Render size

cthulu-san

I'm curious what size others target for their renders. Are you rendering screen dimensions? Focused on print? Do you make it larger than your target? Twice as large? The same size? Does it make it easier/harder for postwork? I typically render for the exact dimensions I'm shooting for. Typically 1920 x 1080 for a widescreen 16:9 render. But I'm curious if it makes more sense to render larger for more flexibility. I realize it depends on what you want to do with the image but I'm curious. What do others do?

alexhcowley

I like as much detail as possible so I render to 9600 x 6000. This also gives plenty of scope for post render touch-ups in Corel Photopaint. (I'm one of those strange, heretical types who doesn't worship at the shrine of Photoshop!)

Testing6790

I used to rock the paintshop pro too lol.

On topic, I generally make comics, so I render them on 1920x1080 and then do my photoshop layering and stuff. Once the product is finished and I like it, I go back and re render at much higher quality for the same reasons alexhcowley said.

I save each render as their own file for this.

I need a bigger hard drive.

cthulu-san

alexhcowley said:

I like as much detail as possible so I render to 9600 x 6000. This also gives plenty of scope for post render touch-ups in Corel Photopaint. (I'm one of those strange, heretical types who doesn't worship at the shrine of Photoshop!)

That's pretty high rez. I'll have to see what this does to my render times. Makes sense that it makes it easier to work the details in a higher rez image.

cthulu-san

Paradigm67 said:

I used to rock the paintshop pro too lol.

On topic, I generally make comics, so I render them on 1920x1080 and then do my photoshop layering and stuff. Once the product is finished and I like it, I go back and re render at much higher quality for the same reasons alexhcowley said.

I save each render as their own file for this.

I need a bigger hard drive.

These do fill up the hard drive mighty quick. Thanks for the response.

linvanchene

edited and removed by user

cthulu-san

Thanks for the detailed response linvanchene. I definitely seeing the benefits of higher renders. Now I need to see what my machine can handle.

Soto

I used to render at around 3000 pixels, now I go around 1500.
My 2D work is around 5000, but renders around 1500, more or less depending on what I'm doing. I like a medium size for postwork, for some details bigger is better, but medium is easier.

cthulu-san

Hellboy said:

I used to render at around 3000 pixels, now I go around 1500.
My 2D work is around 5000, but renders around 1500, more or less depending on what I'm doing. I like a medium size for postwork, for some details bigger is better, but medium is easier.

Thanks Hellboy. Just curious, why did you drop your renders from 3000px to 1500px?

Soto

I don't print much of my stuff, so for screen it's usually enough. :)

The Vertex Doctor

I do my renders at 1.5 times the length and width of their final size.

Graze

If I'm satisfied with how the test render looks without the need for any postwork, then I'll render at target size.

If I'm going to do postwork, then I'll render it at 3 or 4 times the target size.
This makes postwork faster for me.

If it was at target size, then I have to do my postwork slowly and carefully, or any flaws I create will be noticeable at the end.

But if I'm working at 4 times the target size, the edges I create don't have to be perfectly smooth and anti-aliased. The colors don't have to be perfectly blended. Because when I shrink it back down to target size, those minor flaws will be too small to be noticeable. Since I don't have to worry about them, it makes postwork faster for me.

CypherFOX

Greetings,
In an article-like-thing that Jack Tomalin posted on the PC forum, he specifically called out that he renders at 2 times the size that he intends the image to be.

I used to render at exactly the size I wanted, but I realized that as I post-worked it, I was 'losing' resolution in some areas because my tools would draw at the same resolution as the image, so if my tools were 'blocky', I ended up having to live with that. If I render at 2x the intended final resolution, then it's like I've got a 2x2 anti-aliasing pass going on before the final image.

So if I'm going for a 1920x1200 desktop background, I'll render at 3840x2400, but I have to do a lot of WIPs at lower resolutions to be sure I'm getting exactly what I want when I pull the trigger on the huge render.

And yes, it screws render times all to hell, but I typically run them either overnight on my powerful work computer, or for days at a time on my half-as-powerful Windows desktop (that I often go weeks between actually using). I do all my scene design and setup on an ancient two core MacBook Pro, but it's really not good at rendering.

I did have a scene, a WIP in fact, that took 144 hours to render at 2048x2340 on my 8-core work box. Unfortunately I wasn't completely happy with the result, but I'm not going to try and do it again, so I decided it was good enough to call done. I have no idea how folks render at 6000x3500, or whatever...those must be some awful powerful computers, or there's no transmaps, refraction, etc...

-- Morgan