A question about Bryce 6

I have a question concerning the DPI output of the new version of Bryce that soon will be coming out. I’ve asked DAZ but, I get the impression that they think I’m nuts.

At this time the only way to increase the DPI for printing is (render to disk), why doesn’t DAZ see this is a major flaw!

Sense we all know that you can’t make incremental saves during this process (RTD) you are left to the fact that if your computer crashes or you loose power you’ll have to start from the beginning.

I don’t know about everyone else but, most of the images that I need to render at a higher DPI can take up to 4 to 5 days to complete.

Any suggestions?

David :unsure:

This is not answering your question at all.  But I'd like to ask you a question since I detect your knowedge on such.  Please explain in dumbed down terms (for me) the steps you take to render an image for large format print.   The only thing I've done is 8X10 photo paper format.  I think I've found a semi-local print shop that does ciclee (sp?) printing.  What and how do you recommend settings for larger format printing, say 16X20.  I know this is an old question probable ansewered dozens of times.  Tks Willie

I hope some one can answer the render to disk question for u.

All the pictures I create are created quite large, i.e.

1: The Document resolutions is set to 1280X960

2: The Document Aspect ratio is set to 4X3

3: AntiAliasing is set to Superfine.

4: The Render Resolution 1: 3.00 3840X2880

5: Render options are set as follows:

A: Quality mode will vary from 36 to 64 Rays per pixels. (Depending on project)

B:  All other setting are at defaults value except for Optimization which is set to aggressive and Post processing set to 48 bit dithering.   

All said in done you should have more then enough data to get a tack sharp render at sizes over 36” at 72 DPI.

Now the trick is to convince the printers that this will be the end results is quite another story.

I know that this method works because I’ve tried this at work with excellent results.

The bottom line is that you need a computer that can render at a fast enough rate to make RTD usable.

David

I think that this printing out question often results in over-technical answers that no one understands and is usually irrelevant.

I recently took one of my older works, rendered it at premium rez and saved as a default BMP. (I never render to disc)

Then, using PSP7, I set my page to A3 and my printer to the highest quality it had for photo-quality-shinny-paper. The result was awesome, even considering that my printer is a very old Epson A3 and it took ages to finish the job. Now A3 (297x420mm) is not the biggest size on the block, but if you want bigger, why not ask the guys at the print shop?

No offence but, I’m not talking about printing out at 11X17 (297x420mm) I’m referring to images that need to be printer 33” or greater.

I also have no problem at the resolution that you refer to.

The problem is that I have clients that need large print images that give the same quality that you get at a smaller resolution.

I’ve tried all methods and I know what does and does not work.

I wish it was as easy as importing into another program then printing but, at last, this is not the case.

Thanks for the input anyway, Chris, always good to hear from you………

Cheers,

David :biggrin:

I'm not surprised that you can't find an image manipulation program to handle the size of images your generating.

The most likely solution would be to find or create a utility to manipulate the image header for formats that store that information (TIFF being one).
Otherwise you can only hope enough people suggest that the ability to set this information before rendering is added.

nruddock, could you give an example of what you suggest, or point to a program that is capable of doing this. I'm quite interested in what you said.

David

Assuming all you need to do is change the header information, then there are several free programs that might do the trick.
All of them are likely to use libtiff (http://www.remotesensing.org/libtiff) to provide TIFF support.
The most likely candidate would be ImageMagick (http://www.imagemagick.org/script/index.php)
DevIL (http://openil.sourceforge.net/docs/index.php) is image library.

Providing you understand the format your using (and it does store PPI information), you could as a last resort just create something to rewrite part of the header.

Hey Bambam131, I know where to ask, and that's the Printers forum in the topics group. They'll tell you on high-end stuff better than I (I don't work on anything more complicated than HP 9500's..;)

Sounds like you're trying to balance dpi (on the printer) vs. pixels (on the screen). There's any number of ways to handle this depending what color scheme they use (Japanese, European, US, etc), type of printing (halftone [get real..:]), CYMK, etc. Any good printing service is going to be able to compensate for whatever you're looking for.

