Outrageous Print Size Tip

[etobiason]

A problem with 3D for print is the outrageous sizes at which we're asked to produce some images. Comparing 3D to photography I wondered how you enlarge photographs to these same outrageous sizes.

Professional photographers will shoot on film that is either 4"x 5" or 8" x 10" (forget 35mm, it's too small!). To match this film resolution you should set your render for 1000 pixels per inch, in other words, 4000x5000 pixels or 8000x10,000, if you can achieve it. Segmented rendering should allow you to reach that 10,000 pixel height, if you can handle the 8,000 pixel width. For landscape oriented images, try adding a null to the scene called MasterRotater or something and rotating everything (camera, lights... everything) 90° to change your orientation to portrait before you render.

Now that you have this big render, here's the trick: you have your render transferred to transparency film. There are services out there to do this for you. Now you have a transparency that should be just as good as any photographer's.

Your client wants something to fill a whole wall, you say? Next step: scan the transparency, blowing the image up to the size you need it. Instead of getting computery artifacts from enlarging your original render, you will get film grain sneaking into your image--again, the same as if a photographer shot the piece and you enlarged it.

I plan on testing this out soon, but in theory it should work!

 

[DMarkwick]

It should work, as long as the pixel size on the transparency is smaller than the granularity of the film.

 

[etobiason]

I think so too. The standard is 1000 dpi to hide pixelation beneath the film. But I have yet to test it myself...

 

[riki]

Get ready for a world of pain with colour correction, dust and blurry images.

I'd personally prefer to go with a segmented render at Respower.

 

[etobiason]

Hey Riki, but my point is a separate issue than the one you mention... I'm talking about after the Respower render. Let me explain:

Color correction is an issue no matter what process you use.

Dust and blurriness should not come into play at all if you use a professional to drum scan your transparency. Again, this is how regular photography is implemented.

Respower is one way of segment rendering your image to a large size. 8000 x 10,000 is a large size... but what if you have a job where the image should be twice that size? Like a store window graphic, for example? Billboards are big, but not viewed up close so the resolution is relatively low for the size, but a window is large and viewed up close. Even though Respower has a lot of machines, if any one can't load the segment memory and buffers, then the image won't render no matter how many machines you have lined up to chunk through it.

This is just a method to take a big render, rendered at Respower or wherever, and make it even bigger while keeping the best quality. An alternative to other res-up options.

How's LW business in Sydney, by the way? It's beautiful down there, wish I could immigrate! Was visiting a friend there over the new year, btw, and had a GREAT time.

 

[riki]

Sydney's great, not much work for Lightwave though, mostly Maya based in the studios.

I know what you mean, Photographers work with this kind of process all the time, I just find it frustrating and time consuming. Outputting to film, processing, developing prints and then going back to the computer to make colour adjustments and starting over.

If I had my own setup it'd be fine. The last Pro Lab I used, use to charge an extra $15.00 (per image) just to dust your trannies before doing a Flexitite scan.

Anyway I understand what you mean. Just had bad experiences myself in the past.

 

[etobiason]

I understand what you mean. Just had bad experiences myself in the past.

Wow! I mean, sorry you've had bad experiences, but you've done it before, that's impressive to me. I have never done it, I just theorized it should work, so it's cool to me that you've actually done the process, even if it is a hassle. In fact, I can readily see why it's a hassle. It's not artistic, just a series of technical steps to take... for me, it would probably be less of a hassle, because I work at a photography/retouching studio, so I would just hand the render over to the color correction guy and have him take care of the transfer, rescan and color correction....

My buddy stays in St. Leonards, and there was a Lightwave studio not far from his house, actually, in Crow's Nest. I found it online a while back, but can't find it again right now... or I'd post a link.

Thanks for the info on this process!

-e

 

[riki]

I've got a client with a CG studio in Crowsnest, called Flix Animation, but all Maya based, and I think they also do a lot of hand-drawn traditional cel animation. It's a nice part of the world. I'm based in Kings Cross, the sleazy end of town, but lovin it

 

[etobiason]

Flix was the one I found. I suppose I misspoke when I said Lightwave studio... I don't know how I got that impression. Still... maybe someday I'll convince them they can animate in Maya but model (and possibly render) in Lightwave like some other shops do... (I hear Digital Domain works that way...)

