Background image issues, help me please!

[matt318]

Hi all, i am going a bit mental trying to fix this issue and would love someone to put me out of my misery. My viz at the moment is an interior scene with daylight system and interior lighting, from the inside you can see out of some of the windows. As you can see out of the windows i would like a background image to be rendered, usually i green screen and PS stuff in the background as i have not had time to figure out how to fix this issue but i dont want to have to do this anymore as you do not see reflections from the glass and it looks physically wrong.

 

What i have done so far is to drag an instance of the MR sky from the environment and effects box into the mat editor and attach an image with some trees, sky and grass to the background map slot. In the bitmaps parameters at the top I have changed it from texture to environment. When i render i see the background and it all looks ok.......My problem is i cannot see the background unless i render, if i tick the box in the 'use environment background' box in viewport background menu the it all goes white. How can i see the background image before rendering? Please help me someone, before i throw something at the screen! lol

 

3ds Max 2012

[D@VE]

not sure exactly whats wrong

but i am am guess before you 'use environment background'

you need to go in environment and effect- under common parameters click "use map"

 

i am guess that is what you are missing.

[matt318]

thanks for that ken, have that already checked, have spent most of this evening on this problem and think that the only way to do this is to load the exact same background map into the background source in the viewport background menu, seems to work ok but i seems like it is not the proper way to do it....never mind at least it works

[D@VE]

hmm...sorry could not be more helpful

[vincentg87]

Hi,

 

Have you tried importing the image into Views->Viewport Background->Viewport Background (ALT+B) ?

 

i'm not sure if the image will be physically accurate in the viewport background but it's worth a try.

[Corey Beaulieu]

I don't do this very often and I'm not at the computer to double check, but if you've gone the alt+b route and selected the proper options to view the background in the viewport, you may be missing the environment mapping altogether. In the map itself you need to set the mapping type to environment and to spherical. You'll want to make sure your image is on the top and the bottom is all black so that you get the horizon setup. But it should work. If you in PS double the size of your canvas and slide the image of a sky or trees to the top and put a black fill on the layer behind it, you should get a proper map type to use. You get also use screen but this would make the backplate in all camera views the same.

[matt318]

I dont want the background image to be the environment map as it is reflecting too much blue into my scene, i just want it to be a background (spherical would be best scenario) and i want the MR sky to be the environment map. I can set it up to be like this, the problem is i cant preview the background as i am setting up cameras, as everything show up as white. There is no option in the alt+b (viewport background) to view a spherical background, so there seems to be no way of previewing what will be rendered.

[v1ncent87]

Another way that i use to do is to built a cylindrical shape around the scene and apply the background image as the material.

 

Make sure that under Object Properties to disable Receive Shadows and Cast Shadows. This will make sure that the object will just become a "ghost" visible in the rendering but not affecting your lighting.

[matt318]

Thanks for post Vincent, that is a good option but I was having issues with the image not being lit enough, might try it again but change the material to an arch and design and make it glow using the self illumination map, that should give better results I think, will have to keep tweaking the glow setting when adjusting lights I guess, which is annoying, I really hate cg lighting at the moment.