TheKitchenAbode

Absolutely, it's done all the time for large posters, banners, billboards and more, no camera can shoot a pic at those physical sizes in high DPI such as 600. Some of that lose in clarity can be recovered/simulated through creative sharpening and other Photoshop techniques.

Nice demonstration. He should have mentioned near the end when he used Photoshop to increase the number of pixels that the added pixels are extrapolated and as such the pic will loose some of it's crispness, overdone and the pic will look overly soft especially when viewed up close. This may not be a problem for something like a trade show backdrop or banner as the viewer may be 8 or 10 feet away.

I believe Ray Tracing is the only way in versions prior to X10.

Just to clarify, whatever causes these bands the level of ambient occlusion effects the degree of prominence they have in the scene.

It appears that the banding seen in exported high resolution pics is related to Ambient Occlusion. These pics were exported at 4 times their display window size. Ambient Occlusion 0% Ambient Occlusion 50% Ambient Occlusion 100%

You are more than welcome Chopsaw. I rarely use the inches and DPI and when doing so I always have to think it through. DPI and inches are more relevant when sizing for the purpose of physical printing and they want you to define the physical print size with a resolution that matches their printers. I just tried a JPEG export that exceeded the 200mb warning. Seemed to be ok but still has those bands.

Here is the same view exported at the current window size. No banding.

I just tested this out and it seems to have no effect. I get bands showing up. Here is an example, just a plain room, standard camera view, exported at 8000 px width. You can see vertical bands on the walls and the one across the ceiling. There are no doors or windows in this room. It occurs in both JPEG and PNG image exports.

Just a guess but maybe due to the pic size, that's a lot of pixels, you might be exceeding your video cards memory. If so it should resort to shared memory but maybe in doing this something gets screwed up. You could test this by reducing the DPI and seeing if it goes away at some point and if so calculating the total pix to see if that is within your video cards memory limit.

I believe you will find that defining the DPI will have the effect you are expecting if you set the width & height of the pic in inches. If the width and height is in pix then the total number of pixels is not affected, just the physical print size.

I've tested this on JPEG and PNG without any issues. Many Thanks to Tech Support.

Thanks Dermot. I will wait until the new update has been released.

That will work well but we have been having problems with that in the most recent version of X10 where it will only export a proper image if the size is the same as the active window size. Should be fine in older versions.

Absolutely, I'm playing with that right now to see if I can find a balance so I don't have to keep changing materials and lighting when I wish to switch between rendering methods.

I find PDF to be a great way as it is so common that just about everyone knows how to use it. PDF also has the advantage that you can password protect it and if needed it can be electronically signed. I use the free version of PDF-Viewer as it has some great mark-up tools and then I use the free version of Adobe Acrobat Reader DC for signing purposes. Something else I like about PDF's are that they are very secure so I don't really need to be concerned about imbedded viruses or malware. They can also be opened up on any device, even in a web browser.

The simplest way I have found is to have them just mark-up a PDF version of the plan. Everyone has a PDF viewer and most users know how to highlight and add comments. This also provides a solid record of change requests. I have tried other methods such as One Note but found it was to much maintenance work and not everyone has it or is familiar with how to use it.

Just a guess but it is likely that the resolution DPI of the layout page is lower than that of your pic. The advantage of using PDF is that you can set the resolution of the PDF file to match that of your pic. High resolution PDF's are a very common method used to transfer graphics to the printer production people.

If you are using an existing pic then you will need to load it into a program such as Photoshop and use the adjust image size. To achieve what you want your existing pic will need to be 18,000 px in width. 30" X 600 DPI = 18,000 px. For example the pic you posted is 1527 px in width, at 600 DPI it's physical print width would be 2 1/2".

I tested it with 15.65.5.4982. Never experienced the multi-coloured fireflies. Got SEH crashes and unresponsive cameras, seemed to happen when switching an active camera between view types and when cutting through walls when moving the camera around. On my system 21.20.16.4542 seems to be stable.

Looks great Chris. I don't believe you would be able to get close to that quality with the current state of PBR. Yes, a Ray Trace takes a bit longer, but there are times when the result is well worth the wait.

Here is a direct comparison between the PBR and Ray Trace, both at the same resolution. There are some very noticeable differences throughout the scene. The scenes are only lit by the sun. PBR Ray Trace

That's because the material properties where set for PBR. To get a bit of sheen I had to crank up the reflectivity (reduce roughness). Now when I Ray Trace the sheen is too glossy, will need to reduce it. That's a big issue as material properties are not seen the same way between PBR and Ray Tracing.

Here is the Ray Trace version after 24 passes, 6 minutes.

Yes, they are all Chief plants. I'm just running a comparison Ray Trace now, will post in a few minutes - I can already tell that they are much more realistic that the PBR shadows.

This is an exterior PBR. You can see the plant shadows in this one. They are not very real looking. I've softened them with some exterior lights. Second pic is with the exterior lights off and only the sun.