Rendering a high-resolution image is straightforward, albeit time consuming. Generally, all you have to do is enter the desired resolution in the Render Scene dialog and then render.
A few issues to look out for when rendering high-resolution images:
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Aspect ratio of the final output: If you get an X-by-Y-resolution image from a graphics shop that you are planning to use as a background, verify with safe frames that these proportions will not crop important information or otherwise affect your camera composition.
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Details: When you render at high resolution, you see more detail. Most of the time more detail is good, but occasionally rendering at high resolution reveals mistakes in modeling or mapping that you might not see in lower-resolution renderings. To reveal some of these potential problems, create test renders without shadows or reflections.
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Bitmap Pager: The Bitmap Pager is especially useful for high-resolution rendering, scenes that use very large texture maps, or scenes that use a large quantity of texture maps. When the Bitmap Pager is turned on, Autodesk VIZ creates a series of temporary paging files for use when rendering bitmaps. For more information, refer to Rendering Preferences.
Follow the steps below to render a high-resolution image of the exterior of a building project.
Create a high-resolution render preset:
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On the Render Scene dialog, make the Common panel active. In the Common Parameters rollout > Output Size group, verify that Custom is chosen from the drop-down list.
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On the Configure Preset dialog, set Width to 3600, Height to 2400, and Pixel Aspect to 1.0. Click OK to close the dialog.
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In the Output Size group, click the button you just modified so these values become the active Output Size settings.
Set up a file to render:
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On the Common Parameters rollout, scroll down to the Render Output group. In the Render Output group, click Files.
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On the Render Output File dialog, enter the file name high_res, and from the Save As Type drop-down list, choose JPEG File.
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On the JPEG Image Control dialog, accept the defaults and click OK.
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Click the X button in the title bar of the Render Scene dialog.
The settings in the Render Scene dialog are saved, and you are placed back in your scene without rendering.
Render a test image:
To see how the cropping will affect the final image, you'll render a test image in draft mode, first turning off some time-consuming render options.
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At the bottom of the Render Scene dialog, choose viz.scanline.no.advanced.lighting.draft from the Preset drop-down list.
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This scene doesn't used advanced lighting (radiosity) or ray-traced materials, so choose only Default Scanline Renderer from the list, and then click Load.
Autodesk VIZ Loads draft-quality preset options into the Default Scanline Renderer rollout.
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Go to the Renderer panel. On the Default Scanline Renderer rollout, in the Options group, click both the Shadows and Auto-Reflect/Refract And Mirrors check boxes to turn them off.
Even though you've turned off some compute-intensive options, the image will still take a fair amount of time to render because of the high resolution.
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At the bottom of the Render Scene dialog, click Render.
Autodesk VIZ renders the image at full resolution, but displays it in the rendered frame window compressed to 1:4 resolution so the entire image fits on the screen. When the rendering is complete, you can save the image, print it, or zoom in on it. In the next step, you’ll do the latter.
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Zoom in on the rendered frame window until the image is displayed at a ratio of 1:1. To zoom in, hold down the Ctrl key and click the window. (Right-clicking while you hold down Ctrl zooms out.)
Tip: If you have a wheel mouse, you don't need to hold down Ctrl: rotate the wheel forward to zoom in and backward to zoom out.
At 1:1, you can see details that might not be apparent at lower resolutions.
Tip: You can also pan in a zoomed-in view by holding down the Shift key and dragging the mouse. If you have a wheel mouse, press down on the wheel and drag.
Once you are satisfied with the test render, you can complete the production render.
(Optional) Render the scene with greater quality:
Rendering this scene with higher-quality settings results in shadows and better antialiasing, but it also takes considerably more time: about half an hour, as opposed to about a minute for the draft scene.
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At the bottom of the Render Scene dialog, choose viz.scanline.no.advanced.lighting.high from the Preset drop-down list.
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Choose only Default Scanline Renderer from the list, and then click Load.
Autodesk VIZ loads high-quality preset options into the Default Scanline Renderer rollout. The toggles Shadows, Auto Reflect/Refract, and Mirrors are all turned on.
Note: Foliage can take up a lot of render time. If leaf detail is not necessary for your rendering, you can select foliage objects and set their Level-Of-Detail to Low.
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In the Common panel > Common Parameters rollout > Render Output group, click Files. On the file dialog that is displayed, change the output file name to high_res_final, and then click Save.
High-resolution images can take a long time to render, depending on the complexity of the scene and the amount of shadow, reflections, and atmospheric effects. Computers with insufficient RAM will be even slower.