How to do backgrounds without too much fuss

Subtropic Pixel

Hello:

I am doing an apartment scene and I need an outdoor background. Could be city lights at night; could be a garden, could be an ocean, or mountains.

I don't have a huge portfolio of outdoor scenes that I could use; so something fairly fast would be nice.

Also, the DAZ Studio "Background" feature seems to not work too well with photos. Moving the camera around inside of the room causes some weird angular behavior between the foreground subjects and the static "background". Are there other, better ways to use pictures or 2D art?

EDIT: I should clarify that I'm not trying to be chintzy on my background. It's just not the focus object of this image I'm working on and I've already put some hours into it (plus waiting for renders), so I want to prioritize it accordingly low.

Khory

You can always put a primative plane outside the window and put the image on that. I suggest you turn off accept and cast shadows on it. If you don't want to have to deal with lighting it set the image in the ambient as well and turn the ambient up so that it is "self lit".

Shayne

i like using hdri maps on spheres with shadows turned off (of the sphere that is.) use ambiance setting to achieve proper, well, ambiance. use translate/rotate/scale to place it properly.