Rendering for print questions

DrStrik9

DrStrik9

Scene Destroyer
Print is all about resolution. The higher the halftone screen ruling, the higher the render size needed to accommodate the final print size. These days with direct-to-plate imaging, 200 lines of half-tone dots per inch is typical on press.

On a Mac Pro with a single quad core Xeon and 10 GB of RAM, the largest I have ever been able to render in LW 9.6 is 6000 x 6000 (36 million pixels). At 400 ppi, that's a final print size of only 15" square.

So my question is twofold:

1. Would it help to add more ram, or is the 6000 x 6000 limit I'm experiencing simply a function of LW UB running in 32-bit?

2. To get larger renders at print rez, say for posters or packaging 24" x 36" (9700 x 14500) and up ... I tested the theory of just rendering multiple limited regions and comping it all in Photoshop later. Theoretically, this would take only 4 limited region renders at my 36-million pixel limit ... but this does not work: I get the dreaded ""Error: image Creation Failed" each time I attempt to render even a "tiny" sliver of a 9700 x 14500 image (tiny, like 1/20th of the image, or only about 7 million pixels). I also tried limiting the region to something clearly smaller than 6000 x 6000 pixels, thinking maybe the 6000 is a linear limit, rather than the total number of pixels being rendered. But alas, this fails with the same error message also. In fact, there isn't a small enough limited region for LW to render any part of a 9700 x 14500 image.

So how so you get there from here? Is there a plug-in or another method besides limited region for successfully rendering small parts of a print-size image? -- (On Flay I found "LW Stripe" which was originally designed for this purpose, but it's ancient, and available only for Win 95/98 and Alpha! :) ... I actually had an Alpha about 12 years ago! lol

Thanks for any guidance ... :)
 
accom said:
Link doesn't work.
Click to expand...

My apologies ... this one should work fine (I will test it this time). :)

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

Now that I've done this tut and wrestled with a few issues, I finally got it to work perfectly. It requires some trig, which is like asking me to speak in Russian, but with a good calculator and some basic knowledge of LW for some minor details not addressed in the tut, it ACTUALLY WORKS!!! Woo-HOO! :-D

There literally should never be ANY render-size limits with LW using this method. Gratz to NewTek for the Advanced Camera!

Cheers
 
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Ive been wrestling with that solution recently and indeedy it works a treat. Its a real ball ache though-just wish lightwave had some nifty plug-in to automatically set it up!

We live and dream
 
????

is this still available, having issues....do mostly high res print stuff and is a real bear resolution wise......any input welcome.
 
link still gives an 404 and the tutorial is not to find on 3dcreativemag.
could you maybe post this tutorial here (assuming that it was freely available)?
 
I found a site called CrowdSpring.com which is a collection of businesses willing to pay per project. One is a magazine cover requiring 300 dpi, CMYK colors, and is at least 8.5 by 11 inches.

Most of the art there is Photoshop and Illustrator, and I want to use Lightwave to totally blow them out of the water. Does anyone know a camera setting that will fulfill the requirements listed above?
 
I used my calculator and divided the required dimensions by 300 to get my width and height pixel resolution - it worked. The only difference is when loading into photoshop, you need to start a new letter formatted document, then open your image and drag it into the Photoshop document to maintain 300dpi
picture.php
 
spfldnet said:
I used my calculator and divided the required dimensions by 300 to get my width and height pixel resolution - it worked. The only difference is when loading into photoshop, you need to start a new letter formatted document, then open your image and drag it into the Photoshop document to maintain 300dpi
Click to expand...

I wrote a script to help with this:

DPI_Camera_v1.2.2.zip

DPI_Camera.png
 
How about using the Shift camera with these settings, for doubling width and height?
Double focal length
Render with
vert shift 0.5 and hor shift -0.5 for upper left rectangle
vert shift 0.5 and hor shift 0.5 for upper right rectangle
vert shift -0.5 and hor shift -0.5 for lower left rectangle
vert shift -0.5 and hor shift 0.5 for lower right rectangle
?
Setup an envelope and render as 4 frames.
Merge in PS.
 
I often render for print. I do a little math and just multiply my desired inches by 300. Then, in Photoshop, I change the dpi to 300 without resampling. Works a charm.

I've used the Advanced Camera trick to do renders in tiles, too. Just a couple months ago I finished a render of 14940 x 16920, or 83" x 94" @180dpi. It was 16 tiles.

In fact, after the render, I uprezzed it in PS to about 19k pixels high.

The 32-bit version limits me to renders under about 4500 x 3300 or so, and I've got 4 gigs of RAM. I also can't render much more than a million polys. My large render showed some faceting of my models. Grrr!
 
Hey-i hate setting up these soddn camera (the math hurts my head) How about we share out multi-camera setup's, i would luv to build up a bank of these so i can pick to suit. Im sure it will help out other users also!

Heres my 24mm, 4000x3000 (over 8 frames) set up
 

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  • MultiCamera_24mm_4000x3000_8segments.lws.zip
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Bloody great idea!

Here's my monster 4x4, with each segment set at 4,800 x 4,200.

I suppose you can easily change the size proportionally. And probably easily parent the camera and the target null to a master, for proper aiming, but I'm afraid to fiddle with it. All my subsequent attempts to make variations have failed.

My Math Fu is weak.
 

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  • 4x4_4800x4200.zip
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Sheesh-wot happened to this community...there used to be people full of beans bending over backwards to share techniques and discuss options. Too busy with core or waffling on about politics now.

Anyhow im putting together some multi-cameras based on 6000x4000 pixels. Ample for A3 300dpi prints. These are broken up into 8 segments based on 24mm, 35mm, 50mm, 100mm and 200mm lenses....thats alot of maths. I will post em up once they are done.
 
Here we go-a bunch of multicamera set ups for the community. Hope they are useful to somebody....

15mm
24mm
35mm
50mm
100mm
200mm

8 segments, 6000x4000 pixels, enjoy
 

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  • MultiCameras_6000x4000.zip
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Hey I haven't been here for ages been doing 2D stuff mostly.I just happen upon this thread I wish I found all this info last time I needed a print size render!
Great stuff Nangleator and Otterman:thumbsup:
 
zed1000 said:
Hey I haven't been here for ages been doing 2D stuff mostly.I just happen upon this thread I wish I found all this info last time I needed a print size render!
Great stuff Nangleator and Otterman:thumbsup:
Click to expand...

Hey goodstuff-glad i could contribute.

Ive just noticed one thing-i forgot to parent the 'lens_plane' to the 'Master_Camera' If you turn on parent in place and do this then when you move the camera around-everything will render as it should.
 
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