hi there

could please somebody tell me what i got to do when i want to take a simple background image (a jpg or bmp etc) so that im rendering my character(s) in front of a pic of notre dame or stuff?
Must sound very strange but when i see my ready scene with the model in the front and i add a background pic, i can see it but when i start rendering its not there anymore...

Can you help me?
Thank you sooo much

Stef

I always add my bg pic in postwork.... its much clearer I find..

Im rendering atm or would check the settings for a bg pic as I cannot remember off the top of my head.

If you do decide to add the bg in postwork, make sure you render on a black bg ( change backgroun colour to black) and save it as a png or a tiff.

Did you check the render settings? On the right side of the render settings dialog there's an option called Render Over.
The default setting is Current BG shader, you can change that into Background Picture using the dropdown.

I always have trouble with that too.  It seems more trouble than it's worth.
Even when I can get the picture to show up in the render, often times
it doesn't match the dimensions of the render and I get a white border
on the sides or top and bottom.
Instead take a single sided square (in props/primitives) and then take
it to the material room and put your image on the square.  Then scale
the square up to the size you want your background to be.

(Don't use the double sided square, you will get a weird checker board pattern)

Quote - I always have trouble with that too.  It seems more trouble than it's worth.
Even when I can get the picture to show up in the render, often times
it doesn't match the dimensions of the render and I get a white border
on the sides or top and bottom.

The borders are easy to get rid of. Just make sure your document window size (your workspace) is in direct proportion to your render dimensions and your background image. The borders appear when you use a 1600x1200 image as a background for a piece set to render at 1600x1280 for example.
My standard setup uses a workspace of 800x640, Render dimensions will be 1600x1280 or 3200x2560. So long as its a direct multiple of my workspace. Any background image I import needs to be in the same proportions. So a 1600x1280 background. (Or larger. 2400x1920 for example.) Anything else will produce unrendered borders.
Other than that just remember to select 'Render over Background Image' instead of over background colour in Render Settings and you should be good to go.

 Hm I seem to remember this as a known issue in Poser 7 (hope that's what you use...)

The solution is to Render over Current shader, then plug the picture in as a Image Map there.

That also helps on the white border issue,

thank u all there, u are fantastic. helped me a lot by now!!

have a nice time!!

ps: also thx for the png hint...shall i take black as background color and then make that black the transparent color or...? how did u do that? are there no problems with the borders of the cut-out figure?

bye bye

Stef