Sphere As A Background Goes Black

lucartl

I've been trying for the last two make a sphere, and to put a pic as surface and put my scene into it. So I can pan around and take difeerent shots of my scene with a changing background. So far I made a default sphere, inverted the scale -100, reposition the sphere, put a 6000 x 3000 non spherical image, (I tried to use some spherical image that I made myself in photoshop, but i couldn't not see much of a difference) on top as surface, put my scene inside, make the sphere bigger, like -1000 scale. Then I tried to illuminate my scene more, with distant lights from the inside or the outside, but everything goes black when I am rendering. The only slider the seems to make thing better is the opacity one, even at only 90%. The problem is that as you turned opacity down, the image used as surface loose resolution. I mean, it make sense, but I was wondering if there is any way to make this work. If I don't try to put any more light i can stil render, but I would like my scene to be more illuminated. Thanks.

MelanieL

I'm guessing you are using Iray render engine? If so, the problem is that the light can't "see" through the sphere. There is a method to make this work described here: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/63014/yet-another-iray-skydome-technique

If you are using the 3Delight render engine then the answer is to select the surface of the sphere and set Cast Shadows "Off" - this ONLY works in 3Delight though.

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lucartl

Thanks MelanieL I'm going to try that. Yes, in Iray, sorry. I always forget to say that. If I fail I may try to send a messages to timmins.williams. Let's see. :-) The problem is that those instrutions are a little bit vague, for me, I mean. Do you know any of these products? http://www.daz3d.com/movie-maker-maestro-create-for-fun-or-cash  Apprently with this one you can cretae your own 360° degress background and use it in another product called, Movie Maker.

MelanieL

No, I don't tend to buy those tutorial video things - I've heard some people swear by Dreamlight stuff and others not being so keen, which is why I would suggest you try one of the free ones first to see if you get on with their style - go to http://www.daz3d.com/dreamlight then sort by price low-high and there are about ten of them. Also, if you're not in a rush, Dreamlight products used to turn up in flash sales quite often (not sure though when I last saw one) with big savings on price.

By the way, I'm sorry but I only drop into the forums once a day (maybe twice) for an hour or so, so I didn't notice your last post till now.

MelanieL

By the way, I found this in the forum - you may want to read it: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/73490/movie-maker-and-iray - it sounds like it's meant to work with 3Delight so you'd have the same problem as with your own images if you want to use the Iray render engine.

MelanieL

Back to your original question and I came up with this too: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/825330/#Comment_825330

It's a vendor here explaining how to use some of his 3Delight products (which use a cube rather than a sphere as a background) with Iray. It's quite well laid out so you might find it easier to follow than the other link I gave. His skybox (being a cube) has 6 sides, so where he's talking about setting north, east, west, etc you will only have a single surface in your sphere to apply those settings to. This method though won't work with Iray sun/sky or HDRI lighting like the Timmins.wiliam method, so you will probably have to add more lights inside the sphere to light up the rest of your scene sufficiently - use spotlights, point lights or mesh lights, not distant lights because distant lights come from "an infinite distance" outisde the sphere so won't do anything.

lucartl

Thanks. And sorry I did not reply to you straight away. I was busy on other stuff. There is a way to get a message when somebody reply to you? I couldn't find any. I'going trough all the suggestions you kindly gave me. I did try that package but it was not what I was looking for, so I had a refund. I have kind of put on a side the idea to jse a sphere as a background. At the moment I find that I can obtain a nice background creating a simple plane and apply a pic to it. Then I can move it, scale and rotate the way I want before I render the scene. Well it is not what I was trying to achieve, but it does actually give me better results and resolution. Will see. Thanks again. ☺

fixmypcmike

If you edit your profile and go to the Preferences you want to tick the box to get an email when people reply to your discussions:

lucartl

Thank You☺