I am trying to render an object against a photograph background and trying to get the right shadows and lighting.  I went out and took some pictures and stitched them together to make a panorama.  For the background, I also took some pictures of the point where I was standing.  Now I'm trying to figure how how use the panorama I made to create the proper lighting so that if I render a shiny reflective object, the reflection on the object will show the panoramic image.  So how do I do this and do it with proper shadows?

Quote - I am trying to render an object against a photograph background and trying to get the right shadows and lighting.  I went out and took some pictures and stitched them together to make a panorama.  For the background, I also took some pictures of the point where I was standing.  Now I'm trying to figure how how use the panorama I made to create the proper lighting so that if I render a shiny reflective object, the reflection on the object will show the panoramic image.  So how do I do this and do it with proper shadows?

Panorama? Unlikely you'll get the right lighting.

Use an env sphere for the lighting, and the panorama prop to display your image on. Try for a similar image on the sphere so the lighting will appear to be from what the viewer sees.

The only reason to use a panorama to display an image is if you

-- 1) use a focal length of greater than 25 and
-- 2) want the background image to show up clearly

otherwise, use a high-quality image on your skydome/sphere. Bagginsbill has full, detailed instructions on how to accomplish that on his site.

Panorama with sky image, sun in sky appearing to be somewhere over right shoulder, moved the sky image in the dome to that location, and inf light to that location. Kinda works.

Kinda.

Here, I am using BB's EnvHemisphere with the Panorama applied to it and a background image applied to the background node on the default ground material.  I have one diffuse IBL light with the same panorama applied:

I got the reflection I wanted, but it's only half way. And there is no shadow.

Now I change the EnvHemisphere to the EnvSphere and this is what I got:

The background image is gone and I still don't have any shadows.

Oops.  I said something wrong.  The background image was actually applied to the background "Object" in the materials room.

I placed a plane under the spheres and had Shadow_Catch_Only checked for its material properties and rendered with the IBL light with depth mapped shadows turned on.

Now if I could just make the Envsphere disappear and replace it with a picture of the ground where I was standing while taking the pictures, the reflection should match the background correctly.

In Poser Pro 2012, you can make the environment sphere invisible by unclicking "visible in camera" under the properties tab.  I've been using the enviro sphere with a panorama image to help with lighting, rendering over a non-pano version of the same image as a background, and it's come out pretty well, overall.

Success!!

I placed a plane under the shadow catching plane and unchecked "Visible in Raytracing" for the bottom plane.  Now all I have to do is orient the bottom background plane so that it directly faces the camera and then adjust the shadow catching plane to match the background image and I should be able to properly render reflective objects against photo backgrounds now!

Quote - In Poser Pro 2012, you can make the environment sphere invisible by unclicking "visible in camera" under the properties tab.  I've been using the enviro sphere with a panorama image to help with lighting, rendering over a non-pano version of the same image as a background, and it's come out pretty well, overall.

Thanks for the tip.  But I'm using the old of Poser Pro.  But that will be useful once I upgrade.

Not too bad, eh?   I'm using bagginsbill's shadow catcher shader here.

Nice!

Didn't even think of that one. Good work!