Incorporating background pictures
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I did that recently & I just created a plane, positioned the plane how I needed to to be positioned for the camera position during render, converted the surface to iRay (although I'm sure you can use 3DL surface as well), loaded the background image to the plane surface on the Surfaces tab, scaled that image to be the correct size, and rendered.
It is now under the Environments tab...if it isn't open, you can access it by Window > Panes/Tabs > Environment. And click the arrow where it says "None' to change it to Background and you'll find your options there.
Thank you guys. And thanks to MJC. I'd never have found that. Thanks again.
One perhaps small thing I noticed was that if you use a physical background -- like a wall or some other background model (there are a few), or a primitive plane-combined-with-an-image-or-texture -- then figures or other objects in placed in front of it will cast a shadow onto it by default. The straight background image in the environment pane as of DS 4.8, or as the edited "background" in DS 4.6 did not display shadows.
In some cases rendering to TIFF (it's one of the choices) can give a transparent b.g. so that at a good enough pixel size you can layer figures to wherever you want them in an image editor. In Iray though you can have a bit of shadow as part of the figure layer. This can be included if it helps the scene, or you can progressively cut it away as you like.
The forward TIFF layer, or layers, may also be manipulated to add drama to the edges. One example might be some gentle bevelling accompanied by a fuzzed-out drop shadow.
In this "chick and egg" experimental render the two main objects (G2F and an egg) were TIFF renderings laid one at a time onto a flat texture image (the sand) that was applied to the morphing plane found in Maclean's "Everyday Morphing Primitives". I actually continued to play with this for a while and I got the "distant" sand areas smaller, fuzzier and generally more realistic.
Anyway the TIFFs both cast soft shadows onto their transparent layer when rendered in Iray. No problem - I merely cut a lot of the shadows away.
P.S. Some of my renderings were a bit grainy in Iray... no problem with "sand" because it is grainy by definition. For the nice smooth legs and egg surface I simply gave the process more time for a higher quality render.