Been using studio for years but really not as skilled as alot of the good artists. Anyhow, a bit frustrated regarding the way studio handles background images and was hoping someone might have a work around for the problem.  I try to use my background's as a means of showing depth in an image or the illusion of a forest extending into the distance. However in the newer versions of studio it appears that short of zooming out with my camera's I can't get my scene's to scale to the background. Is there a work around that any of you are aware of? I have tried background props. Yes they work but you really have to do alot of work with the light's to insure your not casting shadow's onto the background prop. Another issue and one that is far more work than simply having daz scale your background to work with whatever scene your creating. Well, I appreciate any and all tips..

Mark.

You could render your scene without the BG and save it with an alpha channel. Then load the resulting image in a compositing software like After Effects, set 3D layers and avoid all the issues with lights. Is this an animation or a still?

I only do still images.. And haven't as yet tried anything like that in recent time's.. Use gimp and photofiltre for most of my postwork but Gimp layer's pretty well so shouldn't be an issue. Though I'm new enough that I'm not certain what you mean exactly by an alpha channel. It used to be I would just set my background color to a color I could easily set as transparent. But that has it's own issues. Loss of color quality etc..

Mark.

The alpha channels is the way you store transparency information in a image. Consider that you don't have simply opaque or transparent pixels, a pixel can have any level of transparency. For example glass, see-through fabric etc. An alpha channel stores the information about the transparency level. If you don't set the BG in Studio and save the image in PNG or PSD, you will end up with an alpha channel that you can use to superimpose the figure over a new BG.
I'm not familiar with the GIMP but it can easily work for static image by loading the BG into a layer, load the Studio image in another and by blurring the BG with a Gaussian or lens blur, don't know if Gimp has it, to simulate Depth of field.
Once you get used to the workflow it becomes much faster and simpler than trying to fight with the lights :)

Quote - The alpha channels is the way you store transparency information in a image. Consider that you don't have simply opaque or transparent pixels, a pixel can have any level of transparency. For example glass, see-through fabric etc. An alpha channel stores the information about the transparency level. If you don't set the BG in Studio and save the image in PNG or PSD, you will end up with an alpha channel that you can use to superimpose the figure over a new BG.
I'm not familiar with the GIMP but it can easily work for static image by loading the BG into a layer, load the Studio image in another and by blurring the BG with a Gaussian or lens blur, don't know if Gimp has it, to simulate Depth of field.
Once you get used to the workflow it becomes much faster and simpler than trying to fight with the lights :)

Ok, make's sense.. Just mean's a change from jpg to png. Gimp supports most image types, and is similar to photoshop though it probably doesn't compare to CS4.Thnx for the assistance.

Mark..

Just FYI, PNG is part of the HTML spec, I believe since HTML 3.x but for sure since HTML 4. It's an open standard and OSS programs are big on supporting open standards :) Gimp will work great with PNG. The other great side of it is that PNG has built-in compression that is lossless so you get image files that are almost the size of JPG but without the degradation in quality. Lastly, because PNG compression is lossless, you can open a file, edit it and resave it without generation loss. If you do that with JPeg you end up with visible artifacts after 4-5 saves.

One thing you might want to consider though is that if you need reflections in parts of the subject to shown you will need to load that BG inside studio, apply it to a plane and place it around the subject so that eyes/glasses/reflective areas catch the reflection. This will help in "selling the shot" when you compose it in Gimp.

Good luck.

if you want to use the alpha channel for compositing, you must save the image as either .tif or .png format. bmp or .jpeg do not have an alpha channel.

Quote - if you want to use the alpha channel for compositing, you must save the image as either .tif or .png format. bmp or .jpeg do not have an alpha channel.

