Huge Images for Print - Need Help Please

[JBT27]

I'm no stranger to rendering images a few thousand pixels wide and high, for books and magazines, but we've got a job where one of the images needs to be rendered at 30,000 x 20,000, or rather the end result needs to be that big.

My machine is Win32 with the specs and LW version in my signature - I have the 3Gb Switch active.

We've only just started seeing how to do this - the scene is built and ready, and uses the Perspective Camera.

We're having memory problems, not surprisingly - but even lowering the Segment Memory to 1Mb doesn't work (the scene is 339,000 polys or so and uses 51.1Mb at rendertime). Limited Region, using With Borders, is unpredictable -crashes alot.

An odd problem is that we cannot enter any higher than 16,000 pixels in the Width and Height fields for the camera - setting higher and hitting Return 'defaults' back to 16,000.

I set 15,000 for width and 10,000 for height, changed the Multiplier to 200%, saved the scene and closed it. When I reopened, the Multiplier was still at 200% but the Width and Height fields were both 16,000.....WTF??

I need to render several different passes on this scene, for comp, and I have to be able to keep the camera and general format locked for each render, and know that it will render :)

So I need some help and advice please. My first impression is that using LW at this size is making it seriously unreliable. That said, it looks more like the settings I am using are maybe not appropriate.....either way, I need to sort how to do this.....and no, 64 bit is not an immediate option.....wish it was :D

Thanks.

Julian.

[Surrealist.]

I thought I read that with LW 8 they had bumped it up to 18,000. In anycase, 16,000 or 18,000 is the limit AFAIK.

Then 3 Gigs of ram. Forget it. Not going to happen. Not even close. The very reason everything is going flaky on you is the resolution. If you could even get 10,000 out of it, that would be pushing it. But I am going to say from that ram that you are going to top out at about 5,000 or maybe 6. If you could get 10, no brainer to upres in PS. but 5 or 6 is going to get a tad rough.

Some people have voiced solutions to render in segments and then patching. But just remember before trying to do that that you close down LW and open again to clear the memory. It has a way of getting stuck. So if you are trying this or that you'll get crashes on something that might work with a freshly opened scene.

Unfortunately it is kind of like, welcome to the bleeding edge. :)

I am going to say that most likely your solution is going to be rendering as close to 10, 000 as you can with segments and upres. I am not even sure you can get segments to work at 16,000 but you can try.

[ingo]

I agree, render at 15000*10000 and scale it up. Just curious, what do you need that high resolution for ??

[JBT27]

Thanks for the replies - I didn't realise about the 16,000 pixels top resolution limit in LW.

Well, I did manage to render a 10,000 x 6,600 pixels straight out of Layout without problem, so that's one thing. I tried at 12,000 x 8,000 pixels, but it crashed right at the end.

However, using BNR's SplitFrame feature, I have managed to render a 15,000 x 10,000 pixels image - BNR couldn't assemble it, reporting memory errors on the Targa buffer or something, but that's no big deal to splice that lot together.

I've sized that up 200% in one go in PS to get the size the client asked for, and it's not bad.

Would you up-rez in one go, or incrementally.....or do you use Genuine Fractals or similar?

As to the why.....well, it's what the client asked for, though I already warned him that may be outside what we can do. That said, he's fine with that and there is a Plan B if we couldn't. I'm not convinced this much res is needed to be honest - the end print (not done by us) will be 96" high by something like 160" wide (so that's actually 32,000 x 20,000 pixels or so), but that's at the client's 200dpi.

I suspect a good print could be done with alot less res than this, given the viewing distance, but I don't know enough about current digital printing to be able to advise on this.

So if anyone has any suggestions, I'm all ears :D

Julian.

[Silkrooster]

Yep the further away an image is from the eye the lower the dpi. I wouldn't be suprised if there is a formula for it.
Silk

[Surrealist.]

Well, I did manage to render a 10,000 x 6,600 pixels straight out of Layout without problem, so that's one thing.

Would you up-rez in one go, or incrementally.....or do you use Genuine Fractals or similar?

That's encouraging. I always upres in one go using the PS Bicubic resampling though depending on the image you might like Genuine Fractals better. I have always been happy with the PS Image res solution for my work. Only upping 3X will be fine.

[rakker16mm]

Yep the further away an image is from the eye the lower the dpi. I wouldn't be suprised if there is a formula for it.
Silk

There is a formula in traditional photography having to do with the circle of confusion, but I am a little fuzzy on the subject. No pun intended.

[JeffrySG]

I don't know exactly what you're printing, what the printer is, and what the final output will be used for, but I can give you some input. I'm an exhibit designer full time. We print large murals, from a few feet to 60ft, etc every week all year long. Whenever I do a mural that is larger than 5 or 6 feet I never, ever, ever use a resolution for my raster images that is over 75ppi. Now we also use quite a bit of vector graphics (like illustrator files) but on the raster side (like photos) 75ppi is the limit. I've run tests on the printers we use and once you are standing more than a few feet away - and especially once you are 10 or 20 feet away you can't tell the difference between a printed file that is 50ppi and 200ppi. And as you know, it will be a huge difference in the file size. You have to ask yourself how far away will someone be when viewing this print? The actual resolution of the printer is not as important.

