Hi can anyone tell me why when I render in Poser 6 (firefly) against an imported background image the background image does not render full size but appears to shrink so that I end up with a background smaller than the foreground scene? Really annoying! Never had this problem in previous versions of Poser. :O(

When your pic is smaller, Poser asks if it should be change thewindow size to the pic. This means mainly the ratio. If you resample or change the backgroundpic to the ratio of your Poser window you will avoid thsi prob

IMO the better way to use backgroundimages is to texture a simple box and scale it to the desired size. This lets you use a skydome needfull for reflective surfaces.

Another point when using background images in FireFly: make sure the maximum texture resolution equals or exceeds the background image resolution. If the maximum texture resolution is smaller than your background resolution, the background will be resampled to the max resolution.

And the winner is! NONE OF THE ABOVE! This is not the first time this has happened, and it is really weird and HAS to be a glitch in Poser 6. Last night I tried everything mentioned here plus more and I kept getting a square render. I did set the aspect for both the preview and the render windows, etc. even set max res as high as it would go even though texture was only 1600x1200. Finally gave up in disqust. Well, this morning I loaded the scene - original scene I started with yesterday as I never resaved it. I figured I do some test renders to show what I meant. Guess what! Yeap, it rendered correctly. Go figure. Instead of coming out say 768x768 (background) against a 1024x767 scene with my figure and props in the foreground and the grey Poser bacground showing where the background image should be wider. It rendered 1024x768 completely filling the render scene as it should. So, who else has had this problem? Also I agree totally with UweMattern as that is how I normally do background images. But Poser is suppose to be able to render against an imported bckground and for this scene that is what I was trying out.

When I used Poser 5 and imported a background image that was different in dimensions than the document window size and chose NOT to change the window size, Poser would import the image and I'd see the part of the image that fit in the document window (image 1024x768, window 600x600, would show the 600x600 part of the image and fill the background with it). Now in Poser 6 if I do the same thing, the image will be resized to fit into the document window and leaves empty background at the top and at the bottom. Why? I don't have a clue!

Yes, this sounds like the problem I am having - on occassion - with P6. What I can not figure is why it renders wrong some times correctly others.

I guess for the same reasons it sometimes shows the semi-transparent models in the document windows and sometimes it doesn't. ;o)

Yeah, I hear yah. :O)

Is "reuse textures" selected? I've seen that happen before when that option is checked.

Thanks, but no that wasn't it.

I have this problem in P6 too, never had it in 5. I have IC3 from RDNA and the backdrop on that can be scaled to any size so I use that in my scene and put my background image on it as a texture, works great. You can do the same with the DAZ Cyclorama! thefixer, poser coord.

I'll tell you what I do to solve this problem but you might not like it... I open my background image in IrfanView and I crop and/or resize it to match my document window dimensions in Poser. That's it, no more problem. ;o)

Thanks again. I appreciate the comments and help. And the workarounds. Seems like there is always need for workarounds with Poser. :O(

Ya got that right!!!! ;-))

I have had the same annoying problem, but I discovered if I used the Poser 4 rendering engine it does not shrink the background image, but instead will render it as it would have in Poser 4. If you don't need any of the special effects that Firefly allows you to add, try using the P4 engine instead. You can still get good pictures out of it. In general background pictures can be annoying. I've had some problems with the ground plane in Daz Studio obstructing my image as well. I didn't try, but should have, turning the ground plane off--dough! But still I don't know if it would work as I would like.

Yes, I found the same things. Only happens with firefly not the P4 render engine. Since it does not happen all the time - its like something gets stuck or will not reset - I am just curious what might be causing it and if there is a manual reset so to speak to get around it.

I have some problem with background pictures when I use firefly rendering. I import a background pictures and when I go in Materials room on bakground objects I have some nodes as BG picture, BG color, BG movie, Black and BG picture is not connected. I connect it delete the other nodes and and come back in my sce,if I come back in materials room again I can see all nodes just like before and my picture is not connected... If I make a render my background is white!!! I have not this problem with P4 rendering but the problem is the resolution of the background...very bad... Is any have a solution for this problem... THX

Roland, make sure you render over Background Picture and not over Background Color.

A very simple fix for this one, Poserites ... in the P6 material room, in the background node, tick the little box that says "AutoFit" and all will be well.  This allows Poser to automatically size the background to fit the document window and the render size.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?message_id=2446820

There is more information on this in the above thread.

When I use backgrounds I don't "import" them. Instead what I do is check the size of the background in my graphic program.  Then open Poser,  load the 1 side square poser primative. Go to the material room, right click, pick new node, 2d image, image_map. Then browse for my background and add it to the single side square.  Then in the Pose room I adjust the X Y Z scale dials to get the right dimension for the square. Then use the Scale and Z Trans dials to move the background back and scale up the size to what I need. 

This works well because the background will pick up whatever lighting you are using because you have turned the background into a prop figure which interacts with the environment you are working in.

My experience has been rendering your foreground over black then compositing the background in a photo-editing program is easier and more flexible. If you render the foreground and save it as a .psd or .tif file, the alpha channel will be included with the saved image. You can then use the alpha channel as a mask to clear the areas in the foreground where the background should show. With the background image on a separate layer you can then apply filters, blur or sharpen etc. without worrying about damaging the foreground image. Just my opinion ...

Also gotta watch Poser because when you apply some poses or change some settings, Poser will cut off the background pic node and go back to being connected to the background color node

I've never been able to trust what the firefly render is ever going to do with BG pictures. P6 has it as a glitch. Period.  People ALWAYS say 'Use auto-fit" and it never works consistantly for me. PERIOD.

The best thing to do is do everything as above, and save it as a PNG file and do a copy of the BG in an image program and paste the PNG as a foreground on it.  If the BG renders correctly, save it as anything you want.

At least the P6 glitch is not a deal killer like P7, which works like P6's unpredictability EXCEPT the BG picture is always there visible EVEN WITH PNG's and TIF's.  If the BG is messed up in P7, your render is defective.

After P7's uselessness, I can put up with messed up BG pictures, that can be worked around.