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Trying To Use A Photographic Background – Not A DAZ Backdrop – For A Tower Scene

mysecretidmysecretid Posts: 10
in Technical Help (nuts n bolts)

I’ve been at this for about six weeks now, scouring the internet for tips and techniques, but definitive counsel has been vanishingly thin.

I’m trying to take a sequence of renders set atop a tower.

The fact that you have a view of the surrounding area from the top of the tower – at least in the initial render -- is a story point.

Normally, one would use the DAZ Backdrop feature for something like this, but while this is perfect for a single render, the fact that Backdrops instantly re-align themselves whenever you move the active camera makes them unusable for a series of renders taken from different angles.

For those who don’t know what I mean: if your initial Backdrop shot from the tower set shows a mountain in the distance straight ahead (north), the beginnings of a forest to the left (west), and a shoreline to the right (east), as soon as you move your starting camera, or switch to a new camera angle, the Backdrop image will realign itself to the new angle.

If you shoot left (west), for example, the mountain will now be centred on the left; the shoreline will be to the north, and so on.

Basically, DAZ Backgrounds can be great for realistic looking one-off renders, but they don’t work if you’re shooting a series of renders around your set.

I also tried making an HDR skydome backdrop, but the HDR process also wanted to incorporate the top of the tower itself (the “ground” for the characters in the scene) into the HDR, which created problems and limitations when moving the characters around the set, or setting up basic interactions between the characters atop the tower, or the objects on that set.

Recently, I’ve been chasing a more “old school” DAZ solution – trying to setup large primitives (rectangular shapes) around the set and basically attaching high-quality background images to them so that the surroundings of the set look plausible from inside the scene.

Unfortunately, properly creating such primitives within DAZ, and then “attaching” the images to these primitives is not spelled out anywhere I’ve been able to find.

I’ve tried to study certain DAZ assets which use high-quality photos on primitives for backgrounds, but I’m obviously missing some crucial details of the process, because the images never look as intended when implemented by me, if they’re even visible at all. I’ve adjusted and experimented, but nothing seems to work as intended.

So, thank you to anyone who’s actually read this far, and if someone has any thoughts on how to acquire the desired results, I’d be grateful to hear them.

Any sort of workable solution to this problem will have my gratitude. Cheers!

Comments

  • felisfelis Posts: 6,278

    A picture of what you are experiencing might help the understanding.

    But for a plane with an image, you must ensure that the size of the plane matches the image relatively. And after you have added the image in Base Color, you also want to add it to Emission (set color to white) with a moderate to low value in Luminance/Luminance Unit, e.g. 10-30 kcdl/m2 (I can't remember a good value), and adjust as needed.

  • jmucchiellojmucchiello Posts: 1,270

    I find leaving the plane square and modifying the h scale and v scale in geometry easier. Even if the image wraps on the plane, the plane should be placed such that the edge of the image isn't seen. 

  • garrett_3dgarrett_3d Posts: 290

    mysecretid said:

    For those who don’t know what I mean: if your initial Backdrop shot from the tower set shows a mountain in the distance straight ahead (north), the beginnings of a forest to the left (west), and a shoreline to the right (east), as soon as you move your starting camera, or switch to a new camera angle, the Backdrop image will realign itself to the new angle.

    If you shoot left (west), for example, the mountain will now be centred on the left; the shoreline will be to the north, and so on.

     

    I don't have this issue with either backgrounds or skydomes - they stay exactly where I put them. Do you have them parented to your camera?

  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 40,832
    edited May 10

    you need a cyclorama shaped like a bowl or half bowl

    I made my own from a sphere flattened on the base spherically UV mapped for panoramic images but a half one could take wide angle images

    there are cycloramas in the store but most are just curved planes

    the Millenium environment is somewhat like I described but has a separate terrain base

    https://www.daz3d.com/millennium-environment

    you can load your own wide images (photos or renders) on it and add cutout opacity maps (using an image editor to make sky black and rest white if photos)

    I use it surprisingly a lot

    Post edited by WendyLuvsCatz on
  • jmucchiellojmucchiello Posts: 1,270

    A dFormer can easily curve a plane.