Our recommendation to our clients is to send files between 75ppi and 100ppi at 100% of printed size. Some times someone will send us a 10ft mural that is set to 300ppi and it drives us crazy. So much longer to download the file, open the file, and work with the file for no added quality in the end.

I will say that there are some cases when a higher resolution will help, but it's very rare that I encounter them.

If I have to size up images a lot, I will many times size them up in a few (non-even) increments. Genuine Fractals can be good for very specific cases, but usually I like the PS enlargement better. It usually has more of a normal photographic feel.

Hope that helps a bit! :)

[ingo]

I also do upsizing in small steps in PS, looks better than doing it all in one step. But the next time i recommend that you ask your client for a contact to the printing company, so you can ask them directly what resolution they need. It depends a lot on the "paper" and the printer they use. And high resolution printings in large sizes do look great, as long as you have enough detail in your renderings.

[inkpen3d]

What about TrueArt's VirtualRender (http://www.trueart.eu/?URIType=Directory&URI=Products/Plug-Ins/VirtualRender)? I've never used it my self, but according to the specs it seems it might do what you want. It's $200 (USD), so purchasing would depend on your expected profit margins and whether it has a possible use on future projects.

[JBT27]

Well, thank you very much for the comments and advice, and especially JeffrySG for the print advice.That is very helpful.

As of now, via BNR, I have a means to render up to LW's limit on this Win32 box addressing only 3Gb RAM, and that combined with upsizing in PS should get me somewhere close to what the client wants in resolution.

The more subjective point is that the images were originally done as book illustrations, occupying most of a spread and around 3,500 to 5,000 pixels on their longest sides. The whole setup for each scene was based on that, detail, texture maps, everything. This is a new client, who saw the book, liked the illustrations and wants to use them in a display - albeit re-rendered and re-comped to allow some changes and minor additions.

They work well in the book at that size, but there isn't the detail to warrant this display size, nor anyone scrutinising the prints closely. That said, it is as ever a highly subjective point - the images do nevertheless have considerable detail and impact, and if the client wants them at that res then it's for me to try to deliver as close to that as possible, though I will advise him on Monday of some of these comments and see if we can make life a little easier :)

Thanks very much again - much appreciated.

Julian.

[JBT27]

What about TrueArt's VirtualRender (http://www.trueart.eu/?URIType=Directory&URI=Products/Plug-Ins/VirtualRender)? I've never used it my self, but according to the specs it seems it might do what you want. It's $200 (USD), so purchasing would depend on your expected profit margins and whether it has a possible use on future projects.

Hmm....yes, thanks - I did have a look at that yesterday and it does seem like a possible alternative. Though as you'll see from my post above, there are also issues of the original scenes not being designed to go as big as 30,000 pixels on the long size - they're struggling to hold detail in the texture maps at 15,000 pixels to be honest.

My business partner was verging on us buying into 64-bit straightaway just for this one-off unusual sized job, but I'm not a fan of knee-jerk solutions and the fee doesn't warrant that level of expense. New hardware and software could bring their own sets of problems that prove more a hinderance than a help.....been there, done that, learnt the hard-way :D

But thanks :)

Julian.

[StereoMike]

I rendered 15543 x 9701 px for a 28dpi poster (14.1 m x 8.8m) last week. Final gather at a low setting (just 300 rays), 2.5 millions of polys and using the machine in my sig (lw64). Had no problem.
Pshopping the image was more tedious, just for the sake of the filesize.
Editing an image as large as your resolution on a 32bit machine... I guess this will be a showstopper.

btw. I didn't went that route, but with a view or tilt/shift cam made up with the advanced cam (Proton did a tut on it) you could render segments like the limited region tool, but with more control.

mike

[JBT27]

I looked at a PDF from someone describing that Advanced Camera method - didn't realise there was a Proton tut.....was that one of his recent ones? Do you have a link to hand?

Julian.

[JBT27]

Actually, I think I just found it - one of the older LW9 vids here:

http://www.newtek.com/lightwave/tutorials/videos/index.php

Still unclear how I can get a single camera to exceed LW's 16,000 pixel limit - I think I'll go and look at that PDF again.....but even then, and as I've found, BNR's SplitFrame allows me to render a full 15,000 pixels width.

Julian.

[JBT27]

The PDF is here:

http://www.3dcreativemag.com/artists/issue024_aug07/tutorial02.pdf

It's from Thomas Mangold, who is on these forums I think.

I get how that works I think and will give it a go tomorrow, just to see.

That said, as you say, editing an image at 30,000 x 20,000 pixels is a no-go on 32-bit - I doubt that would be a breeze on 64-bit either - so what editing I need to do will be done at 15,000 x 10,000 then I'll upsize the finished comp.

Julian.

[ingo]

....That said, as you say, editing an image at 30,000 x 20,000 pixels is a no-go on 32-bit - I doubt that would be a breeze on 64-bit either - so what editing I need to do will be done at 15,000 x 10,000 then I'll upsize the finished comp.....

Not neccessarily, it depends on how many layers you have in that document - and because of PS's memory management how strong your nerves are 8~ .

I have done a huge photomontage a few years ago, each of the 200 photos was 7000 pixel in height. The montage was done in files with 30000 to 40000 pixel width.

http://im-graphics.com/pve-2006/p2006-hapano.html