Surrender

By deep end I mean the three chars. I never even tried to render more than one figure until I got my new puter, cuz I think this one would have laughed at me and then died. I'm rendering some backgrounds the last couple days, that don't even have people in them, and to render it 2500x1875px @ 300dpi, it's taking around a couple hours or so. I do know what you mean about the render getting stuck tho. Mine does that quite often, where the bar looks like it should be almost done, yet the render window is only showing a very small portion. So if you cancel right then, you still only see that small portion no matter whether it had "rendered" most of the rest or not. I think this is new with P7, so maybe something to do with the multiple rendering threads. When it happens, I usually just curse, a lot, cancel and restart my puter and try to figure out what I can render seperately from the rest of the scene, or else I go smaller and just deal with it.

I can render at normal size at 10dpi--the scene comes out at like 90 inches big but the dpi sucks. If I scale it to 300 dpi, I can unsharp mask a few times and it SEEMS to be okay, but I would always rather scale down in dpi than scale up, if you catch my meaning. But at 10 dpi, at least I can watch the entire scene render instead of wondering. =/

Do a test with auto settings first, then do your final render at 175dpi 1600x1200 reso.

I always do a render at the basic settings to make sure I like everything, then I go for a test render at better settings to make sure. After that is when I increase the size and pray it finishes. LOL. I'll try the 175 dpi 1600 setting, though.

Can always use Daz if you want faster render times.

And yea with 3 v4's in the scene, my computer would die. And I have all the good stuffs... + 4 gigs of ram. Mine would keel over with 4 v4's in it.

I did a scene with 5 v4's in it once, and my computer didn't even blink. Now, though, it's beginning to "quit unexpectedly" since I tried changing the lighting on this scene. Also probably will just have to render small dpi and let it enlarge (which I hate doing). But I'm a guy who likes complicated scenes. You should see one piece I did on DA--3 V4's plus each was wearing Spartana Armor. Rendered like a dream. I did like the original lighting, though--it was a tad dark, but it seemed to work well. Maybe I'll just keep it.

Beautiful. I'm sending that to Curious Labs for their new banner. :D

I agree on the rendering aspect; if I have it on my final render, I might as well go away and come back a day later. 'course my computer's, well, CRAPPY... so maybe that's why. But if I have more than one figure, AND a background... ferget it. :rolleyes:

Awesome advice here, I'm soakin' it all in, hopefully it'll help MY renders too!

Yeah, I'm trying to remember even HALF of what people are telling me. Only problem is, I forget half of that by the time I leave the room. :) I was trying to render last night, and Poser kept quitting on me. So, I'm trying a different approach that hasn't worked so far, and I can't quite figure out why--I'm increasing the DPI. I'll keep everyone informed on the matter.

Increasing the DPI to what? Why don't you just render in layers?

Render in layers? You know, I've always heard there are various ways to render, but darn it if I can figure out any other way than the basic! I just upped the DPI to 7000 (going to try higher) and while the picture came out small in PNG, when I resized it at 300 DPI, I did not lose integrity. If you have other ways of rendering, please tell me. The help file for Poser isn't very helpful when it comes to stuff like that.

do a search for multi-pass rendering.

and really. 7k dpi is kind of .. excessive. >.>

May be excessive, but as I said, I'd rather size down than size up. At least at 7000, I don't have to change the image size, and I can watch it all render on screen--and it only takes 30 minutes or so instead of 9 hours.

how much bigger than your end result are you rendering? the more you scale, up or down, the more pixelization and other flaws youll end up with.

You're wasting your time. 300 dpi at a large resolution is more than adequate. If you want less rendering time, upping your dpi is...well stupid. You ask for advice but you keep doing what you're doing - /shrug.

Well, if I render normal, I end up with a very small picture to begin with, which I hate because I want my stuff to be at least normal page size when I finish (or so I can make a 1680x1050 desktop, whichever I decide upon). I also like to be able to print my stuff on a normal sheet of paper and not have it be small. So, I need the picture to be big so I can make it whatever size I need later on.

And I'm just playing with ideas, Roz. No harm in that. Gotta experiment in life. As I have no true idea of what a perfect rendering anything should be, other than what you all have graciously advised me, which occasionally crashes my system when I try to do the type of pictures I want to do, I have to find other runarounds. *shrug*

If you are doing this:



There is NO reason your image should be coming out pixel-y ... None at all.

I have to chime in on the DPI issue. 7000 dpi is rediculous. If you start with a good sized image rendered at 300 DPI you should have zero issues with anything being pixeled or small.

Also, you have to understand DPI or resolution. Screen resolution is completely differnt than print resolution. The max for your screen is 72dpi the max for printing is 300 dpi. You will notice that viewing a 300 dpi JPG on your screen should be HUGE. This is because your monitor can not display more than 72 dpi, but when you print the image it should be the exact diminsions you set.

Anything over 300 dpi scaned or rendered at this stage is a waste of time.

Are you confusing the dimension size with the DPI? At 7k, that kind of resolution, however still friggin huge, would make more sense than 7k dpi. At that range there'd be no way you could render if you have problem with 2+ people taking longer than a couple hours.

Sab's image above is for the size of the portrait - when we say DPI it's the RESOLUTION tab at the bottom of that window.

As I said, I'm just trying to make it so that if I pull an image up in Photoshop, it won't be so small that I can't do anything with it. I know 300 dpi is perfect for printing, yet most pictures open at 72 dpi, meaning if I change them to 300 dpi, they lose integrity. That's why I try to keep the dpi large or the actual picture size large--so that when I scale down, I don't lose the integrity. Some of my stuff I actually like enough that I want to print it should, God forbid, something happens to my computer.

I might still be missing an important step in rendering, though. I did try one piece at the dimension Roz suggested, and when I scaled it, things went bad. I was able to render it in under two hours, but it just wasn't good enough for Photoshop to handle when I resized for print. I've played around in Photoshop since version 4, and I know that 300 dpi is great for printing, but I have yet to figure out how to go from 72 dpi to 300 dpi without losing integrity, unless you start the 72 dpi image out HUGE and scale it down while scaling the dpi up to 300.

That is the key. A larger image at a lower resolution is still a high res image. You can then reduce it to a more managable size at a higher resolution. You do not lose integrity of the image. Unfortunately it is impossible to take a small image at a low resolution and make it anything more than it is. Granted I know absolutely nothing about poser, I have no desire to learn. I do however know very much about Photoshop. My advice to you is give your poor processor a break and make a larger image at a lower resolution and resize from there.


You'll find that most digital camara's employee this method. If you set them to a higher resolution it just takes a much larger photograph at the same DPI.

The poser folks here are giving you good advice.