Backgrounds not saving anymore
Hera
Posts: 1,958
Hello!
Since the arrival of 4.7 the backgrounds I add to the images are not saving. Very annoying. Over Friday and Saturday I made 30 small images in a serie with a set of backgrounds and when I opened them y-day to add the final touches the backgrounds were gone on every single one, and I had to start all over, very frustrated since I had no system for the naming standard so there was no way of remembering which background went where. Took me hours to fix before I could begin to render. Then I closed them all and began opening them up one by one to render - and - OMFG the backgrounds were gone again. That was when I almost hurled the laptop out through the window.
So please is there a way to fix this - or is - oh horrors - the ability to save backgrounds gone with the arrival of DAZ 4.7?
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Comments
What format are you saving the images in, and are you setting the backdrops in the Environment pane?
I don't have an answer for you, only wanted to say I'm so sorry you had to waste so much time going back and trying to get this to work. I can't imagine how frustrating that was. I'm interested in hearing what caused this to happen, that's for sure!
Doesn't happen here (saving as Scene).
But I think it's strange that if you add the background before you add anything else, it disappears when you add the first figure, so you have to add it again.
I am sorry for you!
Don't break your laptop!
I never had this ... and I am often using Backgrounds - in DS4.7 too.
I had read this earlier in the day and while checking out some things in the preferences menu, saw that you can change how backgrounds are opened/saved. The screenshot shows what mine are (must be the default as I've never changed them). I have recently added background images to several scenes and they reopen fine.
I save them as *.duf and I use the environments because the earlier, much more convenient way, to add backgrounds is gone (Edit/Backdrop), since 4.7 so now I have to struggle with the environment pane all the time. And it's when I open the .duf file to continue working on it the background has disapeared.
And since the option under Edit is gone I'm also afraid that the ability to save a background is not possible anymore.
I mean what format are you saving the rendered images in? If it's a format that supports alpha channels like .png, can your 2D graphics program show the background?
Where is this pane/window? In environment?
Where is this pane/window? In environment?
Edit > Preferences > Scene
Where is this pane/window? In environment?
Easy as 1,2,3 Navigate to "Windows-->Panes-->Environment" to show(or not show) the "Environment" pane. Then using the Environment pane select "none" to get nothing behind your figures when you render. Or select the colored "background" and orientation of any "backdrop" options.
Oops, well, maybe not. My 1,2,3 sequence is for showing or not showing the non-mesh background and/or backdrop
Whereas the keep or not keep the backdrop image between sessions option is in the "Edit-->Preferences-->Scene" dialog
Thing is the background shows in the render just fine when I do them.
It's when I use a background in a picture that I save and close and then when I open it again, the background is not there anymore. It's like the picture file is no longer retaining the link to the image I use as a backdrop, just using it temporary as long as DAZ is open. This problem started with 4.7 when the Edit/Backdrop option was removed.
And in Edit > Preferences > Scene under "Backdrop Image" you have the Ignore box unticked and the Record box ticked?
Are you saving as Scene or as Scene Subset?
Excuse me - are you saying the rendered PICTURE is loosing the background?
Are you saving as png?
png format has information about transparency - try opening it with Irfanview or something else to see whether it really lost the background.
Agreed, image formats that handle multiple layers like TIFF and PNG handle transparency as a separate "channel" (the "Alpha" channel) and can combine it with the image layers in different ways. Different applications handle transparency differently. Some display a blacked out background (eg: Quicktime Viewer), some display a white background(eg: Windows Photo Viewer), and some (eg: XnView) have a transparent (or checkerboard) background or user selectable color. But most will display the base layer (backdrop) image IF it is there.
Sophisticated image editing and/or display applications give you the option about how transparency in multilayer images is to be handled during display. Basic image display applications often don't give you the choice. For example: different web browsers also have different philosophies about how transparency should be handled.
Another multilayer image format is Adobe's PSD format but PSD is a very full and complex image format. So not everybody handles PSD format by default for free. Microsoft for example. (Although, I suspect that the absence of support for PSD format in Microsoft products is more political than technical)
Regarding your issue with unvisible backdrops. I also am not sure exactly what your problem is but it probably boils down to one of these.
1) DAZ options to keep the background in the scene between DAZ sessions.
2) DAZ option to not create a background in the output image. (double check your DAZ render and image output options)
3) An image display application that doesn't handle transparency the way you expect.
Edited to take my foot out of my mouth:
DAZ has changed the way it handles transparency. If the "Environment" dialog specifies a background color or background image then apparently no Alpha channel is created and you can not easily mask out the background image and no separate background layer is created in the multilayer format.
In the "Environment" dialog be sure the "Active Type" is "Backdrop" and the "Visible in Render" option is "On" Select your backdrop image with the small square icon at the left of the "Background" pull-down (background color doesn't matter). Alternatively, don't select an image, but just establish a color for a plain background.
The advanced options menu pull-down for the "Environment" dialog also lets you adjust the correspondence of your scene size or aspect ratio to the selected backdrop image.
I may have to quit here before I get fatal foot-in-mouth disease. And please don't ask me to explain the difference between a "channel" and a "layer". I know what it is but my brain seizes up if I think about it too much. 8-o
PS: Also be sure you understand the difference between a "background" and a "backdrop". Even if I make a mistake in talking about them which is not unlikely.
