Hello Poser Artists, I am a Photographer who has tried his hands in Bryce and yes, I have played with Poser to the extent that I have taken objects into it and played the pose in it and saved it as 3d objects to be imported into bryce at a latter stage. Apart from that I have not tried much with Poser till now. I had recently captured some very good pictures which I thought would work well as backgrounds to poser images. The images are 2300 x 1700 size and at 300 pixels per inch. I was trying to check if they blend well with Poser or not and to my disappointment I find thatwhen I hit the Render button with a ...New Window (allow larger Render) option. The background appears pixallated. So my quiry is:- 1. Why does this happen??....the pictures aren't pixallated when viewed 1:1 in any photoware. 2. Am I doing it all wrong?? 3. When does a Poser artist actually add the background, while rendering the pose or as a Post work?? 4. Anything else that I need to be aware of. I would really be glad if any of you can help me with this issue. My main objective is to come out with good background images....if you have any tips and tricks, please do share it. Thank you!! SNAKEY

Hi:-) well, I had this problem before and I didnt know what is wrong. It is a Poser problem and to tell you the truth I have no idea why is it like this...but yes, once you brong the background in Poser it lokks VERY pixellated. now, i am gonna try to explain you what I do, but my english is quite limited, so i hope you will understand... Ok, first of all, you render your composition with NO background imported, you can leave the background color that default grey, in case of a lighter background... but if you want to place it on a dark background then change the background color into black. after you rendered it, save the image as PSD. Open the PSD in Photoshop, click the "Channels" tab and you will see all your colour channels and the alpha chanel. The Alpha chanel will apear white in that lil square. Click CTRL on this alpha layer and you will see a selection around the white figure. After the selection appeared, you can actually drag the rendered figure right on the background picture. or you can click edit and copy. You will have the rendered figure on the background and you can resize it and place it wherever you want on the background:-) Hope I made sense. if not, write me and I will try to explain in a small tutorial:-) Val

You can use a single sided plane as the background, set the xscale to 2300 and the yscale to 1700 and add your background texture to it. Switch off cast shadows for the plane, you might have to adjust the ambience setting for it, too.

Thank you Valentina.... your english was perfect for me. :O)) Also it is nice to know that I am not alone ;). Thanks to you too xantor, I will definitely check out that option and see how it works out. I would still like to know from other Poser Artists how they go about doing their backgrounds. I am really curious to learn. :O)) SNAKEY

Hello Snakey, in fact I do not like the combination of 3D and photo so much, it always looks a bit faked for me. But when I'm in need of a photographed background (sky, tapestry, wall-carpets...) which I cannot add by using Props or objects I use Valentina's method most of the time: By saving the rendered picture as a tif (never tried psd, but this should work similar) and than going to Photoshop-->select-->load selection-->Alpha 1 and then select-->inverse selection. This seperates the figure from the background color. By the way: Choose a color that differs clearly from figure, clothes, hair and shadows. That prevents you from cutting off hair, laces etc. - White works fine for me most of the time.

Sometimes you will find some background colored pixels left around your figure. To get rid of them try to expand your background-selection for at least one pixel, then go to inverse, that should help. You can read more about the whole procedure at Awful Soul's forum:
http://www.awfulsoul.com/asforum/viewtopic.php?t=322
...and their english is a lot better than mine ;o)

Another way of adding a photo and a bit of depth is the Cyclorama, available at DAZ and there is a likewise item at RDNA as far as I know. If you want to add landscapes or photostudio-backgrounds you may want to give these a try.

Good luck with your trials!

Meike Edited for making the link work

Message edited on: 09/04/2005 17:26