In the last 2 months I have asked a lot of questions on this forum but I'm new to Vue and the advice/tips I have received have been invaluable - thanks. I've got another question about rendering. I am trying to produce high resolution renders in Vue Infinite - these will finally be outputed as large scale 30ft x 9ft size prints to be shown in a gallery so I'm trying to get as high reslotion as possible so the images will be as detailed as possible close-up. I will be refining this with post-work in photoshop. I'm using a dual 2.5 powwerpc G5 Mac with 4.5 GBSDRAM. Unfortunately I just had a 46 hour render crash as it was writing the final file and I've lost it. I can't afford to have this happen too many more times so I'm trying to get a few things worked out. Sorry if some of this is obvious but any answers/suggestions of tutorials would be appreciated. 1] I now realise I should have regularly saved the render. Do I do this by stopping the render (press esc) then saving (File/save as) 'render1', 'render2' etc? 2] When I stop the render is there anything I can do before I restart the render to optimise the computer? 3] Is the standalone renderer a more efficient way of rendering than normal render to disk (obviously render to screen is not an option). How can I optimise this method? 4] Would adding more RAM to my computer help? 5] Would connecting up a Mac powerbook as a render cow help? 6] I am also thinking of using Pete;'s idea of tile rendering - http://www.petes-oasis.com/tilerendering. Has anyone used this with Vue 6 infinite? Thanks again John

1- when rendering to disk, I noticed Vue wouldn't always record resume rendering info, but it might have changed in the new "final" built, haven't tested it lately.
After you stop a render, Vue normally  record what's been rendered so far. After it has finished recording, just save your scene, the resume info is embedded in the vue file. Next, just right click the render icon, and chooose resume render.
2- Free as much ram as you can ( kill non necessary processes in the task manager)
3- When I created a big big render for ptint, only the "render to disk"  option with the internal renderer would render my scene. This may have changed too with the final built.
4- Yes, definitely, but if you are on a 32bit OS, 2 gigs of ram per application is the maimum you can use, so I would say, don't go over 2.5 gigs, would be useless.
5- Yes, spreading the render over 2 computers would speed up the process.
6- No, not me.

PS: Do you have a spectral atmosphere in this particular render? I know these atmos have issues with high res renders ( was my case with my big big render), and this should be fixed soon, according to the tech guys.

johnr1969 - Did I read this right, do you really mean 30ft x 9ft? Keep in mind that if you are going to print at a reasonably high DPI then your render size will be very large.

Yes ... I appreciate the problems!! Last time I did prints on a similar scale I sent the printers a 400mb file which was on a a 2 metre horizontal scale - but this file was made without any previous enlagement to the imagery (the imagery was made up from high resolution scans. This time because I'm using 3D (because I like the lighting effects etc) resolution is a problem. I am getting pixelation when i try to enlarge the vue renders. So i'm trying to render as large as possible to start with and will then do a lot of post work in photoshop. I'm experimenting with tile rendering. Or does anyone have any other ideas (I'm starting to panic!) does anyone know anything about commercial rendering facilities in the UK????

johnr1969 - You can change the DPI in paint programs which will help to some degree, but I wouldn't enlarge the render in one of these as you will definitely lose quality, so rendering on a VERY large scale within Vue would be the only answer. If you have spectral atmospheres, poser figures & hair etc then this render would take an age, especially if you use user settings with high AA as you would probably need for close up detail. Rendering from more than one computer will certainly help. 
I'd also be interested to know about commercial rendering facilities over here, I did see one once but I can't remember the link.

To enlarge images, there is one solution, it's Fractal Print Pro, plug in for photoshop, you can resize up to 800% without quality loss, or so they say.
As for a rendering facility, there isn't anything right now, but this may change very soon...but too late for you, John, I'm afraid.
You can check Respower though.

bruno021 - "800% without quality loss", you're kidding me?!!

Attached Link: http://www.ononesoftware.com/detail.php?prodLine_id=7

bruno021 - I'd never heard of this plugin before, I've just been checking it out on the net, if it's true what they say then this could be the answer to alot of people's prayers regarding rendering for print. It would certainly cut down on render time as you wouldn't need to render as large as before. It'd be interesting to know if somebody from here has tried it so we could get an honest opinion.

Attached Link: http://www.shutterbug.net/equipmentreviews/software_computers/0306genuine/index.html

stormchaser - yes its true you can increase scale dramatically in photoshop. There are other threads on this - this is the only one i can find quickly - http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2685598. There is is various software I use - eg perfect pixel - and also one of the best methods is supposed to be using the photoshop scaling but increasing each time only by 10% until you reach the desired size (rther than in one go - I am told by experts that this is the best way to increase sizes. But the trick is to start of with as big files as possible.

johnr1969 -  Sometime in the future I want to produce posters so I need as high a print quality as possible, which means as high quality a render as possible. Resizing would have to produce no image degradation, from your experience do you lose any quality?

johnr1969 - Thanks for link, I'd somehow missed that thread!

