Render sizes?

[Hitori Kyo]

This question is aimed at the likes of digiartist, kiwi, skyraider ect but would love to hear from everyone ..what size/res do you render your final images at before you go into photoshop ?

- Hitori Kyo

[Pablo_nemesis]

Depends on your target , i mean , what are you going to use it for, and your machine specs, i couldnt go whit higher than 1024*768 cuz in photoshop it would go slow.

Well, my pc was really bad, till it wroke.

[kiwi123]

My usual rendersizes nowadays are between 5000 and 8000 pixels on the width (or height in case of a portrait render). That's nasty in photoshop, but it has to be done if you want to print.

[giant551]

its getting it to 300dpi is the killer for print thats what governs the render size. For example of you wanted a 800x800 print at 300dpi you will have to render out approx 4 times bigger to get that as screen resolution is normally 72dpi.

so for example 800x800 would have to be rendered out at 3200x3200 ish for print. you can sometimes get away with 250dpi and then resampling up in photoshop depends on the quality needed.

I learned this the hard way when i did the artwork for happyfeet as it was a gatefold book so i was having to render out at huge resolution to get the required dpi.

[cobra6]

You can save it as a TIFF at "x" number of DPI also, might be easier ;)

But also how do you render those übersizes in MAX, because you need to use blowup render or something, otherwise you'll get memory errors...

Cobra 6

[Martocticvs]

There's also something to be said for rendering larger than you intend to use, because downsizing the image generally improves the look over one rendered at the target size. If you do that, you should aim for mulitples of your target render size, so if you wanted your final image to be 1024x576 for example, you could render at 2048x1152 and then scale to 50%. But this really depends on your intended use of the image - for print this would be impractical and unnecessary, as the output sizes are so large anyway that you wouldn't see any benefit to doing so.

[Hitori Kyo]

Thanks for all the coments guys, the info will come in very handy for the future im sure!

at the moment i render in a4 size which is 3508 x 2480 at 72 dpi

- Hitori Kyo

[bmcaff]

It seems that, from a commercial viewpoint, people keep asking for higher and higher res. What was ok at A4 300DPI 2 years ago is now no less than A3 300DPI now. Generally speaking I stick to the later if time permits but more often recently I find clients asking for even bigger images. A project I did recently was rendered at 11372 x 8653 pixels (96.3cm x 73cm at 300DPI). The photoshop file was soomething like 1.2GB. Looks like that will be this years size.. oh boy. looks like I need a hardware upgrade. Not only is the image size a concern but also the level of detail and texture res have to increase accordingly.

[Hitori Kyo]

wow thats heavy indeed! I was thinking about doing my next project in A3 300dpi so i can get a nice print... 1.2 gig is massive ... did it run/open at a slugish rate ?

- Hitori kyo

[bmcaff]

Well i have a fairly decent system so it ran ok. But saving and opening the file was slow. My average PS file size is usually around the 600MB mark anyway. You find different ways of working when dealing with large images. I tend to use less layers and flatten things down a bit more than usual. It is a bit more risky if you need to do any changes later on but you do what you can to deliver the job.

[Skyraider3D]

I typical render to 5400x3600 (although sometimes to 3600x2400 if I am not too fussed about making large prints). As I do a lot of photography, I tend to stick to the 3:2 format. If I were to render a different shape, I'd probably aim for something with similar amount of pixels (i.e. 5400x3600 = 19.4 megapixels). I've found this size big enough even for 1-meter posters. If you need bigger, there are some nifty programs around that can blow up your image by 200% with ease.

In the end it all depends on what you want to do with it.


There's also something to be said for rendering larger than you intend to use, because downsizing the image generally improves the look over one rendered at the target size.That depends on what sort of filter you use for rendering. In MAX a lot of people instantly go for the Catmull-Rom which gives very sharp results. However this is not a very smart thing to do, as it will cripple your image when post-editing. I find it best to use the default Area filter which is smooth, without any edge enhancement. At the sizes I render, it makes really no difference to the overall look of the image, except that your edges will look pleasant ranther than jagged. So if you're rendering at high res, there's no need to go even bigger. Just use a render filter without any sharpening.



Brendan, you might want to look into purchasing a program like Alienskin Blow-Up, which preserves hard edges when up-sizing an image. I think you'll find you can work at say 7 or 8000 pixels and deliver a 12000 pixel with the customer not seeing the difference. Would save you heaps of time. Unless you want the bevels on rivet edges to be visible in the full-size images ;)

[cobra6]

@Skyraider:
Do you use a desktop pc when rendering that kind of resolution or a render farm? I somehow get memory errors when trying to render that kind of size..

