Question: How to create a Backdrop?

Kitti

I purchased the DG Easy Portrait Lights for DAZ Studio and I'm excited to use the backdrop shaders but I'm stuck on how to actually create the backdrop prop.

Can someone walk me through or point me to a tutorial on how to do this? I seem to be coming up empty handed searching for it on my own.

Is there a way to apply these shaders to a primitive plane? When I load one it's solid black, and even though I applied the shader and can see the bokeh icon on the Diffuse Color setting on the surfaces tab, the plane in the scene is still solid black. I did a quick test render and it's rendering it as a solid black surface.

Any help would be greatly appreciated - thank you so much!

JimmyC_2009

Are you sure that you have the Plane facing in the correct direction?

Try rotating it 180 degrees to check. You also need to select the plane in the Scene pane AND the Surfaces pane to apply the shader.

Kitti

Yes I selected it under scene then again under surface and like I said it it does load the image under the Diffuse Color and then the specular color changes depending on which background I load. I already checked the plane on both sides.

JimmyC_2009

I'm sorry, I don't have this set, so I can't test it for you.

Even if I render a shader with a supplied image using Basic OpenGL, it still shows me something in the viewport, definitely not black.

Have you tried just applying the shader preset to a plane without loading any of the supplied lights. Even with no lights in the Scene, you should still see the plane with the image on it.

Also, what version of DAZ Studio are you currently using (Help > About DAZ Studio will tell you the exact version)

jestmart

Generally you would apply the Diffuse texture to the Ambient channel with Ambient color set to white and Ambient strength set to at least 10% so the background is 'self lighting'.