The increase is 602% (new res  5250x3500

I've attached screenshots of the 2 sizes the larger being the result of using GF.  The 3D part of it is relatively clear - enough for me to produce a print size, but some of the background is a little blurry but still not too bad.  

Base your calculations for image size to about 100ppi, or even 72ppi. Anything much more than that is pointless and a waste IMHO. For somebody to take in a 30' x 9' image they would have to stand a fair way back. No way would I go to 300ppi - I doubt if PS could open it anyway!!

Cheers

gillbrooks - Thanks for the example. While the resize is quite impressive, for me personally the slight degradation in quality is just enough for me to rather have a larger size render to retain the quality & sharpness. This is still an interesting concept though which I'll look into further.

I wasn't overly pleased with the result on this one, I ended up taking it down a size and am only selling smaller prints.  It's not too bad now.

I decided to sell the print of this as an afterthought - usually I render much larger if I'm going to do that.

OK I am starting to panic a bit! I am thinking of trying to link up two computers to speed up the renders. Is this easy to do (2 macs). At the moment my computer tells me I can't use the external renederer - it tells me to reinstall Render bull, so I will have to address that first. Also anyone know about commercial renderers/ got any links for commercial renderers?

Commercial renderes? Do you mean renderfarms? Try Respower, but I don't know if they support Vue6 yet.

Just looked at the Respower website - wow that is complicated? has anyone used it?

Sorry more questions - trying to work out why my images are pixelating. 1] If I reduced the size of poser props when i brought them into Vue by x10 does this effect the quality of the render - as opposed to if I had left the figures/props at their original size and moved the camera back instead? OR is this irrelevant. I hope so!!! I don't know why I did this I assumed it would not make any difference. 2]Does the quality of the render depend, in part, upon the resolution of the textures?

Resizing objects shouldn't make any difference, because they are all relative to the scene.
Texture size will have a big influence on final output quality - for example: say you want to render an image 3000x3000 pixels in size. You import a plane primitive that you need to fill the whole view with and texture it with a 1500x1500 texture. The texture will now be interpolated 1:2 - meaning every pixel of the texture will have to cover 4 pixels of the image. The result will be a pixelated texture.I've given a plane primitive as an example as an easy way of showing how textures can affect image quality...I hope, with some success ;0)

Not me.

OK maybe I have a solution. Is it plausible that I render the whole images at as high DPI as possible and then render specific areas at much higher resolution using the 'select render area' option and then cut and paste these into photoshop. Will the camera focus/focal length etc be the same?

johnr1969 - So long as you don't change anything with the camera or your viewpoint then the focus/focal length should remain the same. I find it a pain though that you can't render a selected area to disk.

stormchaser - when you start printing stuff on canvas - these are the best two places I have come across and I have tried A LOT. For smaller printing on canvas/paper - www.intelligence-direct.com (high quality but not too expensive) - and for large scale printing - www.chromagene.co.uk. When I was last producing big prints a year ago I checked out a lot of places in the UK (including going to visit on press) and these were the best by far.

Okay, for a 30x9ft print, if you wanted the output to be 150dpi your dimensions are gonna be:
54,000x16,200 pixels. And it doesn't matter at ALL what dpi setting you tell the render to be - THAT you can change later in Photoshop - even set at 10dpi for the render, it's STILL 54kx16.2k pixels.

BUT - Cheers is exactly right - you actually don't need to go that high because something that size is not ONLY not going to be viewed from close up (so no one will be looking closely to see if it's high res smooth or not - when they stand back far enough it all blends together smoothly), the PRINTER will probably not use an enormous file size to print from as THEY don't wanna deal with huge files in their system.

SO.... Going down to a 100dpi output would make your dimensions:
36,000x10,800 pixels.

I've made images for billboards that the company printed at 36dpi - no kidding! You're standing a good distance back - you'll never see it!

Now, just for the sake of argument, let's say you gowith the 100dpi output - YES, you can just set your camera, set the resolution output, and choose Render>Set Render Area and just render it in narrow vertical strips and assemble them all in Photoshop later. This way it doesn't have to calculate the entire image - just the portion you want at the time you hit Render.

Yes, I've done this numerous times and it works flawlessly (also for changing just a few details here and there - just render that changed detail and slap it in place in PS).

Cheers is also right - it you have 256x256 image textures and render them as 10,000 pixels square you'll have one ugly render! Keep in mind you'r e upsizing your image textures as well which is why shaders and procedurals will look better if you can use them.

Hope that helps - good luck-
-Lew ;-)

johnr1969 - Thanks for the links, I'll check them out when I get back home later.