Dual Channel Residual Learning for Denoising Path Tracing

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In this paper, we present a denoising method for path tracing using residual learning with convolutional neural networks (CNNs). Noisy artifacts in path tracing are inherited from insufficient sampling, which often generates over- or under-exposed values when integrating the limited bright or dark samples in a pixel. In this paper, we introduce a dual channel residual learning CNNs which separates the over and under-exposed signals in order to provide an efficient denoising filter for the path tracing rendering. Furthermore, we present an advanced CNN comprised of variable-sized kernels in each convolutional layer. Our CNN detects features in different scales providing an adaptive denoising filter capability which is optimal for extracting various contextual details in a complex scene. The experiments demonstrate that our method generates better visual quality than other compared approaches across various rendering effects.