hi all,

I'm in the process of checking out all Poser options. While investigating background things, I ran into the Display: Use Background Shader Node menu option.

For me (PPro2012 64bit) it doesn't do anything, no preview or render is affected whatever the settigs of any background / BG node in materials room, or what.

Does anyone out there has some clues for me?

Thanks in advance.

the hell if i know, i have wondered the same thing myself...

 

JAFO

That is because by default the bg-color is connected to the bg-shader node. Use the Materials settings to change that; in the object menu, choose "Background" and connect any other node to the color of the Background-node. For example a clouds-node to get a photorealistic sky (see illustration).

TY Milli...

 

:O)

@millighost

yeah, I know all that. BG Color, BG Picture and BG Movie show up in the preview when connected to the Color parameter in the Background node, in various cases BG Color even shows up in preview when not connected to the Color parameter, and BG Picture can show up when connected indirectly - via intermediate nodes like color_math.

Most varieties make sense when selecting the Render over... options in the Render settings, even the other parameters in the background node become active then.

But whatever I do, the Use Background Shader Node option in the Display menu has no effect at all, nor on preview, nor on render. So I still keep longing to an answer to precisely the question I stated: what does this menu option really do? Who knows?

Note that the option does not come up in the manual, and is only mentioned vagely in the Poser 6 (7, 8) Revealed book. Also Google does not reveal more interesting references.

Quote - @millighost

yeah, I know all that. BG Color, BG Picture and BG Movie show up in the preview when connected to the Color parameter in the Background node, in various cases BG Color even shows up in preview when not connected to the Color parameter, and BG Picture can show up when connected indirectly - via intermediate nodes like color_math.

Most varieties make sense when selecting the Render over... options in the Render settings, even the other parameters in the background node become active then.

Hm, i used poser2010, where the background setting does what is supposed to do (like described earlier). Does not show in the preview, though, but they fiddled with the preview rendering in 2012. Anyway, i think as far as the rendering goes, it should do the same as 2010.

Quote - But whatever I do, the Use Background Shader Node option in the Display menu has no effect at all, nor on preview, nor on render. So I still keep longing to an answer to precisely the question I stated: what does this menu option really do? Who knows?

Note that the option does not come up in the manual, and is only mentioned vagely in the Poser 6 (7, 8) Revealed book. Also Google does not reveal more interesting references.

But it is in the reference manual. It is in a section called "Firefly Options Settings" (page 304 in the 2010 manual). What do you mean, btw, by "no effect at all"? Does it mean, it simply uses the setting you used before?

millighost,

thanks for your response.

I understand the nodes in Materials Room (Background, BG Color, BG Picture, BG movie and Black) and the way they can work together, and can be enhanced by additional nodes.

I understand the four options in Render settings, and how they interact with the mentioned nodes in Material Room, and what they do with the render result.

I understand the File | Import | Background Picture and AVI Footage menu options, and the Display | Background Color, Show/Clear Background Picture and Show/Clear Background Footage menu options, how they interact with the mentioned nodes in Material Room and what they do with the preview.

Then I click the use Display | Use Background Shader Node menu option, and it gets checked and unchecked. But whatever I do with the mentioned nodes, the Render Settings or the other mentioned Display menu options: this Use Background Shader Node does not make any difference to anything.

And although the Background nodes themselves are properly dealt with in manuals and things, this specific "Use Background Shader Node"menu option is not mentioned in the Program manual, nor in the Tutorial manual.

It scores 7 hits on Google, two of them concerning Maya and one in Japanese.

A German reference suggests that hardware accelerated previews are able to show the background in preview but one might want to switch it off. My PPro2010 test reveals that the background picture also shows when the preview is switched from OpenGL to Sreed, and keeps being shows when unchecking the Use Background... menu option.

A ref to the "Poser 8 Revealed" says: To enable the designated background shader, choose the Display, Use Background Shader Node menu command. Enable as in: rendering.but again, tests reveal no effect, checked or unchecked: same result.

A third ref: I looked in "Poser 6 Revelealed" and it said something about a menu option, "Use Background Shader Node".  But that option is always disabled for me. Which does not help me further.

A 4th and final ref suggests effects on background transparency in the rendered result. But whatever I try, the background always shows up in the render result (precisely the way I select it), and is exported to BMP and is never exported to PNG or TIF, whether the Use Background... menu option is checked or not.

Hence again: what does the Display | Use background Shader Node menu option effectively do? Is it obsolete (since Poser 6?) or did I miss something in my investigation?