How do you add a night sky into a scene?

[R.Stewart]

Hi there, I've trolled the internet to try find the best way of adding a night sky background and can't find anything useful. I'd love to here some examples of what you might do.

 

Can you put a bit map on a box and make the stars glow?

[beestee]

Many ways to do this, but the easiest is after rendering. Just put a photograph of a night sky behind your render in photoshop or your image editor of choice. The easiest way to do this is to save the rendering out of Max with an alpha channel in a format that supports it. I use PNG for this most of the time myself, just check "alpha channel."

[Gary Ledgerwood]

In addition to what Benjamin said, if the background photograph that you choose to use doesnt have enough stars for your liking, there are a bunch of free star type brushes for photoshop. http://qbrushes.net/objects/star-brushe/

 

Check here for skies... http://cgtextures.com/textures.php?t=browse&q=23740

 

The point here is that night skies can be convincingly added in Photoshop.

[R.Stewart]

Oh dear, my last reply didn't come through.

 

Thanks a lot for the star brushes they are great. So what is the best technique for getting rid of the 3ds max sky in photoshop? Do you know a good tutorial to check out? Or one on how to use the PNG file.

 

I understand that the PNG will recognise transparency but I don't know how to use it. I can use them in max for cutouts but not in photoshop. I tried using the background eraser but it didn't handle trees too well.

 

Thanks for the help so far guys

[Gary Ledgerwood]

We could assist you better and make more informed suggestions if you could post what you have so far.

[R.Stewart]

Ok well for night time scenes I guess the star brushes in photoshop would be the most efficient.

 

So what about adding a sky to this shot in photoshop. There are a few palm trees that seem hard to erase around. The scene is pretty incomplete so any other suggestions wouldn't go astray as well.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]42994[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]42993[/ATTACH]

 

Thanks guys

[Fooch]

If its a still, which i think it is..

Save your output and the render elements out with alpha. (ala, tiff , tga at 32 bits or png.. i personally will use a TIFF at 16 bit for more colour range etc for a still, tga if size is a problem)

 

There should be an alpha channel in your file. Use it and mask your image and voila.. any sky.

 

Learn up matte shadows as well so you can use it for the ground bits (vray is slightly different where you mod the vray properties or apply a material wrapper.)

[Stan Zaslavsky]

you can also look into ProEXR as a way of getting your image out in higher resolution or my plugin of choice for inputting a sky - psd manager

[R.Stewart]

Save your output and the render elements out with alpha.

 

Hey mate thanks for the advice. I'm sure it's easy once figured out. It's all new to me though.

 

So what I've done is gone to

 

Render set up>common>render output>save file as .tiff with alpha channel box ticked. That's all good.

 

Then to Render Elements>add>alpha>render Then I get this "the path of the following render elements have either an illegal character in it's path or file name or the path does not exist" This is the path renderoutput\alpha.tif Nothing wrong with that yeah?

 

I also tried just saving as a .tga and going straight to photoshop went to channels>alpha1>selected channel>select>inverse>deleted selection>created new layer bellow>placed sky Still just a black back ground!! (had turned environment off in max)

 

Sorry can you tell me if I've gone wrong somewhere?

 

Thanks buddy.

[padre.ayuso]

For me, once in photoshop, I have to double click the original layer, then click OK on the tab that comes up, which basically unlocks it. Then when you delete the selection that you have produced with the alpha channel, you should get trasparent background and not black! I hope that helps. If not, then somewhere on your Photoshop settings, you have selected to have a background color, change it to transparent, or whatever it is the setting, as I don't remember this now. Review your help file for Photoshop, should be able to find it. I think all the other steps you have done before are correct though!

[R.Stewart]

If not, then somewhere on your Photoshop settings, you have selected to have a background color, change it to transparent, or whatever it is the setting, as I don't remember this now.

 

haha well I couldn't find where to change the background to transparent but I did find a way around it. Instead of selecting the inverse (background) I just selected everything but the background and hit copy>paste then I had a new layer with only the scene objects. Made a new layer for my sky to go on and it worked. Not sure if this is a dodgy way of doing it. It looks a bit dodge around the trees. do I need to feather it out? I'll attach it.

 

I'd really like to get the render elements problem sorted out. Stan if you know of a place to download PSD Manager for free can you send me a link. That looks amazing.

 

Once again I know the scene is very bad but this post is all about cutting around the trees

[R.Stewart]

ha forgot to attach it. It looks a bit orange and unnatural around where it's been cut.

[R.Stewart]

wow matte shadows are amazing fooch. What a powerful tool that is.

 

Just for anyone in the same situation. Bringing down the tolerance of the anti aliasing down to 10 and leaving the alpha channel turned off got a nicer cut with no orange. There are many ways to skin a cat.

[Stan Zaslavsky]

your sky is a bit distorted - look at the clouds - they should probably be a bit less stretched "down"

 

i dont think psd manager is offered on a free trial - but its been a great investment for me as i use it all the time.

 

have a look also at ProExr - apparently its a cheaper alternative and when you render out .exr you can go to 32bits so its pretty high resolution and quality to work on later in PS. PSD manager on the other hand outputs it straight to a .psd file.

 

cheers

[R.Stewart]

your sky is a bit distorted - look at the clouds - they should probably be a bit less stretched "down"

 

Yeah I know the whole scene is busted. I figured out how to cut the background out neatly and easily which is the main thing. I also found some pretty cool cloud brushes here http://www.brusheezy.com/Brushes/2187-24-Clouds if anyone is keen.

 

I'll have to wait till I have a few more clams in the bank to get proEXR or PSD Manager

 

With the Star brushes, learning how to use alpha channels, shadow matte and psd manager. I've learned a lot from this thread.

 

Thank you all!!