Hi - I am looking for information on how to print from SketchUp on an large scale - about 5ft wide. Is there a renderer that is best for this?
Natalie
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If you need to get a rendered image printed in large scale (which is what I think you are asking), then it is really a question of the resolution you want to print. Technically, anything could be blown up to 5’ and printed, the question is how much resolution will you lose in printing that large.
What you need to do is take the exact size of your final print, multiply by the minimum resolution you need, then see if you can get your renderer to render that high quality of an image.
What you may have to do is find the largest image your renderer can produce, and work backward into the highest resolution possible.
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Thanks @denisroy
I do need to render a scene to produce an image at a very large format. Ideally the image would be 5’ x 3’ and 300 dpi. Can this be done from Sketchup Make + a renderer?
The SketchUp end of it is immaterial. You should be looking at various rendering applications to see what their output capabilities are.
Actual commercial posters are usually produced at the lowest possible resolution that looks OK from the normal viewing distance. 300 PPI is the resolution used for the highest available quality printing used for art books and glossy magazines. To achieve 300 DPI colour prints you either need a dye-sublimation printer (most of the currently available ones produce 10 x 15 cm postcard-size photos) or an inkjet with at least 1200 DPI resolution (because of the dithering they use).
For a poster that large, unless the thing is filled with small text that requires people to come very close to view it, I would guess that a resolution of about 100 PPI or even less would be quite enough. It would enable the printer to use something like 300 DPI resolution and a much faster printing time. A 300 PPI image file is 9 times larger than at 100 PPI. Furthermore, typical large format inkjets have a 600 DPI resolution that usually there is no visible difference between images of 150…200 PPI and higher, even under a microscope.
Anssi
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