Is There A Way To Render One Scene in Parts?

[Laconic]

Hi!

 

In the ideal, I'd like to render a scene at 13200 x 10200 pixels, by my calculations, but A:M crashes when I set a render at that resolution.

 

Is there a way to only render a portion of a size like this, and then piece the parts together in a program like Photoshop, later?

 

I feel that if I try to move the camera and render only parts of a scene, the perspective would change for each section.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Tim

[rusty]

Hi!

 

In the ideal, I'd like to render a scene at 13200 x 10200 pixels, by my calculations, but A:M crashes when I set a render at that resolution.

 

Is there a way to only render a portion of a size like this, and then piece the parts together in a program like Photoshop, later?

 

I feel that if I try to move the camera and render only parts of a scene, the perspective would change for each section.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Tim

 

Tim,

 

I do this more often then not. My scenes tend to be complex. How you break it up depends on the scene. The most common way is to render background, mid-ground, foreground with the characters being in the mid-ground. I'll usually put the scene together in one project file then determine how many parts I'm going to have then save that project file to several files then start removing things. You must be careful of shadows crossing over more then one part. Actually you must be careful of many things. This of course uses alpha channels.

 

A whole different way, which I've never tried is to take a black box with 1/4th of it cutaway and render the upper left, upper right and so on.

 

Cheers,

Rusty

[heyvern]

Yikes! That's nearly a 400mb image. Just out of curiosity what would you need a file so huge for? Large out put printers wouldn't be able to handle a file that big I wouldn't think. At 300 lpi printing (4 color offset) that would be more than 30" x 40". Just curious. I could only image this would be for some sort of super high resolution specialty printing.

 

-vern

[Laconic]

Yikes! That's nearly a 400mb image. Just out of curiosity what would you need a file so huge for? Large out put printers wouldn't be able to handle a file that big I wouldn't think. At 300 lpi printing (4 color offset) that would be more than 30" x 40". Just curious. I could only image this would be for some sort of super high resolution specialty printing.

 

-vern

 

Hi!

 

That's exactly what it is. I went to a digital printing outfit and asked the manager what I could do to print out large images. We are talking 44 x 34 inches, here. He said I'd have to make a file that big and that the printing shop can handle a file that size.

 

I'm interested in making fine art prints at a large scale such as that, so I'd like to find out my options for getting something that size that doesn't look *too* bad close up.

[Laconic]

Hi!

 

In the ideal, I'd like to render a scene at 13200 x 10200 pixels, by my calculations, but A:M crashes when I set a render at that resolution.

 

Is there a way to only render a portion of a size like this, and then piece the parts together in a program like Photoshop, later?

 

I feel that if I try to move the camera and render only parts of a scene, the perspective would change for each section.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Tim

 

Tim,

 

I do this more often then not. My scenes tend to be complex. How you break it up depends on the scene. The most common way is to render background, mid-ground, foreground with the characters being in the mid-ground. I'll usually put the scene together in one project file then determine how many parts I'm going to have then save that project file to several files then start removing things. You must be careful of shadows crossing over more then one part. Actually you must be careful of many things. This of course uses alpha channels.

 

A whole different way, which I've never tried is to take a black box with 1/4th of it cutaway and render the upper left, upper right and so on.

 

Cheers,

Rusty

 

Ah, I see your ideas. You seem to imply that if there are either fewer parts to a render (it's split into background/midground/foreground) or entire blocks of the render are blacked out (perhaps with a black grid with sections cut out) then I can make the rendering easier on the processor/program and get what I'd need? Does the pixel count have anything do to with it?

 

Tim

[robcat2075]

There used to be a utility called "eggslice" for just this thing.

 

If you pivot the camera only on its axis there won't be a perspective change, but objects near the edge of the frame do get a bit stretched more than ones near the center. I bet a program that is typically used to stitch together panoramas could handle that.

[HomeSlice]

I' m guessing here, but I think Am is crashing on you because it doesn't have enough RAM available for such a huge file. I don't know how much RAM would be required to render a complex scene that large, but it must be in the 10's of gigabytes. In the future, you may have better luck if you upgrade to a 64bit OS and a motherboard capable of handling massive amounts of RAM. Like I said though, I'm just guessing.

 

In the meantime, the suggestions above sound like great solutions to try. I never thought about trying the "black box with 1/4th of it cutaway" trick. I would just either rotate the camera or change it to "orthoganal" and move the camera in regular steps, then assemble the pieces in Photoshop.

[mtpeak2]

This sounds like an interesting idea.

 

You could create a black image with a 1/4 square with an alpha channel (upper left). Use this image as a rotoscope for the camera. Then just scale the image to move the alpha area to a different corner of the camera. Might just work.

[largento]

I wonder if it would be possible to use 4 cameras, positioned to capture the 4 quadrants?

[HomeSlice]

I wonder if it would be possible to use 4 cameras, positioned to capture the 4 quadrants?

You would probably have slight variances in each image due to the differences in camera positions. But Photoshop's pano tools often do a pretty good job of merging photos taken from slightly different perspectives.

[Gerry]

Does this printer you're talking to specialize in fine art giclee prints? Depending on the kind of paper you're printing on you could easily get away with a lower resolution, as paper with a less glossy or plate finish will compensate very well for a lower resolution. And it's also good to keep in mind that the threshold for visible dots or pixels is 144 dpi. Anything above that will do for art prints. High res is nice but not always necessary or desirable. I've seen fine art prints done on a rough water color paper that were printed from a 72 dpi image and they looked spectacular.