I remember King's Cross. I was down there for a bit! Got off at that station, went to the market not far from there, was it Paddington Market?... and there's a Jewish museum and the Anzac Memorial is also not far... saw those too.

 

[riki]

Yeah no, Flix is (actually was) all maya based. I think they've been around for about 30 odd years or so, something like that. They do all the Warner Bros stuff in the Asain pacific region, mainly for advertising. Bad sadly enough they're winding down business at the moment getting ready to close shop.

One of their 3d animators has started his own business http://www.soma-cg.com/
Just a showreel at the moment but looks good.

 

[cgbloke2004]

yeah, i worked at another studio that when redering for print, they rendered as large as they could, then had it transferred to transparency for posters etc.
the only drawback, here anyway, was that it was extremely expensive.

 

[RonB]

I know this is an old thread but maybe some of you guys are looking now and then.

My solution instead of the transparency route, which I have done and is an EXTREME hassle, is to use a Photoshop plugin. It's from Lizardtech called, Genuine Fractels Print Pro. It likes a 15 meg file to start but as close as you can get to that is good. Render to as large a file size as you can and run it thru GF Print Pro, it saves it in it's own file format using a lossless fractel compression. A 15 meg file will compress to 2 or 3 megs. Then when you reopen it under Print Pro you can res it up as large as you want without any artifacts. Works perfectly, I use it all the time for magazine work and even posters for clients. Much, much better than the trans route, faster and easier and you pay for the software only once....another thing is it's great for sending files to ftp sites. Many printers use it as a standard part of there graphics operation.

 

[al3d]

A problem with 3D for print is the outrageous sizes at which we're asked to produce some images. Comparing 3D to photography I wondered how you enlarge photographs to these same outrageous sizes.

Professional photographers will shoot on film that is either 4"x 5" or 8" x 10" (forget 35mm, it's too small!). To match this film resolution you should set your render for 1000 pixels per inch, in other words, 4000x5000 pixels or 8000x10,000, if you can achieve it. Segmented rendering should allow you to reach that 10,000 pixel height, if you can handle the 8,000 pixel width. For landscape oriented images, try adding a null to the scene called MasterRotater or something and rotating everything (camera, lights... everything) 90° to change your orientation to portrait before you render.

Now that you have this big render, here's the trick: you have your render transferred to transparency film. There are services out there to do this for you. Now you have a transparency that should be just as good as any photographer's.

Your client wants something to fill a whole wall, you say? Next step: scan the transparency, blowing the image up to the size you need it. Instead of getting computery artifacts from enlarging your original render, you will get film grain sneaking into your image--again, the same as if a photographer shot the piece and you enlarged it.

I plan on testing this out soon, but in theory it should work!

i know this is an old thread....but i can't help to write some comments on it.. i've been a graphic designer for 18 years and i've been using 3D for it since LW5.0.

taking the way of doing a chrome transparency to get your image size is REALY going backward man. by doing a 4x5 or even a 8x10 chrome..you are loosing a generation in quality. if you do normal print size renders...meaning print work for Binders or brochure that range in the 9x12 or 8.5x11 size, it actually does'nt require such a big render actually. 9x12 in. at 300dpi is only 2592x3450. so that's no big deal.

IF you are going to large print format, wish are mostlickly printed on large size printer and not offset press...then the DPI needed is actually VERY low. format printed over let's say, 4 x 6 feets....usualy use a 72dpi and less resolution. last year we did a mural, 24 feet x 12 feet, and the DPI was only 30 actually....there is absolutely no need for higher then this., so an render of 12 000 pixel will be WAY enough for that kinda of size realy, and most of the time anyway you can render your scene in seperate files and composite it all in Photoshop...just like you would do for a 2D scene.

Hope this help in any way..

 

[etobiason]

You're making some assumptions that don't apply... sure, sometimes the final print size isn't so big, that's not what I was talking about, and sometimes the final print size is huge in inches but small in pixels because they only need 72 dpi or so, and that's not what I was talking about either. I believe the project I was working on was a window mural for Disney where they wanted 300 dpi at several feet across and high.

 

[al3d]

You're making some assumptions that don't apply... sure, sometimes the final print size isn't so big, that's not what I was talking about, and sometimes the final print size is huge in inches but small in pixels because they only need 72 dpi or so, and that's not what I was talking about either. I believe the project I was working on was a window mural for Disney where they wanted 300 dpi at several feet across and high.

