Renders vs Renderings

[andy.engelkemier]

well, rapid prototyping didn't turn into that. Additive Manufacturing is only referring to 3d printing. Rapid prototyping covers 3d printing, cnc milling (which is often several times faster for many parts), laser cutting, etc.

I do like the term Rapid Visualization though. But I probably won't use it myself because I'll often have to do renderings that are really large and require lots of photoshop. Clients don't seem to understand why I can't turn around an image for a mural in the same time as a 30 inch print. Well a mural that you walk in front of still needs to be 150dpi or so. And it's 40 feet long. Yeah. I'm not doing that in keyshot. I'm not even sure keyshot will let you put in 72000 as a number. I tried 20,000 once, and it did the rendering version of laughing at me.

[Speedster]

Yep, "morphed" is probably not the right word, as RP uses a lot of technologies and platforms.  What I was alluding to is how my, and likely your, clients perceive it. Most think of RP as "3d printing". And our industries are evolving so quickly that the terminology is only starting to pick up.

I send out some $30k to $50k a year in SLA's, FDM's, CNC, PolyJet and DMSL prototypes, and two of my clients have their own Objet machines.  When I first added KeyShot (BunkSpeed back then) in 2008, I saw it as a value-added capability that other designers did not offer.  Of course that's changed now, but all of my clients expect KeyShot renderings as normal. And it's also become about 30% of my sales, to other designers and ad agencies.

So all of the "Rapid Prototype", rendering, etc. have sort of merged into what I now call Rapid Visualization.  Each technology has their rightful place in the process of time-to-market.

Interesting about the 150 dpi.  I always thought that billboards, large banners and truck-sized wraps were printed at 72 dpi. That alone would have a big hit on rendering time.  It would be interesting to test KeyShot 6 (beta) on a large rendering.  So far it seems to render blistering fast!

Bill G

[andy.engelkemier]

DPI is based on view distance. A 25 foot billboard at 150 yards only really need 6dpi to read the same as your monitor at arms length. The printer I worked with requested images at 12-18dpi. That's it. They don't want people throwing them 15,000 pixel images every day. It's overkill. The printer itself was 150dpi though. I was actually hoping for 200 because some of the details were only 8 inches or so. So some people tend to lean in to look at it. Then you see the dots. No one wants to see the dots.

[Esben Oxholm]

Hi Guys.
A lot of interesting answers and development of the thread. I like how it went from whether a "rendering" is called a "rendering" or a "render" (not specific to anyone), over what you guys call yourself to 3d-printing and DPI

Anyway, I think I got an answer to what my intended questions was.
NormanHadley did a nice analogue to painting.

I'd argue for render as the verb and rendering as the noun. I call to the bar, as my first witness, the verb to paint, which produces a painting as the end-product.

I think I'll stick to that.
Thanks again all for your help (and interesting discussion).

[Speedster]

Esben, you're one hell of a good rendererer!
Bill G