The real kicker is that if I open an empty window with no character the background image expands just fine. But as soon as I put any object into the picture it wont expand.

I've attached an image with the mucked up background and you can see how the window has expanded but there is a grey area surrounding the image.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated as I really don't want to go through the hassle of reloading poser except as a last resort.

Before I go on, I have to ask where you got that great background! 

The best way to add a background to your scene is to not use the import feature.

The best thing to do is to look at the dimensions of the background you want to use IE: 1024x768.  Then in Poser add a single side square (props/primatives) to your scene.  Then go to the material room, add an image_map node and browse to your background.  Hook that up to the 1st and 3rd nodes. Then go to the Pose room and use the X and Y scale to make the image the dimensions of the background you chose.  After that use the Z Trans and the Scale  until you get the background where you want and it fills your scene. 

The bonus of doing this is that the background will actually interact with the lighting as any prop does.  You  won't get  realistic "floor" shadows on the background though.  In order to get ground shadows on the "background" you would have to use something like Infinity Cove or Cyclorama.

What I tend to do is add my background on a square. Get everything placed as I want it. Then hide the background and render the rest using shadows, including ground shadows. Then hide all the rest and then render the background. This way the background takes on the same lighting as the rest of the scene.  Then in my graphic program I place  the scene over the background....now I have matched lighting and I have shadows :)

"there is a grey area surrounding the image"

That's what the preview usually looks like when you specify explicit render dimensions.

It's showing you the area that will actually be rendered. Resizing the window has no effect on the rendering area if you have specified an exact render dimension.

Acadia:
Thanks for the detailed response, it sounds like exactly what I am looking to do. But I am a materials room idiot. Would it be possible to provide a screen capture showing your set up as described?
The background is Spooky Backgrounds 3. It has many excellent pics.

Baginsbill,
that sounds like a good answer but that image had no render dimensions specified. I loaded an empty screen, added V3 and then imported the background. Thats it. Never went to the render settings to set a dimension.

Step 1:   Load a "single side square" in Poser.  You find that in  the Props library under "Primatives"

Step 2:   Click on the Materials Room Tab

Step 3:  Make sure you are in "Advanced Mode".  At the top of the working area there are 2 tabs: simple and advanced.  Click the "Advanced"

Step 4:  Also at the top of the window you will see "Object" and "Material". You can pick the prop or character from the drop down menu under "Object", and you can pick the desired material zone for that prop or character under "Material".  Using the "Object" drop down, pick the "Square" prop. It only has one material zone so you don't have to pick a material zone to use.

Step 5:  Right click in the working area and pick "New Node" and then "2D Textures" and then "Image_map"

Step 6:  In the Image_map node, where it says "Image Source", browse to your desired image. Once you have found it, click "ok"

Step 7:  You can click on the "Eye" icon in the upper right of the "image_map" node. That will display the image you selected.

Step 8:  There is a male plug icon in the upper left of the "image_map" node.  You need to plug that into the "Poser Surface Node"  See attached image

Step 9:   Go back to the Pose room by clicking the Pose tab. 

Step 10:   Using your parameter dials rescale the square using the X and Y Scale dials to the dimension of the image. IE:  1024 for X and 768 for Y  or 800 for both X and Y if you image is 800 x 800 pixels

Use the Z Trans dial to move the square forward and backward.   If you push it back you will have to increase the size of the square. use the "Scale" dial for that, not the "XY Scale" dials.

Here is a link to a thread that has bookmarks to material room tutorials and  discussions. I have grouped several beginner tutorials together at the top.  Have a look at those. A couple explain the basics of the material room.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2722867

I have a couple issues with this.

The connection to Specular_Color is doing nothing, because you have it set to black, resulting in no effect.

In any case, it is extremely unlikely that you actually want a specular reflection. If you had one, it would make it look like exactly what it is - a wall with a photo on it, instead of a 3-dimensional scene behind the figure.

I'm not convinced you want the photo to "interact with lighting". If you're using a spotlight on the figure, do you want to see the ring of light projected onto the background photo? Again, that would make it look like a wall with a photo on it.

