[Bf-committers] Quick proposal for "Print Size" settings mode

[Campbell <aka Ideasman>]

Ton, I have a problem with your rationale. one of the advantages of 
blender is that it dosent have to be designed for simple usage for the 
masses- (Somthing I ppl said at bconf)

If you used blender for DTP and you had some experience, then you would 
be aware that a pixel in print is not necessarly equivilent to a pixel 
in 3d- and should not be rendered at that resolution.

Even so- you may want to output to 150dpi, or your employer may have a 
standard for  digital image resolution.
Therefor having this feature would be usefull for these people.

Examples where you may want to have spesific DPI output are.
- Comic illustration, with toon shading may need to be high res (like 
typefaces) for realy smooth edges.
- Any typographic/3d work (unlikely but possible)
- Rendering images for a magizine knowing the desired output size... 
Rather then guessing what would be right, you would output an exact DPI 
so no time was waisted rendering an image that was too large.
- Wireframe/CAD design printouts (again unlikely, however there are at 
least 3 people I know of using blender for interior design and mabe they 
want to bring out high res wire frames)


Working out DPI yourself isnt a big deal, but it speeds up your workflow 
if Blender can do it for you..

Python intergration is not yet good enough for people to use small 
functions like this as a part of there workflow (needs its own 
subdivided space etc.)

- Cam


> Hi,
>
> I think this is highly disputable to add this by default in a 3D  
> gfx/animation suite. It can even be easily achieved with a Python  
> plugin, offering the GUI in a Script Window. Such specialist 
> additions  is exactly what we have a scripting language for.
>
> My main concern however is that the general audience, especially most  
> DTP artists, haven't the slightest clue what a DPI actually means, 
> and  how to create properly 3D graphics for printing. Blender output 
> is  *not* comparable to output of normal 2d layout tools, but instead  
> compares to the output you get from a (digital) camera.
>
> Since rendering is done only with pixels in 3d software, with for 
> each  pixel an enormous overhead in CPU in memory, I really recommend 
> to keep  PIXELS as presented standard in Blender. I'm really not 
> looking forward  to a bug report stating "Blender crashes on rendering 
> a 30x20 inch  image with 600 DPI".
>
> -Ton-
>
>
> On 9 May, 2005, at 1:07, Johnny Matthews wrote:
>
>> Alex,
>>
>>  I think these are great ideas!  One addition would be a user Pref 
>> for  Metric / English  ( I know all you euro's are cringing ) but 
>> Letter  will always be 8.5x11 to me.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 5/8/05, Alexander Ewering <blender at instinctive.de> wrote:
>>
>>> Here's a quick proposal for a very compact and easy to port feature  
>>> from
>>> instinctive-blender, for potential inclusion into the next version.  
>>> It's
>>> - in my opinion - pretty overseeable and troublefree, so I would be  
>>> able
>>> to sneak it in into the next release :)
>>>
>>> http://pub.intrr.org/printsets.png
>>>
>>> Basically, a new mode is introduced into the scene buttons, which
>>> replaces the following buttons:
>>>
>>> SizeX, SizeY, AspX, AspY, and the Preset buttons
>>>
>>> with:
>>>
>>> mmX, mmY, DPI, Flip, Bleed
>>>
>>> This adds easier support for setting a specific size for taking your
>>> render to the print stage.
>>>
>>> When in this new mode, changing mmX, mmY or DPI will calculate the
>>> new pixel size and put it into the rectx and recty variables. "Flip"
>>> just swaps the two sizes and is a nice quick way to flip between
>>> "Portrait" and "Landscape" after choosing one of the presets (A4,
>>> A5, etc.) on the right.
>>>
>>> "Bleed" is the border area added around the image on each side, for
>>> cutting the printout. For example, setting Bleed to 2mm will increase
>>> both the horizontal and vertical size by 4mm each.
>>>
>>> Of course, if you would like to view the resulting pixel size of
>>> your image, you can switch the "Print" toggle off, and you will
>>> see the usual pixel dimensions that have been calculated.
>>>
>>> With the new code, the DPI setting is also correctly written to
>>> JPEG, BMP and PNG files. They will instantly print in the correct
>>> dimensions.
>>> For other file formats, I didn't quickly find if they have the
>>> required "DPI" field.
>>>
>>> There is a *lot* of confusion about things like DPI, print size,
>>> and the like. I've tried to be as clear as possible here. If
>>> any questions remain, feel free to ask :)
>>>
>>> | alexander ewering              instinctive mediaworks
>>> | ae[@]instinctive[.]de   http://www[.]instinctive[.]de
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Bf-committers mailing list
>>> Bf-committers at projects.blender.org
>>>  http://projects.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --  Johnny Matthews
>> johnny.matthews at gmail.com______________________________________________ 
>> _
>> Bf-committers mailing list
>> Bf-committers at projects.blender.org
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>>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
> -- 
> Ton Roosendaal  Blender Foundation ton at blender.org  
> http://www.blender.org
>
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>


-- 
Cam, Ideasman
homepage: http://members.iinet.net.au/~cpbarton/ideasman/