One problem we all have is that there hasn't been a formal release yet, and only a few tantalyzing details (none, unfortunately, about printing).  You could check with Daz, maybe they'd be forthcoming (I know they have a Bryce forum over there, and pay possibly a little more attention to it..hey..it's worth a shot.

Again discussion has left me behind.

All said in done you should have more then enough data to get a tack sharp render at sizes over 36” at 72 DPI.

*Sounds like you're trying to balance dpi (on the printer) vs. pixels (on the screen). There's any number of ways to handle this depending what color scheme they use (Japanese, European, US, etc), type of printing (halftone [get real..:]), CYMK, etc. Any good printing service is going to be able to compensate for whatever you're looking for. *

Again in dumbed down terms.  Pls explain what kind of render sizes are adequate to produce acceptable printed image of 16X20inch or as large as Bambam's 33". 

  I guess it is the dpi vs pixel thing that fuzzies my brain.  Is a simple table or rule of thumb not available to set pixel size rendered to produce an apparent non-pixelated print  of varing size?

I follow the increase ray/pixel setting giving a more accurate color per final pixel.  Then I get lost again at :

B*:  All other setting are at defaults value except for Optimization which is set to aggressive and Post processing set to 48 bit dithering.   *

Again thank you for indulging my ignorance on this subject.

* *

I'm not sure what the problemis...

I've rendered images up to 8000x8000 pixels in bryce, printed them on large size HP plotters and mounted on presentation boards many times. Usually I print out of photoshop.
Office plotter has a 36"roll, where I printed up to 36"x90" strips. I had an exhibit that had to be done at 80"x80" about a year ago.  I use Bryce at the office to render or pretty up exhibits of terrain models I make.

My general rule of thumb is to not gotoo much below 150 dpi for a printed image. 100DPI if I was going to push it. Just depends on the audience.

Attached Link: http://www.irfanview.com

Example for conversion:

i_view32.exe c:test.bmp /convert=c:test.jpg

Convert file: 'c:test.bmp' to 'c:test.jpg' without GUI.

i_view32.exe c:.jpg /convert=d:temp.gif

i_view32.exe c:.jpg /resample=(500,300) /convert=d:temp.png

i_view32.exe c:.jpg /resample=(500,300) /aspectratio /convert=d:temp.png

(Note: Supported are all IrfanView read/save formats except audio/video.)

Not sure if that's quite what you're looking for, but I've used it in the past when I didn't have enough RAM.

Attached Link: http://www.brycetech.com/tutor/bryce/bryceinprint.html

Have a look at this tutorial on BryceTech, there is calculator at the bottom of the page that will do all the work for you to get the proper render resolution size you are looking for. You just punch in the size of print you want and a couple other things and prestro.

Thank you croowe and all.  I saved that tut.  One last thought:

My general rule of thumb is to not gotoo much below 150 dpi for a printed image. 100DPI if I was going to push it. Just depends on the audience

I think I understand what is happening with printed output as it decreases in dpi.  What is the "depends on the audience"  Pls example what would be needed as fine art for framing as opposed to poster board for backdrop display in some sort of business presentation.

Again apologies, but this is what I like about this forum.  Such a wealth of knowledge and "been there, done that" 

 Willie

Also, certain media are gentler on lower res than others.  For example, I've had some things printed on canvas, where the resolution needed was a lot lower than it would have been for paper.

I also agree with skiwillgee about the depth of knowledge :)

Must be said I generally work on 150dpi for any image over A3 size - generally something this big is likely to be viewed at a distance so you can drop the dpi. A3 and below I use 300dpi, sometimes 600 for a photo size image to wallmount.

I agree with Davids starting point on the thread, you can't get to a big enough res without using render to disc and this means you're at the whim of any system failure that comes along, although for big images I will go to the bother of setting up network rendering to quicken the pace. IMHO I'd be fine to use render to disc if there was a way of re-starting after a failure, DAZ could easily hide some reference information in the image file to note how far the image has gone along, or create a second render progress file....

bottom line?.........if you're concerned that higher res renders could faulter due the the constraints of a single machine.....why not network render for larger images. I'm sure the pros use 300dpi and above with a small render farm at their disposal. For us "home bodies", I'm sure a few decent PC's could handle the task.

sorry, didn't mean to step on any toes..;) Long and short, I believe (but could be wrong), is that you can still get finer detail on the printout than the screen. I haven't checked lately, but it's something like 72 dots per inch on the screen, and even a cheapie laserjet will give you 300. There's all sorts of tricks for getting more hue, saturation, contrast, etc., in the printing world. Halftoning, 'smots', and all the other stuff mentioned previously will have an effect on your output.

