Exported Screen Views And Image Quality

[VHampton]

I've always wondered about the very slight pixel-ation of the screen captures when you export a view as an image. (Yes there is a setting to fine tune your exported images, but the slight blurriness often occurs no matter how many pixles per inch you crank it up to).

 

Ray-tracing seems to take quite a long time, and I prefer to generate a series of shadowed views instead of only two or three Ray-traces

 

Here is my question(s)...

 

Would a very high quality monitor provide a better view from Microsfot Snip-it for example?

 

Or is the best way to achieve super crisp rendering by doing the painfully time consuming Ray Traces?

 

 

[TheKitchenAbode]

For a screen shot the pic only has whatever pixels are being used on the screen for the pic. Probably equal to taking a pic with a 1 or 2 megapixel camera, it's just not going to be very sharp. The fine tuning when exporting does not change the total number of pixels, it controls the physical print size.

 

Foer screen captures a higher resolution monitor would help as there would be more pixels on the screen. Best is to run a raytrace and set the pixel size there, it now uses that number of pixels for the pic.

 

Graham

[johnny]

This is an interesting topic. Honestly, for me i've been just doing a quick export/import into Lumion 3D - as that app has a very quick photo process which also allows me to use camera focal lengths. If I am just doing an export/import it takes me about 10 min or so and then pictures are a snap - and every revision thereafter I dont even have to setup the Lumion file again, I can just update the model. Below are quick picture examples from Lumion 3D (this scene was slightly more difficult, but it really only took me 30 min or less and I could do movies from this file now).

 

Most all the home textures are the same from Chief (except glass - but that is like 2-3 clicks to change).

[jcaffee]

OP, why are you using screen shots instead of Exporting the image as either *.tif or *.bmp; both lossless formats?

 

jon

[VHampton]

OP, why are you using screen shots instead of Exporting the image as either *.tif or *.bmp; both lossless formats?

 

jon

 

 

Good question Jon. I only export views from Chief as the highest quality jpeg. Both tiff and png formats are known to provide lower resolution.

 

Regarding my alternate method to Chiefs export tool....If I need a screen capture to better control the viewport, then I use "Snip-it".   and this is where my original question comes in.

 

Would a very high quality monitor combined with the Snip-it method provide a better quality capture? At he moment I'm using an old flat screen TV with an HDMI input as my jumbo-tron monitor. Lol  It's awesome to work on, but there's some grainy-ness to the screen.

 

 

On that note, Johnny's work clearly displays some awesome clarity without having to go through the Ray-Trace process. Excellent work. Lumion.

 

 

 

Foer screen captures a higher resolution monitor would help as there would be more pixels on the screen. Best is to run a raytrace and set the pixel size there, it now uses that number of pixels for the pic.

 

Graham

 

Thanks for the tip on the monitor. Ratracing is awesome but the patience to make one is incredible.

[johnny]

OP, why are you using screen shots instead of Exporting the image as either *.tif or *.bmp; both lossless formats?

 

jon

 

It may be worthwhile to hear from Chief on this subject - since if they are setting the visual display of their "standard final view" based upon the screen pixel setting, then exporting to a higher size simply stretches the pixels - it doesn't actually add resolution.

 

When I test this myself I get marginal differences between export vs screen capture.  Perhaps there is some key element to this I am missing as well.

[TheKitchenAbode]

From a pixel perspective I do not believe there will be any difference whether one uses the screen shot or export method. The image is mapped into the video card memory which is set to the screens resolution. Both methods obtain the image from the video cards mapped memory. If there is a difference it would only be related to how the software takes these pixels and converts them to either jpg, tiff or bmp formats. Some do a better job than others at this but the number of pixels they have to work with are the same. If the software allows you to increase the number of pixels during the conversion process then it uses an interpolation method, it just makes up pixels to fill in the gaps. Some software can do a pretty good job at this, just depends upon the algorithm.

 

Graham

[TheKitchenAbode]

Just an added note. Your Raytraces do not need to run a ridiculous amount of time to generate an image far superior to a screen shot or exported camera view. The attached Raytrace took only 18 seconds for 10 passes. Probably no more time than it would take to set-up a screen shot. The pic is 1200 x 600 pixels.

[VHampton]

Thank you.  It never occurred to me that you could run A Ray Trace it in less than a dozen passes.

 

After reading your post, I let it run a dozen passes, and hit the export image tab. Presto. Ray Trace in under a minute.

 

 Prior to your message, I watched it run pass after pass for over 30 minutes with no end in sight, and finally shut it down. Quite frankly the jiffy method looks not too different than the one that that was taking an eternity.

 

Thanks again. And thanks for the very articulate response regarding the screen captures and resolution. It makes a lot of sense now.

[TheKitchenAbode]

Val - Glad this was of help to you. Yes while Raytracing you can just save a JPG at any time, no need to stop the Raytrace. You can of course set the number of passes to maximum 10 for these in the Raytrace DBX, when complete then save image. I do this a lot, if I have 5 different views you just line them all up and they will run automatically one after the other.

 

Graham