[Michael Betke]

A client asked me to render construction site sign in 300dpi. Well my internet calculator says it would be 11811px x 23622px.
Does it make sense? And can Maxwell render such a high resolution without waiting for ages? Never did such a high-res. Only a 6k x 3k which I printed to 2x1 meters as well and it looks nice even on close-up.

Any suggestions?

[Half Life]

If it is to be printed in color then 150-180 ppi will be fine -- that is the maximum resolution the human eye can detect differences/edges in photographic colors... the only reason you would need 300 ppi is if you were doing high contrast graphics (B&W linework and text) which can be composited over lower resolution "photos" anyway in any vector graphics/page layout software.

Best,
Jason.

[JamesColeman]

I think it's also worth remembering that assuming the image is going to be seen from quite a distance (as it is so large), then the SL wont need to be very high, maybe even as low as 6 or 8 and because of the resolution, it doesn't look noisy.

[Michael Betke]

Yes its not seen from closeup. Maybe hanging in the air a few meters plus most people drive by with a car or bike. I will see about the lower SL values.

Whats the largest res in Maxwell? 65.000px?

[brodie_geers]

300ppi is a very nice high res image for closeup work. If the client is asking for 300ppi for a construction sign though, it's because of a lack of education which leaves you with some options. You can try to educate them and perhaps bring along an example of what it would look like at, say 100ppi or so (maybe just a portion of a render on 8.5x11) along with the same print at 300ppi. Maybe they can tell the difference up close but if you hold them both a couple meters away they'll have no idea which is which.

Or you could render to a lower res and increase it in post. Or you could find a way to render it that large (I'd suggest some sort of upcharge for being an unreasonable client...although I wouldn't word it that way on the bill ).

As for max res, it'll depend on the amount of RAM you have and the complexity of the scene. Some folks will use region render tricks and such to render different portions of the whole and then combine them in post if you have issues rendering it all in one pass.

-brodie