I have made a background image (in a separate scene) at the size I want my final Poser image - say, 1000x2000 pixels. However, when I import that background bitmap into Poser, add my scene characters and props and render it at 1000x2000, the background that looked fine in an image editor suddenly has a chronic case of pixelation. Any way to stop this happening?

Poser 4 or 5? You CAN apply the background pic to a one sided square instead of importing it. That will enable you to resize it without any pixelation (within reasonable parameters of course)

Poser 4 resamples the background image to your display window's current resolution. So, if your display window were 250x500, the background is scaled down to that res. And it stays that way, even when you render to a new, larger window.

Setting your display window to 1000x2000 probably isn't an option, eh?

On the other hand, Poser 5's Firefly renderer can use the full resolution of your background image, and does a fairly good job of upsampling if necessary, although the included P4 renderer suffers from the same flaws noted above.

The recommended solution in P4 is to create a background prop (a simple square prop from your Poser primitives should do), and apply the background image to that as a texture.

Message edited on: 11/19/2004 06:47

I'm using Poser 4. And no, I don't have a monitor capable of 1000x2000 (which were random numbers - my required image is 50% bigger again!). Thanks for the tips re. using a prop instead.

Remember and switch off cast shadows for the prop.

I recommend setting the prop's Object Color to black and Ambient Color to white, also. That will eliminate any shadows being cast onto the prop.

Hey THAT's a neat trick, LD. Never thought of that. Thanks :o)

Your other option is to render without the background, and save to an image format which includes transparency information - PSD, PNG or TIFF. Then it's easy to composite your render onto the original background in an image editor such as Photoshop. This method has the advantage of not needing to worry about shadows, and will not be affected by the colour of your lights. If you want shadows, on the other hand, the background prop is the way to go.

I've had this problem in the past as well. Thanks for the great repsonsesI will keep them in mind for future use.

EnglishBob, any pointers on settings -- background colour for instance -- to help with postwork compositing. And thanks for the tips on background prop colours, I reckon they'll apply to the fancier background props from Daz and others.

Yes, it'll work on the Millennium Environment, Cyclorama, and other backdrops, but remember ... in many cases you'd want shadows for the ground elements. That trick also prevents the prop from being affected by light colours, EnglishBob.

The Millenium Environment, at least, has distinct materials for the walls (sky, etc) and the floor. I'm not sure of the Cyclorama. RuntimeDNA's "Infinite Cove" prop is similar to what Doc Geep describes how to make.

AntoniaTiger: background colours are irrelevant, since Poser renders those bits as transparent so it doesn't matter. This is much easier and more accurate than "green screen" type effects. Little Dragon: yes, of course it does - wasn't thinking. But doesn't having a high ambient value wash out the image? Oh, I know, I'll just try it for myself instead of picking holes. :)

Cool, learned something new!

It'll wash out the image if the Object Color is white ... which is why I suggested setting the Object Color to black.

EnglishBob - strangely enough, background colour does seem to matter even when the background is going to be masked out. Poser appears to take this colour into account when it anti-aliases the edges of the figure. It's a very subtle effect, and you may never notice it (especially if you use Poser's default greyish background), but I was rendering-out some animation frames using a high contrast magenta background, and when the resulting figure was composited onto a dull, monotone background image he looked like he had a faint pink glow all round him.

Of course, it might just be the way PSP7 handles alpha channels ;) but thinking about it, anti-aliasing works by averaging-out high contrast areas of colour, so Poser has to work off something in order to apply AA to the edge of the rendered figure. Even if that 'something' is a background colour that isn't going to be part of the final render.

Message edited on: 11/20/2004 01:39

hitting head I'd stopped using the square prop with the background pic on it because I'd get shadows cast onto it. So simple to just turn off shadows on that prop! Duh! Learn something new every day! Thanks folks! Liz

You're right, gps. I tend to use a background render color close to what my background will be when it's opened in PSP. Dark or black for night scenes, a lighter color for other scenes, white for something going on a plain white background.