Anybody have a good formula for how big an image needs to be when placed as a "background" to look correctly when rendered and not just used as a reflection map. What I am doing is placing a panorama that has been rendered in Byrce/Terragen in the "background" so I can move the camera around in Carrara (animate) and have it look seamless and like a real terrain as I follow a walking model around. Just curious if anyone had a magic number as to how big the image should be, or does it depend on your final output. If so, (I know the image should have an aspect ratio of 2:1) what's the ratio between the background and the final output. Thanks for any help you can provide. Chuck

I have no real idea but everything I've ever done for something like this has been BIG so I didn't have to worry about it. No help here. -Kix

Did you see Litst's post describing the "Procedural Skydome"? - new scene - insert an infinite plane - insert a sphere - open the Properties tray - disable the Casts Shadows checkbox - click on the clap icon to get to the Motion/Transform tab - set the dimensions of the sphere to something around 1000 x 1000 x 500 inches - set the X,Y and Z centers of the sphere to 0 He also used the 2X1 aspect ratio for the texture. My guess is that the background image has to be double the render size in pixels.

Here's an image which uses litst's technique (as close as I could remember it). Now with selective aura, I can have the sun in aura and the sky as normal! Another thing in C I've wanted A LOOOOONG time. Thanks Eovia! -Kix

what do you think about that,2 spheres a real big one and a small one in the center of the big one.the big one is for the sky color and the small one is only for the clouds.you can make a shader for the cloud sphere in carrara or make a texture map with a transmap in paint program.so you have some cool shadows from the clouds on the ground if you want,if not then turn it off.it looks realistic and you can animate the small cloudsphere without the skycolor,or animate the skycolor from blue to black or something else.

That's a very smart idea! I'll try it tomorrow! -Kix

Thanks for the replies everyone... Litst's skydome might do the trick, even with a texture map on it - seems to give me more control over the scene. Next question, how do you go about lighting it in order to get even, realistic lighting in the dome?

For the image I did, I set the size of the dome to be bigger than the range on the light. The texture is actually in the glow channel of the dome and that's why it shows up. -Kix

Kix, Thanks... Any chance you could post a demo file of your setup? :-) Chuck