Hey All! I was just wondering what setting do you guys render at? I followed some tutorial that said it was the best render you can do but it just didn't look that good? With a normal Home Computer can I get professional renders? And if so what are the light settings/resolution/size settings?

Personally I will generally render at at least 2X the final size I want and at either 300DPI, or 600 DPI depending on if I plan to print the work or not. This will give you some really great renders at high quality hope that helps

DPI sorry I'm pretty new to 3ding

Maybe we should start with what kind of computer you have and OS and work from there bakabaka1. I see that most people render at 1000 x 1000 but I useally go for 800 x 600 till i find the render I want. I start out small and work my way up till i like what i have then render at 1600 x 1200 . The DPI that was mention really only has to do if your going to be printing the render. The profesional looking part is the lighting and well worth your time to learn about it by reading what people post about it and the tutorials.

ahh yes ... OK... DPI stands for Dots Per Inch, and what that number means is pretty self-explanatory. It tells you how many dots will appear on a given line in an inch of space. So, the higher the number the more dots which means better resolution. Another important measurement to know if you decide to get into printing would be LPI (or Lines Per Inch). That number tell you how many lines will appear in an inch. I think the standard for that is 150, but someone who knows more about printing should correct me of I am wrong. As far as what tasquah is talking about I agree. When you are working on your image you should start smaller than what you want in the end. Otherwise it will take bloody forever to render 1600x1600@300DPI just to see if the hair looks right or whatever. Something to keep in mind would be to set up your document to have the same aspect ratio (i.e. 4:3, or 640x480) so when you do go for the final large render it will look the same (only bigger) as what you worked on. Hope that helps

fretshredder: Yah I forget to do the aspect ratio all the time or only remember after i pushed the render button. I also uncheck the cast shadows box untill I have everything workded out and in its place to speed up rendering .

tasquah: the cast shadows box = excellent idea mate!! I could see how that will speed up rendering when composing the scene :-)

If you are not planning on printing then you can stick to 72 dpi (screen resolution) and the size of the screen. (I am right aren't I guys? it works for me)

Yes elgyfu but it doesnt hurt to render it a bit higher incase later on you want to print it.

Ok I just have a HP Pavilion with pentium 3 I believe I'm running on XP professional. I have a light set I downloaded somewhere that says it is great for rendering and it looks pretty good. Look at that picture I attached is that pretty good quality or can I get it alot better?

Oops forgot my periods. Pentium 3 I think. I'm running on Xp Professional sorry. Another quick question. If I make the image render at say 1200 x 820 or whatever will that give me better quality when I scale it down a bit?

Your computer should handle big renders well enough. Keep your hard drive defraged often and you shouldnt have to many problums unless you have a small amount of hard drive space. Your render is pretty good but Me personaly I would try to get more detail from the skin , The lights can be played with some more to help this . What program do are you going to use to scale down your renders with ? If you use adobe then you sould shrink it minus 200kb at a time. Save your renders as a BMP or TIFF or you will get even more loss when you shrink it down.

How do I get it down 200 kb at a time? Also once I convert the bmp to jpeg will I lose quailty? This pic here was rendered at 1200 x 1200 at 600 dpcm With the same light effect as the other. Anymore suggestions? Also how do I make the picture big but keep it under 200 kb?

In photo shop you choose the image size and it gives you options as to what size to make it and you useally go 200kbs at a time but its not allways nessisary to do that . Try shrinking it to the file size you want then save it as a jpg (AFTER THE CONVERSION) you only really should change it to jpg at the final stage. You have a option at that time ( 1- 12 ) jpg conversion ratio . useally a 6 or 7 will give you under 200 kbs at this point with out to much jpg loss. Your first render was fine but the lighting looked like she should be at the beach and not the woods the second is better or from what i can see for the woods .

When you place a model in front of a photograph, BEFORE you even think about rendering it, move the light source so that it matches the background as closely as possible. This means light color and brightness as well as position. We live on a planet with only 1 sun. The image in message #10 shows 2 suns at work: one on the model and a totally different one lighting the building in back. Exteriors are usually easy to get right, because you are typically dealing with only 1 light source. So make sure that the highlights on eyes, skin, hair, clothes, props all are consistent. You can get bounced light outside, but the effects are more subtle and can often be postworked. Interiors, where light can come from everywhere including the floor, and multiple light sources are common, take more time to get right. Carolly

The DPI number in Poser means nothing. You get the exact same render at 72dpi as at 3000dpi.

that is not true ... 3000 DPI is much higher resolution than 72 DPI no matter how you slice it. If you print out a poser render at 300 DPI and one at 72 DPI the latter will look worse, trust me I print them out all the time. .... On screen, you are correct the monitor cannot perceive resolution, so in that sense the one at 72 DPI will look the same .... but not on paper.

DPI is only a number. You can change it in your image editor to anything you want. Trust me, the render is exactly the same no matter what DPI you put in Poser. You can take the same image and set different DPI numbers in your image editor, then print, and they all will print differently from the very same image. The DPI number in Poser is a convenience only. You can print directly without going through an editor, but it is totally arbitrary and has no effect on the render itself.