importing an image

alisa53

If I have a jpg or png file of an image, is it possible to import that to DAZ to use as a shader?  Say for example I have a jpg file of a texture I like and I want to apply that to the surface of a plane that would be used as a background wall?

Sevrin

What you can do is create a plane, resize it until it is the same aspect ratio as your image and then, in Surfaces, load your image as a diffuse map with white as your base colour.

Bartleby

If you look at the Surfaces tab with any object in your scene selected you will see where the images are that make up the materials covering that surface.

To put an image on a plane:

• Create the plane and make sure it is selected.
• Click the Surfaces tab to open it.
• Make sure you are in the Editor (another tab at the top of the surfaces tab)
• Select the default surface under the 'Plane' object on th left of the surfaces tab.  You will see all the settings to the right.
• The Base Colour is the one you want.  Click the down arrow and choose Browse from the menu that apears.
• Browse to the desired image and select it.

Thats the basics, there is a lot you can do there to change they way it looks.

Taoz

For backgrounds there's also the built in DS Backdrop:  select the Environment tab and then Backdrop from the Dropdown/Combo Box.  By default it's colored and you can change the color, or you can click the arrow button on the Background field and browse to the picture you want to apply, or choose one of the other options.

Contrary to a plane the DS Backdrop is not affected by scene lighting, which can be an advantage or not, depending on the context.  A disadvantage is that it adapts picture size to viewport size, so images may be stretched or shrinked vertically/horisontally if they don't fit exactly.