first paid job and a question...

[philippelamoureux]

Hey guys!

 

Today I got my first paid job. I have a question and I'd like to know if I've made the right choice.

 

Client needed me to embelish his render. It's 1 image, 23 000 x 14 000 pixel. He provided a rendering with no sky, no background...rendered in sketchup. (a PSD file with 1 layer, sigh) He also gave me a horrible sketchup model of the scene. I had 48 hours to do it. Sigh.

 

Since it's impossible for me to render a 23kx14k res image under 48h, do all the materials, proxies, etc. , I opted for photoshop compositing:-) But even then, on their rendered image, they made huge mistakes, some textures are missing, geometry is floating, some meshes are intersecting, etc. LOL the big package!!!

 

I wanted to know how do you handle big res images like that. Do you render at the target resolution or you render it on lower res and upsample it in photoshop? Obviously I really doubt they rendered a 23k in sketchup, but i'm not sure. The image is going to be printed on a 4 meters wide board.

 

Thanks! And sorry for not posting in the right section, for some reason I don't have access to all subforums :-(

[RyderSK]

By not agreeing to nonsense. It's the same case of "It doesn't matter if it's one mile long, it needs to be 300DPI scaled" PPI=DPI in client's logic, because, that's how math works right.

Working in 50perc. of that is already overkill, but also still super safe territory. It's not like you're going to find for example Sky bigger than 7k anyway ( google or banks aren't exactly filled by content from Medium format cameras), you'll be lucky if you find that. 33perc. is way more reasonable.

The work itself would be painful in PS and you would quickly run out of memory.

[numerobis]

What is the viewing distance of this 4m image? 50cm or 10m? Like Juraj said, this is really overkill, unless you need to look at the image very closely. I think ~72dpi should be more than enough for billboards, maybe even less.

[Zdravko Barisic]

For billboards, you can go even 25DPI, with no issues.

Anyway, you've got the common client from hell!

Good luck!

[RyderSK]

I think some clients (but also 2D/3D artists) simply need to educated that DPI=/=PPI. You can print 18MP photography up 2400DPI on A4 with laser prints for example, it doesn't mean the photography has to be resampled into billions of pixels.

It doesn't refer to same thing and there is zero relationship between them.

[TomD_Arch]

In terms of business sense I would think you would have asked some of these questions before signing on to start the clock on the job, then you would have had an opportunity to talk it over. Unfortunately you are already on the clock so you have to deal with sculpting a master piece from a pile of shit. But, Juraj is right and at least now you have the defense if the client comes back at after the fact.

 

I know none of that is very helpful, but next time you will be better prepared to ask the questions that will keep you from the deep end.

[philippelamoureux]

Just finished the work...100% photoshop lol. I have no idea how they rendered their image at first with sketchup but i'm pretty sure they upsampled it alot in photoshop because at 100% view, it's very aliased. Anyway in ended up at 150dpi, 400cm wide image, but it's not a ''native'' resolution. I think they had no idea what they were doing. At the same time they aren't very picky. I pretty much learnt photoshop compositing doing it, andddd they are very happy. But it's not the kind of work I'd put on my portfolio hehe!

 

I'm gonna take your advices for future renderings concerning dpi and resolution and all of that. But like I told my client, which is a family member too lol, I usually work in 3d and avoid post as much as possible. I'll do it for color corrections, etc. I don't like to take a ugly ass image and try to make it pretty. But for this particular contract I had no time to remodel and render.

[philippelamoureux]

just of snipped of the render image i'm dealing with in photoshop. Look at that wonderful 3d modeling lol ...

 

 

Yes sir! 3d people, untextured, full of collision bugs, missing polygons...lol

[notamondayfan]

just of snipped of the render image i'm dealing with in photoshop. Look at that wonderful 3d modeling lol ...

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]52054[/ATTACH]

 

Yes sir! 3d people, untextured, full of collision bugs, missing polygons...lol

 

At the end of the day, that's why we charge what we do. Some people think what we do is easy, and learnt over a weekend. To be fair your client doesn't sound too bad at all, maybe just needs a few pointers in the right areas.

[notamondayfan]

Also you should post a before and after

[M V]

3 things for next time to tell your client.

 

1 - Send me the model to review before we talk pricing

 

2- If you are supplying the render, I will need all channels included with the rendering, especially MatID

 

3 - Explain what resolution makes sense for their presentation. It it's a printing board at 36" wide, explain to them that anything over 10K wide is insanity and not worth the added render time. It adds nothing to a rendering's quality, especially a low poly SketchUp model.

[philippelamoureux]

1- I had the sketchup model...if I wanted I could've re-rendered it but the model was too poor. Needed a complete rebuild in 3ds max imo. Scratched that option

 

2- Dunno what renderer they used, and what resolution they rendered it, but what I got was a PSD file with one layer. They contracted me because they don't know how to do this.

 

3-The render, in PSD format, was already in 24 000 x14 000 res, approx. I just composited stuff around their picture. It was for a 160 ft long board hehe.

 

Of course if I have to start from scratch next project, it's gonna be different. But hey, they're happy, I got paid. I didn't spend more than 5 hours on this anyway.