I would highly recommend  checking out the printing forum; they deal with this stuff all the time, and it's just a little more high-end than I work with (I fix network printers and run print queues for a livin'..;)

I've seen several questions like this in the printer forum, so by all means, go to where the experts are.

With posts like the one above, I might actually forgive ConnieKat8 for using Max.........I said 'might'...

My quick 2 cents, some of which agrees with the info above.

I don't worry about DPI when rendering. DPI is just header information in the image file which can be changed at any time after rendering and/or post-work. There is zero pixel difference in a single render that has either 72dpi or 300dpi applied to it.

I myself use either my Thumbsplus or Irfanview to make sure/change the DPI to 300 before doing a final save which would go out to the print company.

300 DPI is the basic standard, but as Connie mentioned, I too have changed the DPI to 150 and printed with success (on my home printer).

Yeah, much like Agent Smith, I too use Thumbs plus a lot for printing (in addition to photoshop).

Usually I don't pay much attention, if any to DPI.  If I have an image which is total of 1024x768 pixels, and want to print it on an 8x10 piece of paper, I know it will be pushing it. I'm getting barely 100 dots per inch on printed paper. With most printers this can look pretty pxelated. Although, with certain printers, the drivers and printer settings have way of getting around even that by adding little bit of printer created diffusuion, so you get a soft focus effect, rather then hard edges pixels.

It also very much depends on the image itself, what is depicted. If it's a complicated scene with a lot of detail which needs to be shown in focus, you want to push the number of pixels as high as you can. If you;re doing a photograph with a soft focus or an abstract with not so much detail, you can get away with a lot fewer pixels.

I've made prints at 100DPI that people wouldn't believe were 100 DPI because of the quality. I've also seen 300 and higher DPI printouts that didn't look very good.

Higher isn't necessarily better. It's knowing the best setting for what you are trying to accomplish that counts more. For me, this came with experience and trial and error. You need to get to know your rendering program, your printing program and your printer drivers. There are settings in all of those that can afect your end result much more then just plain DPI. So much that I tend to be almost completely unaware of DPI settings in my images.

I look at it every once in a while in photoshop when I need to resize the image to fit the paper. Even then, I don't go by the DPI, I just glance at it as it is displayed in the dialog box. I'm always aware of my overall image size in pixels.

Depending on the audience....
Here's what I mean... Where is the image going to be presented? Is it going to hang on the wall somewhere where the closest anyone is going to get to it is 5-7 feet away? How much detail can a human eye pick up from that far away? Looking from 7 feet away, human eye typically can't tell a difference between an image printed at 600 DPI vs. 300DPI. It has a hard time seeing a difference between 300 DPI and 150 DPI (when the printer setting are done right).

Are you doing a piece for a home decoration for someone that is not overly art savvy, or someone who is very discriminating? Are you doing a piece for a gallery or something that will be juried?

Sometimes I need to do an artboard wich will be displayed where people will just glance at it and move on. For those I know I can lowe the quality. Other times, I know I'm making a project map which will be laid on a conference table, and will be studied in detail, almost inch by inch. For those, I know I have to have very crisp detail. There were times I rendered them in several squares and composited them in photoshop.

Also, you need to see based on the coloring and the type of the image, what kind of the file type is best suited for it. Out of rendering I first save at the highest grade, but then I take a small piece and see if JPG, or TIFF or a GIF, and color depth, or indexed color and similar variations in settings don't give me manageable file size, and preserve the detail I need. I really don't have a 'canned' solution for things. I handle them case by case, whatever fits each image the best.  

Just my 2c  HTH

hi all,

just my humble thought on this. The initial question was: what about lage scale images? Serious printing needs 100 lpi minimum (150 normal) so in the end wejus need more pixels.

