Draft Render dimensions for clients

[Terri Brown]

Hello people,

Would appreciate your input on the average resolution you provide clients with draft renders. My standard practice is this:

1_a clay render draft to approve camera angles (approx 1200px wide)

2_a first draft (1500px wide, sometimes 1200px)

3_a final draft (1500px wide)

The final resolution of the images I am working on now is 4K, and client is wanting 2K drafts, which isn't possible in the timeframe given as renders are very heavy.

Would appreciate knowing some of your workflows so I can know the industry standard before replying to them.

Thanks as always!

[James Vella]

I would say this is something you need to negotiate with your client, their expectations of image size and what they need it for. For example if its for an A3 @ 200dpi is 3307px accross. Its fairly good quality for such as large image.

 

If you want to talk raw numbers we provide clients 4000px draft renders, anywhere up to 6000px for finals or 8000px depending on the format. We stopped sending clay renders about 5 years ago which streamlined our process a little. Im sure 2000px is about minimum I would provide a client if I was in a rush.

[Terri Brown]

yeah I don't always do clay renders, but these guys request it.

If final render is 4000px, surely 40% of that is sufficient? ie. 1500px.   

[James Vella]

Sure, why not. You could just render it at 1500 and upscale with topaz gigapixel they would never know the difference anyway at that size  

[Scott Schroeder]

You could compromise and do 2K draft sizes but with 50% lower render settings. I tend to do my drafts at full HD (1920x1080) but with fairly fast rendering render settings and a heavy use of Vray denoiser to clean up the leftover noise.

Most of my draft renderings are straight from Vray. I use the VFB controls and denoiser quite a bit so I can be very fast at getting images out. My AA is usually 1/4 with a noise threshold of .04 all the way to .1. I use semi decent light cache and medium IR maps for GI. I know in this day in age some people reading this may faint or clutch their pearls in horror at those settings, but I can get drafts out in under 8 minutes an image on my local laptop. Denoiser picks up the brunt of the work. These are drafts after all, I want them to look good but not good enough they accidently get slipped into marketing material and released to the world before we are ready.

Edited April 30, 2020 by VelvetElvis

[Lewis]

Hi,

For most projects i do 1280*720 draft renders (although not clay but full scene colors) and with lower quality i.e. less samples than what final render would be so it renders quicker. Sometime if scene is quick (exteriors are usually much quicker than interiors) then i do FullHD drafts but also reduced number of samples (PathTracing).

For final i do 2-3x more samples than for drafts and 2560*1440 or 4K renders, depending of clients need. If is for print then usually 4K but if is for web/mails/phones (as they usually do it that way) then eeve 2.5K is enough or too much in some cases when they look it on phones and tablets :).

cheers

[Casey Hawley]

Does anyone use progressive render? You can set the length of time you want the render to run.

Works great for drafts when up against a deadline.

[James Vella]

1 hour ago, Casey Hawley said:

Does anyone use progressive render? You can set the length of time you want the render to run.

Works great for drafts when up against a deadline.

Yep, always.

 

[Francisco Penaloza]

Draft render in the realm of 1500px or 2000px are ok, most of the time client will review those images in their phones and tablets.

Some people like to print them to do mark-up but at 2K they can get a good enough 8.5inx11in to print and red mark it.

Larger images are asking for more pixel peeping and people get too obsessed with things that really don't matter, the lack of sharpness or more detail of smaller images usually help to concentrate in the big idea. unless of course you are reviewing materials in that case I do close up images.

As a  freelancer I don't give away large preview images, because I been burned too many times with, clients get happy with that review image and don't want to pay for more or  clients just ghosting.

Working in house, if I render too large images the architects complains about the look in the face of the girls in the very back, instead of telling me if the building is gray or pink.

YMWV.

 

[Terri Brown]

On 4/30/2020 at 8:44 PM, redvella said:

Sure, why not. You could just render it at 1500 and upscale with topaz gigapixel they would never know the difference anyway at that size  

My experience with these programs is that there's always too much of a compromise on quality - I know my clients wouldn't be happy with the outcome. I did download the trial and gave it a bash...unfortunately it came out as expected

[Terri Brown]

On 5/14/2020 at 7:59 PM, Casey Hawley said:

Does anyone use progressive render? You can set the length of time you want the render to run.

Works great for drafts when up against a deadline.

yeah I always use it for drafts

[robert becker]

In my experience is is helpful to find out why they want higher resolution drafts. It may be they need to print large for a client meeting, or more often, there are certain details that are not showing well enough to see at lower resolution. I sometimes send higher resolution images of certain details that help on the later. If it is affecting timing / workflow then you could give them options about that compromise. You also may need to invest in more equipment. Having to wait on a computer is never good!