies more on physically based spatial filtering than temporal filtering, offering minimal temporal lag.
ReLAX is a variant of SVGF optimized for denoising raytraced specular and diffuse signals generated by RTX Direct Illumination. ReLAX offers substantial improvements to image quality and performance over stock SVGF. Not only does ReLAX preserve lighting details produced by massive RTXDI light counts but it also yields better temporal stability and remains responsive to changing lighting conditions. And while image quality improvements of this magnitude are usually accompanied by a drop in performance, ReLAX is in fact 50% faster than baseline SVGF.
Supported Denoising Signal Types
Diffuse
Scattered lighting reflected in all directions (with some exceptions can be called "view independent", prevails on dielectric materials). The algorithm uses hit distance to guide the denoising process, it allows to denoise ambient occlusion together with diffuse radiance for free.
Specular or Reflections
Lighting reflected in a particular direction or cone (view dependent, prevails on metals). The algorithm uses hit distance to guide the denoising process, it allows to denoise specular occlusion together with specular radiance for free.
Infinite Light Source Shadows
Sun or any other infinite light source visibility information (shadow).
Customer Testimonials
"Every developer adding ray tracing to their game needs a denoiser that runs fast and generates an excellent image. We’ve been really pleased with NVIDIA’s solution; it allows us to make the very best of our ray budget, delivering exceptional quality without compromising performance.”
Zurab Abelashvili, 3D Programmer
“We use NRD for RT bounced diffuse lighting and shadows denoising with success. Thanks to NRD, we significantly reduced the amount of rays used by our RT implementation without quality loss. It's easy to integrate and brings both, great quality and performance at the same time."
Tomasz Szalkowski, Rendering Director
