The Tips in detail

 "Can't set the DPI for rendering."

Sometimes I hear about people trying to find out about how to adjust the DPI-resolution (Dots Per Inch) of a rendering-output. Without success, of course.

Many painting/drawing packages (like ie. Adobe Photoshop) offer a setting where you can set the DPI-resoulution of any given image. Wondering why MAX doesn't give this option they blame kinetix for not thinking ahead. Wrong. They did think ahead.

Make up your mind about what you set in your rendering-settings-dialog: you set an amount of pixels along the X-axis and the Y-axis. What you get on screen is in 72 DPI (not only Max does it this way).

To determine the printing-resoulution you have to do some simple calculating:

pixels X times pixels Y divided by DPI.

Example: 640 pixels X times 480 pixels Y / 72dpi rendered =(rounded)= 8.9 inches times 6.7 inches printed.

If you need that size for printing with a printer that prints at ie. 600dpi you'll need to render at 5312 pixels times 3984 pixels. Afterwards you need to resample the image to 600dpi, but outside MAX. MAX isn't an image-manipulator! (see also: 010: "Max ia a stand-alone application"). Use an image editor (ie. Photoshop) for this task.

The output resolution is determined on the increase you need from 72dpi to 600dpi. This is in the above Example: 600 divided by 72 = 8.3

So 8.3 is the factor you will multiply your pixelcount along the X and the Y axis with. 640 times 8.3 gives 5312 and 480 times 8.3 gives 3984. If you want the printed size to be larger or smaller at 600dpi then you'll need to adjust your render size accordingly.

If you don't want to do the calculating you may just do your rendering "oversized". Take the values for 640 times 480 at 72DPI as a rule of thumb: nearly 9 inches wide times nearly 7 inches high. Multiply either value with the factor that fits to your needs.

compiled with hints from David (3danim8r@thebeam.net) and RhiBiT! (rhibit@mediaboutique.com)

Here are some rendering resolutions:

Rendering an animation for playback from a CD try 15 fps and a resolution of about 320 x 240 to be on safe ground. Resolution also depends on the pixel ratio (Square or CCIR standards). Most of the time a value of 72dpi is used by the GCs, but some hardware uses dpi-ranges up to 90dpi. You should refer to your manuals and / or the manufacturer. Many videocards are using 640x480 resolution for NTSC. It depends on the videocard and it's drivers what resolutions are supported on your system.

Dave (DWieland@swri.edu) commented:

Things are not quite this simple. The DPI rating of your printer in general is for text and vector art.

When printing raster images the printer resolution is dependent on your printers halftone screen frequency. This is usually given in lines per inch. For consumer grade printers it may be difficult to determine your screen frequency. But in general it is much less than your DPI. For example our Tek 560 laser printer has a DPI of 1200x1200 in premium mode, but the screen frequency is only 200 in premium mode. You can find out a little about halftone screens from Photoshops help. Photoshop recommends an image resolution of 1.5 to 2.0 on your printers screen lpi. This in general will give you a file with the the best resolution your printer is capable of printing.

If you are going through a service provider ask them what resolution to use for their equipment.

This can explain why there may be very little or no difference when printing a 150 dpi image as compared to a 300 dpi image. If the 150 dpi image is already near the printers screen frequency there will not be much improvement when you go to 300 dpi.