Maya always renders at 72 ppi. How do I render at 300 ppi?

[wizzackr]

I change the resolution to 300 ppi in the Render Settings window, but when I render my image it always renders at 72 ppi. I'm using Maya 8.0. Is this a bug in the program? How can I render with 300 resolution?

Thanks

you've got the concept wrong: dots per inch only gives you on what length you distribute your pixels. Now, the setting in the render-globals only helps you calculate the correct pixel width and height of you image.

say you change the size units to cm and put 30cm x 20cm into the respective fields, then hit 300dpi and finally change the size units back to pixels you will notice maya calculated the width and height of you image correspondingly: Whatever you see there then will give you a 300dpi image on a 30x20cm poster.

Hope that helps,
J

[qrichardson]

I've been running into this a lot at work.... and having to explain it..

In digital media, to a degree, PPI is irrlevant. What you really need it to find out how many pixels you need. For example and 8.5 x 11 inch document at 300ppi is 2550 x 3300 pixels. The reason I state that ppi is irrelevant is that same document can be 4.5 x 5.5 inches at 600ppi. However the pixels remain the same (2550 x 3300).

I believe the basic math is: dimension x ppi = pixel resolution.
So- 8.5 * 300 = 2550.

HTH.
-quinn

[TheNeverman]

how do you know the image your viewing is 72ppi?

[DrYo]

There's no indication that the original poster knows how PPI works, nor is there any indication that she does not know how it works.

Assuming that there is no confusion regarding PPI itself, then it bears mentioning that not all file formats support PPI at all. AFAIK Maya's IFF does not. It is unfortunate that the Maya interface does not bother to gray out the irrelevant PPI field, but this is par for the course in Maya. The interface is riddled with examples of data entry fields that simply do nothing, and give no feedback to the user. So you can plug any value you want into the PPI field, and usually it makes no difference.

If you output to a TGA, for example, then there is no PPI information embedded in the file. Under those conditions, most image editing applications (such as Photoshop) will interpret the file as having a PPI of 72.

If you want to render to a specific print size and PPI, then you need to either a) render to a format that is PPI-aware, or b) make the necessary conversion in Photoshop.

For best results for print, choose the TIF format.

[Emil3d]

...when I render my image it always renders at 72 ppi....This settings has an effect and makes a difference on the rendered image only when you print it. Otherwise you have to check the rendered file properties in a print program as Photoshop.
In Maya, for the end result, refer to the feedback above the scrolling area in the Render Settings window which is not very ergonomically designed and is easy to miss
http://i111.photobucket.com/albums/n129/Emil3d/res.jpg
According to the help:

Resolution
Specifies the resolution of the image in the unit specified in the Resolution Units setting. TIFF, IFF and JPEG formats are able to store this information, so that it is maintained when the image is opened in a third party application such as Adobe® Photoshop®.

So if you render to other file formats, take note from the feedback in Maya and use for setting properly the image in the printing program.

[MasterZap]

Yes, it's funny, that the "print terms" like PPI and DPI seems to be least understood by print people.

Many many times have I sent an image at the right resolutoin (in pixels) to print people, but they send it back and say "this is 72 dpi, we can't use it".

I silently swear a bit, load it into photoshop, go in and change the DPI information only, save out the *exact same pixels* at *the exact same resolution*, only now the little "tag" inside the file says "300", and the "print people" is now happy. *sigh*.

The ONLY thing that matters is resolution. the "DPI" tag inside the file is only a hint to desk-top-publishing software how big the image is when you initially drop it into a document. THAT'S IT.

Yet amusingly, the people who man said desk top publishing software seem to not understand this. Probably because they were never fed understanding, rather was simply told that "everything must be 300 DPI at least". Sigh.

Another case of "give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day, teach a man to fish, and he'll print the fish at the proper resolution forever". ;)

/Z

[veiledsongbird]

Thank you everyone!! I really appreciate your response and have resolved this issue because of all your helpful information. :)

[avinashlobo]

I silently swear a bit...
/ZI think I have the ultimate story here with regards to sheep in the print biz.

I e-mailed an A4 ad to a magazine which they rejected with this message:

"The format you've sent the file in is incorrect. Please send either Illustrator, EPS..." blah blah.

The format I sent to them? .rar :sad:

[Kabab]

Another case of "give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day, teach a man to fish, and he'll print the fish at the proper resolution forever". ;)

/Z

Perhaps you should spear head a revolution..

The 2.2dpi revolution...

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