Another Rendering Size question.

[hdjohnson]

I need to do a presentation rendering that will be 40" wide x 30" high. The image will be plotted with a HP 5500 color plotter or an HP 1050C. How would you set up the image size to give the best possible resolution.

Any help anyone can give me would be greatly appreaciated!

[SkiSouth]

Do you have photoshop available? If you render that image full size at say 600 DPI, you'll be talking gigabytes to store the image. Think I'd go for a maximum of 1/2 size 20x15 at 600, or maybe 10x 7.5 at 1200 DPI. Then use Pshop to up the image to the size you need. (or a specialty ripping software) The 1200 DPI would really slow my machine down though, so I stay away from the higher resolutions if the project is a complicated model (unless I have LOTS of time until the image is due).

[BillyGrey]

An E1 sized PR rendering is a pretty big file. Also, is it photo real, non-photo real? Will it be printed in-house by a specialist or at a print service provider? Is it going to be processed through a software or hardware RIP (raster image processor)?

If you can answer some of those questions, I can offer a little more accurate suggestions.

Bill

[hdjohnson]

An E1 sized PR rendering is a pretty big file. Also, is it photo real, non-photo real? Will it be printed in-house by a specialist or at a print service provider? Is it going to be processed through a software or hardware RIP (raster image processor)?

If you can answer some of those questions, I can offer a little more accurate suggestions.

Bill

Thank you both for your responses. Here is the answers to your questions:

1: It is a photo-real image.

2: We use a print service that plots our color renderings.

3: I'm not sure if I know how to answer this, but here it goes: I usally plot the rendering from Revit to a plt file. They then plot the plt file to the plotter.

I hope all that makes sense. Once again, thanks for your reply.

[SkiSouth]

Thank you both for your responses. Here is the answers to your questions:

3: I'm not sure if I know how to answer this, but here it goes: I usally plot the rendering from Revit to a plt file. They then plot the plt file to the plotter.
.

See if they can RIP a JPEG or TIFF file. I would think you would get a better image from an image file properly processed into their printer. (you would render the file, then export the image to a jpeg or tiff - by the way - DON'T capture this image. Your Revit file will get HUGH if you do )

[hdjohnson]

See if they can RIP a JPEG or TIFF file. I would think you would get a better image from an image file properly processed into their printer. (you would render the file, then export the image to a jpeg or tiff - by the way - DON'T capture this image. Your Revit file will get HUGH if you do )

I'll check into this. I never capture the renderings (found out the hard way), I always export the image.

[BillyGrey]

If it's a psp, I'll bet they'll RIP it for color correction/control, and speed. Also, a RIP is excellent when you have a small file (in pixels) and you need to blow it up in scale, without it turning into a dithered mess.

I would ask them straight up how they would like you to deliver the image to them, that is, what format would they like (like skisouth says, prob. tiff or jpg, possibly PDF), and, how big would they like to see the file delivered to them, in pixels. They will then process the image to suit their equipment.

On great pinters, dots per inch are not as critical as on home machines. I know some psp's that still only work in 300 DPI, and they do fine, still, you should address this with your psp, and counsel them you would like as high a resolution as is practical.

HTH

Bill

[LRaiz]

Why would not you try a straight forward approach? Set the size of your desired image to be as big you want it to print (30" by 40") but in order to limit the total number of resulting pixels choose a coarse rasterization (100 dpi). That will produce 30*40*100*100 = 12,000,000 pixels. You should not be concerned that 100 dpi seems to be low and modern printers have much higher resolution. Accurender will shoot a single ray of ray-tracing for every 1/100" by 1/100" square of the final picture. However during printing these ray-traced 'pixels' are going to be multiplied/replicated by a printer driver for every paper pixel on an actual device. I think that you are likely to be satisfied with the quality of the result. I think this is a better way to go rather then setting a smaller image size, trying to increase resolution and later stretching the image. This way you will probably find it easier to do the final paper printing and you are more likely to get the actual prints come up the right size.

Let us know how well does it work.