can the Default grey ground plane be hidden/ assigned a texture??

Brycescaper

I have a scene with a tropical island (Ultimo Paradiso, by AM) that I removed the coral bottom, ocean and skydome, and replaced the ocean with Polish's Large Sumer Yacht ocean and the sky with DA's Palm Island Iray dome. It worked beautifully, I now turned Ultimo paradiso into an Iray scene. Beyond the ocean I can still see the grey default plane stretching to however large the skydome is. I tried covering it by increasing the diameter of the LSY disc to meet the edge of the skydome, and the grey is still visible. I tried lifting the entire scene off the ground. I grouped the sea and island, and the group had a Y "elevation" of -1252. I zeroed that out so the camera at 39 Y elevation that I saved with the scene would have a working Y position 1252 units above the ground plane, at 1291. I render and the ground is STILL visible. Is there a way to (a.) hide or (b.) assign a texture (the LSY ocean) to the ground plane so I don't have this gray stripe at the horizon?This grey plane seems to be infinite but its not as far as i can tell a selectable asset, it's not listed in the scene. Bryce's ground plane was an actual selectable infinite plane that I could assign a water texture to to create an ocean that went to the horizon or hide completely. Is there a way to merge the texture into the background at the horizon? I'd rather not 'tilt' the sea as I do spherical renders and half the horizon might merge into the skydome but the other half would be an even thicker ring of grey.  "Hiding" the entire 360 degrees with other objects at the edge of the LSY water plane would burn valuable RAM, so I've already discarded that idea. One difference I've noticed between Bryce and DAZ Studio is that there are no size 'dimensions'. I have no idea how big the water plane (a disk) is onless i take a camera and translate it to the edge. As far as real-world 3D, Bryce has DAZ Studio beat in infinite skies (not to mention HDRI, which I haven't seen in DAZ for skydomes) and selectable infinite planes that can actually be assigned a texture... I don't do dragons or droids or elves, I create scenes with natural outdoor elements and DAZ is so inferior to Bryce in this respect its amazing DAZ has decreed Bryce as abandonware. Skydomes that are actually textured spheres and the lack of infinite planes that simulate reality are two of the reasons I've always thought Bryce to be superior to DAZ, Iray and dForce nonwithstanding. I'd love to be a convert to DAZ but there is so much of REAL 3D elements that are missing for me to take it seriously.  I model environments, not elves. Skydomes are a joke to a Brycer, its not natural lighting like HDRI skies are. Anyway, I digress. I have no idea how to get rid of this pesky ground plane because in theory it shouldn't be showing up in the first place if its not listed as an asset in the scene.

 BTW, in my render settings/environment/ground the "draw ground" setting is currently OFF. If there is a ground, is it selectable and be given a texture?

Richard Haseltine

The grey is an absence, not a presence, I think. What you might try, in Render Settings>Editor tab>Environment Group, is setting the Dome Mode to Finite Spehere and then lowering it via the Dome Origin Y parameter.