I prefer to turn off all lighting - set Diffuse_Value = 0 and Specular_Value = 0. Then connect the photo to Alternate_Diffuse. If you want it darker, then decrease the white value on the Alternate_Diffuse to a shade of gray. Or to give it a different tint, put a non-gray color in.

I'll give that a try next time I use a background in the scene.

You are right about weird shadows and stuff sometimes making it look like a wall, so that's why I tend to hide everything and reder the background separately so that it catches the light and then I add the background in post work. That way I don't have weird shadows. I do the same with Cyclorama too most of the time because I get shadows on the back wall part that well, just looks like a shadow on a wall, hehe

Here is the new set up as explained by bagginsbill.  I notice that you don't see the image on the square until you render, which is ok.  If you need  to see the background while building your scene, do what is in this image but also connect the image_map node to the "DIffuse_Colour" node in the Poser Surface area.

Once you have set up your scene, go back and disconnect the "Diffuse_Colour".

Also, you can save yourself some time in the future by saving this set up as a material.

In the material room, click on the plus + sign at the bottom of the library.  Give it a name and save it as a single material.

The next time you want to add a background, just load your square in the Pose room. Go to the material room and look for the material you just saved.  Double click the icon.   Your image_map and poser surface settings will load.  All you have to do then is just browse to your new background image.  And resize the square as needed to meet the dimensions of the image.

Acadia,

You should always connect to Diffuse_Color, so you see the preview. It will NOT influence the render, because Diffuse_Value = 0.

Anytime Diffuse_Value = 0, or Diffuse_Color is black, the result is nothing at all.

Ok, thanks. I'll resave my material :)

Dear Bagginsbill and Acadia:
wow, thanks for all the effort you two put into resolving this issue. I'll certainly give it a whorl in the future. Acadia, very kind regards for the very detailed answer that kicked this off. I really appreciate that you took the time to answer my question in line by line detail. These seems like a great method to gain control of background images. It's this type of effort that really makes me appreciate the great community here at Renderosity.

Bagginsbill, despite my bit of a blow off on you it turns out that you did address the nub of my question. When I doubled checked my render settings I realized that at some point in time I had set my default to always render to screen size. When I switched it off I got the background image to load. Thank you so much because it allowed me to easily load up a background to finish off a picture that I hope to load tonight, one that I had about given up on.

Again, thanks to both of you for going beyond the call.

You're welcome.

The material room is a very daunting area and I didn't understand it at all until someone took pity on me and spent time with me in a chat program walking me through some of the basics.

And Bagginsbill is my mentor! Whenever I need help in the material room he's the one I go to. I don't think anyone know more about the material room than he does.

So I tried the background load following Acadia's final modifications. It certainly does give you control over the background and a totally different shadow affect... or lack thereof. Worth while playing with for sure.
One thing I noticed however was a signicant drop in the resolution of the backdrop. I attach here side by side images. There is a slight difference in placement of background between the two but I am sure that is not the issue. Perhaps a lighting tweak. This was just a 15 minute knock off excercise.

For sharper textures:

1. Turn off texture filtering on the material room Image_Map node. (It's the bottom parameter.)
2. Decrease render setting Min Shading Rate: .5 is better than 1, .2 is better than .5.

dang, I gotta start writing this stuff down...;) Tried Acadia's original method. Gave the background 'square' a more 'painted' look, but  that could have advantages as well. Thanks for the input.

Baginsbill
I bumped the min shading rate to .2 on a render last night and was totally blown away at what a sharper and more detailed image it produced! Thanks for the great tip.

I normally only import the background picture to get my lighting from the right angle etc. I would then render without the background pic and compose the whole in Photoshop.

That way you can control the amount of blur you want etc.

Horses for courses I suppose but why make life harder!

I also require that the object reveal reflections of the background, as I'm showing here. The chair would not look at all real if it didn't pick up the red curtain, which is a photo. How would you do that outside Poser?