Cobra 6

[bmcaff]

I'll look into it Ronnie. The truth is often times this is exactly what I have to do as time limits make a large render impossible. I find that PS can do 150% and 200% reasonably well but would love to explore other options.

Also often clients will ask for 300DPI image without really knowing what they are asking for. Probably the large format print process the are using is much lower res but it's just something they have in their head "it has to be 300 DPI". It is not really surprising as many people in our own field don't even understand the relationship between pixels and DPI

[Martocticvs]

Ronnie - yeah that's a fair point, and one often overlooked (by me as well it seems!)

[scrimski]

Also often clients will ask for 300DPI image without really knowing what they are asking for. Probably the large format print process the are using is much lower res but it's just something they have in their head "it has to be 300 DPI".
In that case I would ask to contact the printing facility and speak with them directly. Saves you a lot of work caused by misunderstandings sometimes.

[digiartist]

Generally I will render out at quite a small res, 4000 pixels wide. Although I'm going to push this up to 5400 like Ronnie starting with the next render.

[Skyraider3D]

...often clients...ask...without... knowing...;)

It is not really surprising as many people in our own field don't even understand the relationship between pixels and DPII noticed a few odd comments in this thread as well about this... :p

[Skyraider3D]

Do you use a desktop pc when rendering that kind of resolution or a render farm? I somehow get memory errors when trying to render that kind of size.I think the problems you have may be related to the super-high poly models you make (full cutaways etc.). My scenes have a few hundred thousand polys at most. Maybe I'll run into memory problems when I start rendering a formation of Corsairs.

I did buy a half-decent PC though (dual Opteron with 2 GB RAM running Windows X64) to do my rendering, although it slowly needs upgrading now after a year and a half in this configuration. The Opterons will be replaced with core duo ones of higher clockspeed and I will double the memory and replace the videocard (6800GT) with something pretty new (8800GT?). That said, my Little Friends image was made on an ancient Ahtlon 2000+ with 1 GB of RAM and I didn't have any problems rendering it at 3600x2400.

So I am guessing your problems are predominantly due to too many polygons or your scene being too "heavy". Have you tried hiding half the model and see if it renders then? Perhaps find out where the limit is and then optimise your model to get under that limit?

Also remember that MAX uses quite a bit of memory when you don't collapse your stacks. Most my models are Editable Poly objects, without any modifiers on top. I keep collapsing things down when I can.

Having too many objects in the scene is another culprit. So if all the ribs on your Stuka are splines with Extrude and UV Map modifiers on top, for instance, it's worth collapsing that before you attempt to render. As a test, collapse one object to editable poly or -mesh and attach all the other objects in the scene to it. See if that works?

There are countless ways you can save memory in MAX, but these come to mind as major ones to explore.

[bmcaff]

In that case I would ask to contact the printing facility and speak with them directly. Saves you a lot of work caused by misunderstandings sometimes.

Sometimes the worst offenders are the printers themselves. I've lost count of the number of times I have been asked to resize images but printers, either up or down. I mean, you'd think these guys would know how to use Photoshop. It's not like I am going to rerender the image :lol:

Ronnie, Sounds like we have the same computer. I also need upgrading badly as memory usage on these high res images are causing me sleepless nights (quite literally). It has become a matter of overcoming technical problems and getting the thing done as opposed to spending time creating a compelling image.

[Hitori Kyo]

would someone like to talk in depth about DPI please ... as i understand it 72 dpi is fine for digital viewing and for print it depends on type/size of the printer you want to use ?

Thanks in advance

- Hitori kyo

[Skyraider3D]

DPI or dots-per-inch can basically be read as pixels-per-inch. The most common printing standard seems to be 300 dpi. So if you want an A4 size image, this means roughly 8.25"x11.7", it translates into 2475x3510 pixels.

The 72 dpi thing doesn't mean much if your screen doesn't conform to 72 dpi. Afterall, if you set a 24" monitor to display 640x480 your screen resolution is way different from when you set a 15" monitor to 1600x1200. And since a monitor's size is measured diagonally you'd physically need to measure your screen size and set your screen resolution accordingly to match 72 dpi. Bit of a pointless exercise in my opinion though :)

My prints are designed for 18"x12" at 300 dpi, which results in 5400x3600 pixels. This is good for A2 size prints (after addition of a white border and title) which is a comfortable size to hang on your wall. This size also allows for moderate upscaling without any visible loss in quality, in case someone wants an A1 print.

[bmcaff]

That's it in a nutshell. I would add that to set any image up and figure out the dimensions all one has to do is set up the canvas in photoshop which allows you to input the size in cm and set your DPI and instantly gives you the image render size in pixels. And remember in the end it is the pixels that count when it comes to actual render output not the DPI. If you use the canvas set up and get the size in pixels you can't go far wrong