Creating High Res Images from Renderings?

[visualizer]

Can anyone tell me how to create better quality high res images from my renderings. When I do a rendering I export the completed image from Chief Architect as a tiff image and it always has a resolution of 72dpi, regardless if I did the rendering in standard or high quality. Is there a way I can get that increased to say 300dpi so that I have a higher res image? I'm creating an advertisement for a newsletter so I want the quality to be top notch.

Thanks for any advice!

Wade
Chief Architect X3

[SDS Chris]

Wade.

What you need to look into is raytracing. Chief has a Raytrace engine included in X3.

It is quite time consuming - but can produce great results.

[visualizer]

Thanks Chris, I am using raytracing. The results are good, but the final image still only comes out at 72 dpi.

[perryh]

I know for me the larger you can make the rendering window on the screen the better the quality, when I send to layout the rendering is usually much larger than a typ. 24 x 36 page, then I just reduce it to fit wherever I want. if you want better than rendering, use ray-trace for that. also your video card is in play here, change to a bigger resolution if you can.

[moak]

Right - what Perry said.
meaning if you want a 1" x 1" image at 300dpi you need to render a 4.167" x 4.167" image at 72dpi then resize. The resulting image after resize will be 300 dpi.

[visualizer]

Thanks Perry, I did notice on my last one that I got the dpi up to 96 by making the rendering window on screen larger.

Wade

[perryh]

Your welcome. I also remove the library and toolboxes to get a bigger window.

[moak]

You can also enter a width and height in the RT Options dialogue and make the image larger than your screen size.

[visualizer]

Thanks everyone for your help. I'm still fairly new to Chief. Are there any suggestions for speeding up the raytracing when I have to go this large with my image?

I'm using a Dell Precision M6500 Quad Core i7 Q820 @ 1.73Ghz 8GB Ram. Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit with a Nvidia Quadro FX 3800M graphics card.

[perryh]

Thanks everyone for your help. I'm still fairly new to Chief. Are there any suggestions for speeding up the raytracing when I have to go this large with my image?

I'm using a Dell Precision M6500 Quad Core i7 Q820 @ 1.73Ghz 8GB Ram. Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit with a Nvidia Quadro FX 3800M graphics card.

I think Chief is working on that, but try to elimate anything that is not in the picture

[moak]

To speed things up keep the number of lights to a minimum.

[SDS Chris]

There are a lot of ways to make the raytrace faster....but ultimately, to get a really good raytrace, it will take some time.

as far as the DPI....depending on what size image you want with it's done...

you set that in the raytrace options General tab>image size.

If you want an image that prints on 8 1/2x11 paper...say a 7"high by 10" wide image at 150DPI....the image size would be 1500wx1050h...in pixels.

The higher the pixel resolution - the longer the raytrace time.

[knight]

I know for me the larger you can make the rendering window on the screen the better the quality, when I send to layout the rendering is usually much larger than a typ. 24 x 36 page, then I just reduce it to fit wherever I want. if you want better than rendering, use ray-trace for that. also your video card is in play here, change to a bigger resolution if you can.

I know that this is an old thread but it has answered most of the questions that I've had regarding high resolution images but what is the highest quality that you can get using this method?

[SDS Chris]

I have created renderings in the past for smaller billboards at a property that was being constructed for lease....probably about 72"x48".

I don't remember the DPI I set it for....it wasn't an image that people would stand in front of to view - mostly only passing by in their vehicles, so - it may have only been 150DPI..still very large.

I set the raytrace at the end of the business day, and it finished sometime around noon the next day.

This was back when using PovRay in X1.

Now, the largest I do typically is an 11x17 image at 300DPI - 3300x5100 and that takes a good 6+ hours.

[Dermot Dempsey]

There is no limit to how big of an image you can create using the ray trace engine that is built into Chief, other then running out of memory or patience waiting for it to finish. Assuming that you are using the 64 bit version of X4, you will have access to much more system memory then you will have in the 32 bit version (and all older versions of Chief).

Standard and other rendered views are always limited by screen size and there is no way currently to get an image that is larger then your current window size.