I don't understand why it is considered "harder" to compose the image in Poser. In my opinion, "render, save" is less work than "render, save, open photoshop, load render, load background, faff about, save, exit photoshop".

So to continue with my newbie dumb question mode..... can you tell us how you get the object to reveal reflections of the background? This is all great stuff Baginsbill, I'm learning lots! I'm working on a scene with a big honking chrome harley sitting in front of a complex wall. I'd like to get some reflection of the wall on the cycle.

Attached Link: Cabaret Girl

Meanwhile, have a look at my finished render. (Follow the link). Contrary to what I said earlier, about not wanting shadows on the photo, this time I did want shadows on the curtain, which is a photo. It really depends on the situation. Also, I blurred the photo first before loading it into Poser :biggrin:

Examine the ball on the chair and the box on the floor. Both are using the shader shown. Observe that you can see reflections of the curtain in both. If I had used the curtain in post work, or used it as the Poser "background", we would not see this.

Chrome is almost a perfect mirror. It does not give off any diffuse reflection (smeared out reflected light) at all. It gives nearly 100% reflection of the world around it.

A Poser chrome shader is simple as pie. The Reflect node generates reflections of objects in the scene. This is why it is important that the photo be mounted on a one-sided square - so it is a part of the scene. But, the reflect node does not directly reflect our light sources. This is because light sources are not scenery objects. They are just mathematical models of where light is coming from.

The Glossy node is producing the pin-point reflections of my 3 spotlights. You can adjust the size of those reflections if you want the lights to appear to be bigger than pinpoints.

Be sure to enable ray-tracing, and set your bounces to at least 2 -  better is 4 or 6, in case we do more reflections of reflections of reflections.

Here I rendered with only 1 bounce. That means we can't see any reflections of reflections. The first-order reflections are fine, but any reflections of the balls appear to be black!

Look at the front of the square. It is showing a reflection of a ball. Nothing.

Look at the floor. Examine the reflections of the chrome objects - they are black.

If you cannot build an entire interior (a room) for your scene, you can fake it with an environment sphere. This is a gigantic sphere that surrounds your entire scene, and has a panoramic (360 degree) image mapped onto it. The best images are HDRI, because they capture the full dynamic range of the lighting in the scene, and it shows up great in reflections.

Here I've used an image of the interior of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. There are real lights in the image (in the ceiling) as well as stained glass windows. Because I have real lights to reflect from my scene now, I removed the Glossy node from the chrome shaders.

This looks way more real.

I changed the lights to match.

Attached Link: Free Orb and 20 decorative glass shaders

I used to post a material that was fair, although when I first made it I thought it was very good.

I recently did more research into the mathematics of reflections, particularly the Fresnel equations. In the past I would explain it all, but it's too obscure, so i won't.

What you want to do is just use one of my Orb glass shaders - the first one, Orb001_Opaque.

That shader is basically a smooth opaque glass shader, but it works well also as a clear-coat finished paint.

For comparison, here are two balls. On the left, my new orb shader with 100% accurate Fresnel calculations, with linear lighting and gamma correction. On the right, my old best paint shader.

Notice how the blue of the sky is totally lost in the old one, while the new one manages to capture it, even though the paint color is almost completely the opposite.

Follow the link to the thread where I announced the Orb (glass) shaders. The download link is there.

When you get farther along, and you want a metallic paint effect, come get me. You have a lot to work on already :)

This is going to take quite a bit to digest at my level but I can tell this is really great stuff. thanks for taking the time, I really appreciate it.

Hi - I was away. I'm back.

1. Not exactly the same - you have Reflection-Lite-Mult checked. Don't do that - turn it off. Its very important.

2. You're showing me the preview. Reflections do not show in a preview. They must be rendered - they take a long time. That's why people don't turn them on most of the time.

3. You must render with raytracing enabled.

4. You must have raytrace bounces at least 2 - better is 6.

5. You must have something to reflect. If the angle of the camera is such that nothing is seen in the reflections, move the camera.