I'm toying with the idea of making some skies and background images/landscapes to go with a new product.

But what environment/ skydome do people prefer?

Or are plain background images easier to work with?

Opinions?

Lyrra

BB's Envdome

Daz Cyclorama

A picture pasted on a primitive square

... pretty much in that order. Depends on what I need and what I have on hand or can get.

All three, depending on what is most suitable for what I am rendering.

BB's Envdome as well as the included dome in Daylight Studio at RDNA.

BB's Envirosphere. I use it ALL the time. In fact, I have it set up in my default scene ;).

Laurie

I'm starting to experiment with using BB's envsphere, for IDL and background reflections, combined with a background plane.

Along the lines of the method BB has been touting recently... except I've made a slightly concave rectangular background plane and have been experimenting with rendering partial spherical panoramas in Vue to project onto it.

Kind of like and IMAX screen I guess?

Attached Link: SkyDome

People tend to ignore or forget the stuff that ships with Poser, the relevant props on this occasion being the 'GeoSphere' and 'HemiSphere'.

Having said that, it's BB's EnvSphere for about 95% of my scenes, the one-sided square as and when required.

I just tend to use BB's dome and sphere props, over the Poser primitives, because his are preloaded with the shader...

I think I may have read something BB wrote about the Poser prim mapping not being that great? But that was probably not about those current Poser primitives anyway...

BB's Envirosphere

PJZ's RenderRoom

And a Paper Roll backdrop that I made.

Just DL'd the SkyDome linked above... looks pretty nice.

glaseyes skydome from the link above. He/she has some great sky textures for it as well

Quote - BB's Envdome

Daz Cyclorama

A picture pasted on a primitive square

What basicwiz said - with the addition of:

Render with transparent background, for compositing externally;

and for indoor scenes, nearly everything starts out with my Basic Backdrop Box - and many scenes end with it too, suitably textured. 

Quote - ...Along the lines of the method BB has been touting recently...

BB's EnvSphere

What are the latest things being "touted"?  (it's hard to keep up)

Oh, and postwork backgrounds, so plain images are great!

Quote - > Quote - ...Along the lines of the method BB has been touting recently...

BB's EnvSphere

What are the latest things being "touted"?  (it's hard to keep up)

Basically, just going with a flat plane and standard image for your actual scene background... but use the envsphere still to provide IDL light bounces and blurred / distant reflections (i.e. reflections that aren't actually going to be decipherable)... recent thread here:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2856213&page=2

I guess BB's point is that for many occassions the approach he's demo'd there is ample...

I was planning to make my background prop a little more expansive, than a simple flat rectangle, purely because I want more options when I'm playing around trying to come up with a composition I like for my actual Poser scene... and I'm developing a way I can work using Vue to generate my skyscapes etc.

I use pretty much all of the above, plus an old skydome from my runtimes from 3d worlds, which also has a pretty good simple and sd ground plane and water zone.

I use my own Skydome most of the time, unless the scene is completely inside with no outdoor views.

I also have a few outdoor sets that come with their own skydomes but I usually substitute my own.

Also have SkyGen, which is pretty good for dramatic skies.

i enclose my scenes in a jumbo cube primitive as a raybouncer.

my favorite purchased skydome is the one from the in_Wavecutter set.

not a fan of bg images

I have a prop from RDNA that I use often, its like a photo studio backdrop, I use Daz cyclorama, a half sphere, a flat plane and a image loaded as background or simply render with a ground and no background and fill in in photoshop.

I use a lot of interior sets so those dont need anything else.

Vue or something modelled :)

The Terradome at RDNA is awesome.. :)

None. I think you can always tell when you use those things and they all tend to flatten out an image. The domes/orbs etc are fine for extreme close-ups or panoramas, but it flattens out anything in-between. I do use backgrounds to fill the glass of a window or a cracked doorway, however. 

Quote - The Terradome at RDNA is awesome.. :)

I 2nd Terradome! :)