Yes, that I knew.. And as I suspected it will prove to be a postworking nightmare. Do you all render with antialiasing when you render that way? I can postwork alot of detail's that are screwed up in my images. The latter test image had some really nasty issue's that I usually try to avoid. Didn't do too awfully bad. But the hair alway's get's me.. Especially with a preset background color and flyaway in the hair. You can imagine what that would do when rendering with antialiasing on. Simple fact is long term, I want to become the best artist I can be. Antialiasing creates the best looking image's but not if I have to utilize transparencies to place over a background. I personally can't think of any easy way's to fix the issue. Perhap's it just show's the level of my postworking skills. They have a long way's to go to get to the level of some of the artist on this site. Come to think of it, I don't even know if Studio allows you to turn antialiasing off. My old Poser 4 did but compared to the new studio it wasn't the greatest to use and I couldn't use any of the new characters. Well, any further advice would be appreciated. I can attach an image of the postworking nightmare I rendered as a test, lol. It didn't turn out nearly as good as I'd hoped.

Mark.

Antialiasing is a must, you can improve the level of smoothness by increasing the image size beyond your target resolution. For example, if you plan on a final resolution of 2048x2048, rendering the image at twice that size and then downscaling in Gimp will bring smoother anitialiasing. You should not have any issue as long as the image is exported correctly.

> Quote - Antialiasing is a must, you can improve the level of smoothness by increasing the image size beyond your target resolution. For example, if you plan on a final resolution of 2048x2048, rendering the image at twice that size and then downscaling in Gimp will bring smoother anitialiasing. You should not have any issue as long as the image is exported correctly.

Hm, ok well my image was exported as a png and it didn't turn out too awfully pretty. Alot of pink scattered throught the hair and around the leaves of my willow tree.. The fog didn't help but that was the easiest fix.. I can pretty much postwork most of the issue's around the tree but the hair turned out pretty ugly. Tried to post an image but it was complaining about file size. Even after several resizes and reductions in quality. Anyhow, I'll continue to work on the issue's.. Do some trial runs and see if I can perfect the technique.

Mark,

Mark, what you posted is a JPG, there is no way we can analyze what the problem is in the PNG file if you convert iot to JPEG. Please post the original, untouched file. There is no reason for a color shift when saving the image from Studio.
If the image is too large use YouSendIt, it's free, just use the Lite version http://www.yousendit.com/cms/liteaccount

I've been playing around with backgrounds myself and have discovered a couple of tricks.  If you have the paper backdrops you can open one in your paint program and try using your BG image as a fill.  You can adjust the size of the BG image to fit the  panel.  Another way to do this is to open your backdrop panel in DAZ and then select it from your surfaces tab.  Browse for a background jpg you like and select it.  If it doesn't fit, fiddle with the horizontal and vertical settings until it does.  I've had great success with this method.  I hope you will, too!

Quote - Mark, what you posted is a JPG, there is no way we can analyze what the problem is in the PNG file if you convert iot to JPEG. Please post the original, untouched file. There is no reason for a color shift when saving the image from Studio.
If the image is too large use YouSendIt, it's free, just use the Lite version http://www.yousendit.com/cms/liteaccount

I uploaded that as I couldn't get my png image to fit within the upload requirements. I will upload it to my soon to be non-existant website and post a URL. The only difference between the two images. One has transparency the other has a black background and thus show's the pink that exists in both images better. From most of the tutorial's I've ever read they usually postwork the hair after the render. Even in poser I had to render antialiasing off. The only way I could render for animations and eliminate the color bleed issues.

Cabbieg: Yes, I've used background's successfully in studio. But I have never been able to successfully use a background with a ground plane successfully in the new studio as your background cover's the entire back wall of the scene. Not from the ground plane up. Thus you must zoom out so far to get it to line up with the ground scene that you would end up rendering ants in the distance as it were. If you decide to move your scene forward after that, the camera changes with the scene putting you right back at the start. In one of the older images of studio I managed to use backgrounds with a ground plane successfully. When done right it look's great and save's alot of unneccesary work. And my render's almost alway's include a background as a backdrop for the main scene as I like to do garden or fantasy forest type images.

Mark.

p.s. I will get the original png URL posted later.