Bryce can handle images up to 4000 (x4000) in memory, so up till this size you can do a network render on a still using "tiling". No use on a one-machine network though. For bigger stuff you better stich a UPS (Uninteruptable Power Supply) between the wall plug and your machine, it will pay off.

The smart way of handling things is done in mojoWorld, where tiles of 100x100 can be rendered AND SAVED so when the sky comes down, you can pick up where you stepped out. You can even render at night and work at day. When DAZ failed to pick up this functionality, I do see a new request coming up.

Why someone needs large scale prints is not the issue. My record is 4000x6000 in 254 hours (see Got Her, in my favourites).

regards
aRtBee

Bambam, might just be case of a cpu upgrade.

Ive done some Bryce images at 3600x2400 and then printed them out at 30x20 inches and they come out great.

Im lucky none of my images are as complex as yours!, 4-6 hrs tops.

I would seriously wait until we have some sort of confirmation that Bryce 6 uses BOTH cores/cpus then go for a $100 dual core cpu.

Far cheaper in the long run.

:)

Quote - With posts like the one above, I might actually forgive ConnieKat8 for using Max.........I said 'might'...

I'll grow on ya before you know it! :m_wave:   :m_tongue2:

First off I would like to thank everyone for all the input you have given in the thread.

This has really given me some good ideas as to how to approach my printing problems.

Believe me I know about printers because I work for Canon and I use quite a few of the large format printers at work.

I must tell you that I myself have 3 Pentium D 3.2 GHz duel core systems and 3 Pentium 4 HT 3.2 GHz systems running with every computer having at least 2 to 4 Gig’s of RAM. All are using ATI PIC Express cards with 256 Megs of RAM. Over all I have around 4 Terabytes of harddrive space. All my systems have 8 Gigs DVD Burners for off storage.

So I don’t think it’s my systems that need to be upgraded.

Bryce Lighting is in a word is (A bust!) My pictures are quite complex and on the best of days I’m looking at around 15 to 24 hrs render time.

When I increase the Rays per pixels this can bring the render time up to over a week or more.

I cannot afford to have every system chugging along on 1 picture.

I will take all your suggestion into consideration, I just hope that DAZ will include the save function in the next release or so.

Cheers,

David

When working with inkjet printing (and this includes Giclee - low quantitiy production) dpi is not of much concern. Total image size matters more. The Error Diffusion halftoning process (all print image have to be halftoned in some manner) produces fantastic prints at very low dpi settings - a 1024x768 can make an excellent letter size print. Epson's process in this regard is very good.

Where dpi becomes a concern is when using conventional halftoning screens for multicolour process printing (i.e. commercial quantity rpoduction). As each halftone screen for each colour of the process has to be offset angularly from all the others, the produced dot size has to be fairly small so that when the colours are overprinted, a fairly crisp final image will come off the press. 300 is a good base reolution for high quality press printed images.

For large outdoor posters (feet in lieu of inches and viewed from at least ten feet) you can drop the dpi greatly.

Hope this is of some help.

Dave- had no intention to try to tell you how to print. You have the inkjet background I gather. I came from the 4/6 colour process work of commercial job presswork myself.
Nice systems! (My dual Opteron 280 crunch box arrives this weekend)

DPI ability, from the standpoint of 3D rendering is, I think, a bit irrelevant.  I generally create an image with a specific POV and detail.  I then consider what size I want the printed scene to be -- based on that initial creative concern of POV and detail.

I target a final DPI of about 240 for final print resolution, and based on the size of print I want, I simply do the math (8x10 print would require a final image resolution of 1920x2400 pixels).  I use Irfanview to do a 2x upsample (usually with B-Spline or Lanczos filters), so I factor that in if the rendered file will exceed ~2600x5000 pixels (in other words, don't bother with pushing the limits, just upsample).  I have PShop CS2, but IrfanView does a better job at upsampling.
I print to my Epson 9800 giclee printer, usually on canvas (which I then coat with a giclee veneer).

BTW, if you ever want to buy a wide format giclee printer, and want to print on canvas, then seriously consider the Epson 9800 or 7800 printers.  They are made on the Seiko assembly line, and are absolute jewels!

thanks Incarnadine, I was in trouble there (I only get to play with this stuff when it doesn't work..;)