Digital Art Zone

I’ve downloaded some free pre-made scenes that include props, a pose and a background. In most cases, I can get the props and the pose loaded into a project, but I can’t figure out how to get the background scene loaded. Truth is, I can’t even find it in my content library. A lot of the things I’ve downloaded come in a Runtime folder that I copy into my content folder, and the background scene is usually in a .jpg format, but Daz doesn’t seem to want to import or open that type of file. Do I need to do something with the .jpg file before I can use it in Daz?

Thanks.

Nevermind - I think I just figured it out. God, I hate when I ask a question like this and then I’m looking around in Daz and stumble on the answer to my question.

You add the Background jpg to one of two things. First you can just load it into the DS Background, Edit Menu/BackDrop then pick your jpg and it will load as your DS background. Or create a primative Plane and use Surfaces to ADD the jpg as the Diffuse image.
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I prefer the second method because I can scale it and move it to be where I want it.
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Hope that helps.
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MANY EDITS: You beat me to it I see…

Well, I suppose you could say I ran into another problem when, after I figured out to get a bg scene into the project, I did a test render, and the bg did not render - only the prop and the posed figure. Well, what you suggested about making a new plane and adding the jpg to it - that may solve my new problem. It seems like you figured out my new problem before I did, LOL!

Edit: You might have to help me out here - I got a new plane in there, but how do I go about adding the .jpg image to it? You said use Surface to add it, but I’m lost…

If you save as png or tif the Background will not be rendered. It will instead be a alpha channel that is transparent. Try your render as a jpg.

I rendered it as a .jpg, and voila! - the image looks as it should, bg and all. Thank you very much for the advice and help!

Edit: Now I just need to tweak it a bit…

You may be able to tell your image editor not to treat the alpha in PNG and Tiff files as transparency but as a mask. In general PNG and Tiff are better as they don’t sacrifice quality, though saving a render as jpg and then saving as something else before editing shouldn’t present a major problem.

Very Welcome. And as RH points out for postwork in a 2D prg like Photoshop you could get better results with a mask. I was just trying to get your image to render. I’m not a postwork or 2D pro, most of my stuff is right off the render.

Jaderail - 28 May 2012 04:58 AM

Very Welcome. And as RH points out for postwork in a 2D prg like Photoshop you could get better results with a mask. I was just trying to get your image to render. I’m not a postwork or 2D pro, most of my stuff is right off the render.

I don’t know what sort of post work people do with their images, unless they’re going in to add special effects, but so far all my renders are just, as you say, right off the render. I just set up a scene, some props, a pose, do some lights and shadows, get the angle how I want and hit Render.