How Large Can a Render Be Blown Up?
Nathanomir
Posts: 132
An old friend from college asked if I would donate a render for his art auction to raise money for his local community theatre. I said, HECK YEAH! He's going to want to print it and frame it for the auction.
How large can a render be blown up before it begins to lose clarity?
I have no idea what size print he's going to want, but probably at least 8.5x11 and maybe as large as 24x36. I can adjust the render size to compensate. My usual size is 1800x900 up to 2200x2000, depending on subject. Obviously, something complicated or larger requires slices merged together in postwork. I'm used to that, so it's no problem.
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Well, the DPI for printing can translate to PPI for rendering. So how many Pixels Per Inch do you want?
To keep the numbers simple, at 300 DPI/PPI, a 10 inch by 10 inch print would need to be 3000x3000. If you wanted higher res printing (e.g. 600x600) then you'd need more pixels. For lower res, less pixels.
There's no single answer (other than more pixels = better) as it depends on the printer and paper, etc too.
That helps tremendously. Thanks.
Render at the largest size you think he will want and x by 300. That will let you make an even bigger print at 150 dpi or a small one at 300/600 dpi. That is assuming an inkjet printer other printers may vary.
Is there still a maximum of 10,000 pixels?
@Nathanomir "Obviously, something complicated or larger requires slices merged together in postwork. I'm used to that, so it's no problem."
Why? I routinely render at 4000x6000. https://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#images/471871/ ; (Keep Clicking for full size) I have printed the example at 17x22, which is the largest I can print on my Epson Surecolor P800. The same image would just as good at 36x24 from a large printer.
If a GPU render you will ultimately be limited by your card's VRam, or your time limit. For CPU render, size will be limited by your CPU ram or your time limit/patience.
Muliple characters or large sets, like Stonemason's Streets of London, take up a lot of VRAM...
To really blow up a render you need dForce...
I use ON1 Resize, I've enlarged images by a factor of 5 with no degradation, it's quite miraculous!
Regarding the loss of quality, you need to consider the size of the key textures that form part of the render. If, for example you were doing a render that was a close up of a face, then anything rendered at a resolution above the pixel size of the face texture (typically 4096 pixels) may start to look slightly pixelated. However if the scene showed the whole of one or more characters this would not be an issue. However some of the background textures, for example a wall, might be low resolution and not using tiling to a great extent, and so could end up looking poor in a very large render (ie 10,000 by 10,000 or more).
So there is not hard limit of how far a scene can be blown up, but one of where it is highly dependent on what it is you are displaying.
Yup. And it just so happens I'll be using Streets of London, as well as at least four G3s. G3 is a resource hog in my machine, but they look so much nicer than the easier-to-render G2s. I can never put more than four in one scene without locking my computer up. Used to be three, but with Anagenesis, I can increase that by one now. It's a pretty powerful machine (1060 V-card, Kaby Lake CPU, 32G RAM). Having worked in Luxrender for years, I'm used to slow, so a few hours per slice and merging in postwork is actually fast in comparison.
Well, it's true you'd need aForce but not specifically dForce.
...Hmmm, Leela thinks she could do it.
Thanks for all the responses. These give me some direction. I appreciate it.
Yes and no. 10,000 pixels is the default limit, but like most limits you can turn it off. In the render settings, under General tab there is the Pixel Size setting ... click on the Gear Icon and choose Parameters and turn limits off. Then you can make some huge poster size renders ... if your equipment can handle it.