Ah... another thought has intruded into my nap time. These rendered images that you say are missing the backdrop image, were they created by an earlier version of DAZ Studio? Point being I'm just not exactly sure what your situation is. Can you post a link to a complete image file so that someone can look at it to see what it actually contains? Or post screen shots or describe completely the settings of the DAZ dialogs we've mentioned?
And, as I understand it, if you need an alpha channel of your scene elements along with a visible background image, you need to do two renders. One with, and one without the background visible in render.
Based on my quickie experiments this morning I'd say you are right. Rendering with the "None" Environment setting will produce an Alpha channel to produce a transparent area outside of the rendered objects. But rendering with a "backdrop" selected does not produce an alpha channel and shows either simple color or a selected image. To get a multi-layer image with a background layer and an Alpha channel you'd have to use something like Photoshop to combine the two renders. One to get the transparency information the other to get the image information "behind" the transparency. Ghaaaaa...... Somebody please say this isn't so. Please.... DAZ engineers, did you guys think this through completely before you made the change in Studio4.7?
That being said, I've only been experimenting with DAZ's PNG output format not the more complete TIFF format. I was reading just a few minutes ago that the official PNG format specifications treat Alpha channels and transparency in a rather limited way compared to TIFF. And interestingly enough, an "Alpha" channel in a fully complex multi-layer image format like TIFF doesn't have to be transparency information at all and there can actually be as many as 56 different "Alpha" channels containing color information! 8-o See why my brain seizes up when I get too deeply into "Channels" and "Layers". Arghhhhhhh....
I believe Carrara has some interesting abilities for using "Alpha" channels for things other than transparency.
I never figured out the 'why' but save only in TIF format. Never PNG. Mainly because explorer and Irfan View treat them differently as does Photoshop. TIF is just easier to work with in my experience.
The only problem with TIF is that studio doesn't support lzh compression with TIF so I just load into Photoshop and save compressed which, I think but have never really studied, results in smaller size compression wise than PNG.
Pardon me, if I'm unclear here, but what happens is this:
1. I create a pic with a background in
2. I render the pic - and the background is there all right in the render and also later in the final pic
3. I save and close the pic
4. The next day I open it up again to make a second render with some minor stuff altered. Like another figure or prop or somerthing. And then the background from earlier is not there anymore, the link is severed. So I have to add the background to the picture again. After that I can begin rendering.
Now, the work around is of course to keep re-adding the background all the time I re-open stuff, but that's a bit dreary. I can also skip the background and add it later in photoshop or some other pgm because of the new transparency function, but that's not optional of course, because then I don't have the same control over the final result as with a bg added earlier on.
This problem started when the easier way of adding a bg using the Edit/Backdrop option was removed. And of course I'd love to have it back. So I wonder if it's an error or if it's simply a removed feture.
Yeah, I almost always render to TIF format just because it's so close to PSD format. I've been experimenting with PNG because it was mentioned early in the thread.
The TIF compression is, I believe, a proprietary algorithm and fees need be paid to use to include it in your image editing application. Same type of thing as Dolby audio noise reduction license fees. Without a good free compression algorithm for TIFF, a lot of TIFF images end up being stored without compression and that eats up a lot of space. Photoshop does include the TIFF compression.
It's been mentioned before, but to keep the background you must go to a separate place. Edit menu-->Preferences-->Scene (tab along the top of dialog) and under heading 'Backdrop Image' do NOT check 'ignore settings when opening a scene file' and DO check 'Record settings when saving a scene file'.
That's the dialog in 4.6. I don't know if it changed under 4.7.
(Edit forgot to quote for clarity)
Yeah, I almost always render to TIF format just because it's so close to PSD format. I've been experimenting with PNG because it was mentioned early in the thread.
The TIF compression is, I believe, a proprietary algorithm and fees need be paid to use to include it in your image editing application. Same type of thing as Dolby audio noise reduction license fees. Without a good free compression algorithm for TIFF, a lot of TIFF images end up being stored without compression and that eats up a lot of space. Photoshop does include the TIFF compression.
It's something I'm too lazy to look up right now, but I thought the unisys proprietary compression thingy ran out, expired, or whatever, a few years ago.
Here's what that dialog looks like in DAZ Studio4.7
It's something I'm too lazy to look up right now, but I thought the unisys proprietary compression thingy ran out, expired, or whatever, a few years ago.
Yes, you're right. Cool! The bru-ha-ha over having to license the LZW compression algorithm led to the creation of the free PNG format as an alternative. But in 2003, twenty years after the LZW patent was filed in the US, it expired. It has now also expired in other countries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lempel–Ziv–Welch
The LZW compression algorithm is a "lossless" compression scheme. i.e. no information is lost either compressing or uncompressing the image.
It's an old post, but I still have the same trouble, and found there are some ways to solve it.
I don't know if it's perfect.
1. Change View mode to "Texture Shaded".
2. Create new scean. (File-> New)
3. Load file with Background image.
Judging from the situation, it may be a problem when loading the IRAY settings.