Maxwell Render | Official public forum

After trying a lot for years, I wanna ask you ppl what resolution do you render (for printing size of about A2) without render farm.
Esp. interiors.
Thanks for any reply !

Hello choo-chee,

As you are mentioning, there is not a single universal answer to that question.
It depends strongly on the quality and specifications of the printing device (or print service) you will use to print that render.
Obviously the most conservative answer is to consider always 300ppp, but on large sizes like A2, this res is not affordable.

If you are working with a print service company, you should ask them, as they know the specifications of their machines, and can estimate the minimum resolution until the pixels and grain become visible.

If you are printing in your own device, I would ask you to perform a few tests to see what level of pixelation is acceptable for you or your client. It is like estimating the Sampling Level, just a compromise between quality and amount of info.

Cheers

Dario Lanza

well as most of my clients print using their service providers, I need to find out what is the most common optimal resolution .... that's why I'm asking.
The more answers I get - the more I can find out what is considered best yet render-able ...

That's a very deep topic as it depends on so many factors. I found that the 2 major factors are the required viewing distance and -most of all- the level of stupidity on the clients side.
Seriously though, oftentime rendering larger does not equate to more details since you baked the maximum amount of detail already into the scene when you textured/ modeled it. Unlike reality where you will see increasingly more detail the closer you get, a 3D scene will get worse and worse after a certain point. The majority of renderings I did have been around 4-6k pixels. Also rendering size and delivery size are often not the same due to above mentioned stupidity. If a client insists on 15k for an A3 print, the rendering was simple upscaled in post. There is no way you can put the required amount of detail in a scene that will need 15k to show up. Some hard surface objects like technical things , may benefit from rendering larger than usual since it's mostly edges and corners but they also tend to render more quickly than-say- an interior scene.
I'd say at around 4-5k you are set for almost anything and it's a very common delivery size in the archviz business.
With Maxwell this can be very hard to achieve on a single machine except for simple scenes. It's unlikely to achieve in a reasonable time frame for interiors unless you have the mightiest of machines at home ( a quad or six core won't cut it). If you need to render very often it might be a feasible investment at some point, otherwise I'd suggest using the Ranch renderfarm. You can factor in a cost of around 2-400$ for a 5k interior at sampling level 18 without mixing emitters and sky/sun. Local rendertime would have been around a week.

Ben

That's a great summary and should go into the docs/faq.

Polyxo wrote:That's a great summary and should go into the docs/faq.

I agree as well Polyxo , Tora has highlighted some incredibly valid points . I cant even begin to imagine for example the true ramifications of creating a scene that contains a true 15k of info other than if you were making every asset to a high quality I feel sure it would take longer to make than render.

Thanks for putting it all so succintly Tora . Great thoughts/words to give to someone requesting such a size (think I'd miss out the stupidity part in that situation though )

Hi all,

Yes, very interesting topic.
I've added to the documentation (on the rendering FAQ page) as you asked, because it would be useful for others:

http://support.nextlimit.com/display/kn ... dering+FAQ

(entry #10).

Thanks Ben!