does anyone have any idea what the best size for rendering should be and what do the guys who've been with poser for a while think the best size is for the start up screen. sorry for what seems like pretty basic questions. billy

I always render at least twice my finished size and generally at 3200 x 2400. Most of my work is for the screen so 72 dpi is fine. Startup screen? If by preview screen, make it as big as practical. My monitor runs at 1600 x 1200 and my preview screen is 1200 x 900.

thanks sam. it never ceases to amaze me how helpful you guys to the noobs. i could do with a little more help if you its okay. i want to have something printed off, the size is 24 inches by 24 inches. the print shop says it has to be in a 72 dpi photoshop format or jpg format. is a render that size out of the question and if not what should my render screen size be in order to get a decent render...again any help will be apprecciated. billy :)

To work out the pixel size, just multiply dpi by image size: so 24 x 72 = 1728 pixels. A 1728 x 1728 render shouldn't be out of the question, although whether your machine can handle it will depend on what you have in the scene. However 72dpi seems low resolution for print; you'd normally go for 150 - 300 I think, though I'm far from an expert.

i was wondering about what sam said re redering double the finished size english. could i do a render at 3456x 3456 or bigger and resize the image in photoshop to get a better quality image. my pc is a toshiba sat 5200-902 pentium 4 2.4 ghz 512 ram i'm using a 200 gb external drive which runs at 7200rpm i was also wondering about large renders...i did one to see how it would look and when i saved it as a jpg i had the task bar in the picture. thanks for your time billy

Rendering bigger is a good idea if your machine can handle it - that includes both rendering the image in the first place, and being able to work on it in Photoshop or whatever. If you're going to do postwork, a bigger image will mean you can zoom in on small details better. When you saved your large render: did you export the image from Poser, or just screen capture it? An exported image shouldn't include the task bar, or any other part of Windows.

Attached Link: http://mystic-nights.com/poser/tools/index.html

I know someplaces require 300 dpi for print. It places more pixels per inch and makes better print quality I believe. I have a couple of calculators on my website to convert pixels to inches. Just enter the dpi you want, the width and height and it will tell you how many pixels wide and tall the render should be.

Sometime soon you might think about a little more Ram.
I have a similar setup: (Pentium 4, 2.4ghz processor,
2.5 GB of Ram and 200 GB hard drive space (4 different drives).
I only do large formats, saving everything from Poser as a uncompressed Photoshop file. Then do all my photo editing in Photoshop.

Message edited on: 02/06/2006 07:23

Just another perspective on the whole render big/finish little thing. All the illustrations you see in everyday life, whether it be a magazine advert or poster, or comic book art, or whatever, are rarely worked on at the dimensions you see them in. Most of the time, they are created much larger, just so that, as Englishbob says, you can work i Photoshop or whatever in the postwork and get finer control over the brushwork, etc. You can then resize it down, knowing that your postwork isn't going to stand out. Whreas if you start with a smaller image and zoom in to work on it, you're always going to be looking at a pizelated image, which can be difficult to work out 'where' in the image you're working, or what needs to be done. jonthecelt

thanks to every for the info. been a big help billy