Oh.,..me bad then.....but i can't imagine why anyone on earth would want such large prints at 300dpi...but..hey..client is always right....DOH..

 

[Dave Jerrard]

taking the way of doing a chrome transparency to get your image size is REALY going backward man. by doing a 4x5 or even a 8x10 chrome..you are loosing a generation in quality. if you do normal print size renders...meaning print work for Binders or brochure that range in the 9x12 or 8.5x11 size, it actually does'nt require such a big render actually. 9x12 in. at 300dpi is only 2592x3450. so that's no big deal.

Right. it's all about the output resolution. If you know how sharp it has to be (PPI) and how large it has to be (width & height in inches, meters, whatever), then you can figure out how many pixels you need to render.

IF you are going to large print format, wish are mostlickly printed on large size printer and not offset press...then the DPI needed is actually VERY low. format printed over let's say, 4 x 6 feets....usualy use a 72dpi and less resolution. last year we did a mural, 24 feet x 12 feet, and the DPI was only 30 actually....there is absolutely no need for higher then this., so an render of 12 000 pixel will be WAY enough for that kinda of size realy, and most of the time anyway you can render your scene in seperate files and composite it all in Photoshop...just like you would do for a 2D scene.

Yes! Finally, someone else that knows this!

Now for the original post...

Professional photographers will shoot on film that is either 4"x 5" or 8" x 10" (forget 35mm, it's too small!).

No. DON'T forget about it. The bulk of photography in advertising is 35mm based. portrait studios use a mix of formats, including 35mm, but for the stuff that has to be the highest quality, then the larger formats are used.

To match this film resolution you should set your render for 1000 pixels per inch, in other words, 4000x5000 pixels or 8000x10,000, if you can achieve it.

1000 PPI for a 4x5 print? Very few, if any, printers could do that justice. If this is halftoned, ****, what a waste. I've never even heard of a 500LPI halftone. Transfering this to a chrome will lose resolution since there's always inherent blurring involved in an optical process, and then again during scanning (you already had the image in a digital format).

The important thing is knowing what the output size is going to be and how it will be viewed. Generally, the larger the output, the less resolution you need because the viewing distance increases. For posters & anything larger, I can't see any reason to go with anything higher than 300PPI, and even that's high. A poster can look great even if it's 50PPI.

He Who Has Had To Train Printers How To Use Their Own Equipment.

 

[ingo]

...

IF you are going to large print format, wish are mostlickly printed on large size printer and not offset press...then the DPI needed is actually VERY low. format printed over let's say, 4 x 6 feets....usualy use a 72dpi and less resolution. last year we did a mural, 24 feet x 12 feet, and the DPI was only 30 actually....there is absolutely no need for higher then this., so an render of 12 000 pixel will be WAY enough for that kinda of size realy, and most of the time anyway you can render your scene in seperate files and composite it all in Photoshop...just like you would do for a 2D scene.

Yes! Finally, someone else that knows this!
...

Well that was a few years ago, but nowadays people like to see detail in large print resolution renderings. And if you have seen any of those large format prints with 150 dpi you wont go back.


he who has a hard time rendering high resolutions in Lightwave

 

[Hervé]

don't worry, Maxwell will print at any size the developpers said on the MaxW. forum...

BTW, you're right... todays large printers are very hungry for pixels...

How are you Ingo..

Hervé

 

[etobiason]

No. DON'T forget about it. The bulk of photography in advertising is 35mm based.

I work at a photography studio and we never use 35mm.

1000 PPI for a 4x5 print? Very few, if any, printers could do that justice.

1000 dpi for a 4x5 transparency, not a print... that is, transferring the image straight to film, not printing it. Basically, treating the 3D art as if it were photographed with a high-end camera.

 

[mike_stening]

i do alot of my work for print and basically my rule of thumb is to use the pixel dimensions for the job, eg if it is A4 the dimensions will be 3508x2480 (this is at 300dpi), you can check all these sizes by creating a new job in photoshop at 300 dpi to the size you require and then check the pixel dimension. anything larger than A2 tends to be at a percentage size and so work to that, 96sheet is generally at 10% which would give you a res of approx 30dpi at full size.
just my 2p