  • mysecretidmysecretid Posts: 10

    Genuine thanks to everyone who responded to my initial post! I'm truly grateful for all the kind help.

    In the days since I first posted, I managed to put together an "old-school" style background consisting of the photographic background image attached to a rectangular plane. Unfortunately, it suffers from the very problem which made renderers move away from that type of solution and toward HDR skydome solutions -- it just doesn't look convincing enough when all is said and done.

    With work and postwork, the set could look passable enough in a single render from a single angle -- but since I need to shoot a full scene, from different angles, it reads as false fairly quickly. The light, in particular, just does not match convincingly between the set and the surroundings across a series of shots.

    I think I'm going to have to look again at creating an HDR skydome environment around the tower set. Maybe if I modify my approach, I can get that to work this time?

    The only other solution I can think of at this point is to shoot the entire render sequence with transparent backgrounds to the renders, and then (somehow) try to add in convincing backgrounds with postwork background shots merged through Affinity Photo. My postwork skills are not professional-grade, more like "ardent amateur", but I'm running out of options to create this necessary story section, and I've already lost six weeks trying to solve this unexpected difficulty. Wish me luck!

    I'll answer each of the people who took the time to answer me specifically below. Again, I do appreciate everyone here who reached out to help. Thank you!

     

  • mysecretidmysecretid Posts: 10

    felis said:

    A picture of what you are experiencing might help the understanding.

    But for a plane with an image, you must ensure that the size of the plane matches the image relatively. And after you have added the image in Base Color, you also want to add it to Emission (set color to white) with a moderate to low value in Luminance/Luminance Unit, e.g. 10-30 kcdl/m2 (I can't remember a good value), and adjust as needed.

    Thanks! I didn't attach a picture simply because nothing I've implemented beyond using DAZ Studio's "Backdrop" feature has even remotely worked as intended, and the tower-top set is simply a standard DAZ set against the default grey void of DAZ. There's "nothing to see here" as the saying goes, and that's sort of the problem. :-) I tried the "image on a plane" as you suggested (thank you!) but it didn't look realistic enough across a series of shots and angles. I think my only way left to go forward is to try again to create an HDR skydome for the surroundings, that I can then use in the tower scene. We'll see how that goes. Be well!

  • mysecretidmysecretid Posts: 10

    jmucchiello said:

    I find leaving the plane square and modifying the h scale and v scale in geometry easier. Even if the image wraps on the plane, the plane should be placed such that the edge of the image isn't seen. 

    Thank you! As above, I found that using background planes mounting a photographic image just didn't look plausible across a series of renders taken from different angles. The light in the images always looked false on some level, even when tweaked. I imagine this is why DAZ renderers generally moved on to HDR skydomes for backgrounds in multi-image scenes, but it could certainly be a failure of my own skill level. I can only do what I can do, however, but I do absolutely appreciate your counsel in my search for a solution. Cheers!

  • mysecretidmysecretid Posts: 10

    garrett_3d said:

    I don't have this issue with either backgrounds or skydomes - they stay exactly where I put them. Do you have them parented to your camera?

    Thanks, Garrett! I suspect we're talking about two different kinds of background/backdrop in DAZ3D here.

    When I was talking about a Backdrop (capital B) in my scene, I was referring to the Backdrop feature in DAZ Studio, specifically, not just a standard background. It's kind of a hidden feature.

    If go to the Environment tab of the Scene section of your scene in DAZ (i.e. not the Render Settings section) you'll see a drop-down at the top that you can toggle which reads None initially. If you click the toggle, you'll see a choice which reads Backdrop. You can select a picture from your drive and drop it into that slot by clicking on the left spot.

    This chosen picture will then become a background image for your entire scene, so long as you have iRay switched on.

    The problem (in my case) is that this Backdrop image instantly reorients itself to whichever direction your active camera in pointing at the moment. There's no parenting involved, it's simply how the Backdrop feature seems to work.

    The irony, in my case, is that the Backdrop feature works pretty much perfectly for my scene, except that I need to shoot from more than one camera angle, which breaks the illusion, because the same view is shown in every direction.

    Thank you for trying to help me out. It is very much appreciated. Be well!

     

  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 40,832

    I often save my camera sequences to render the backgrounds separately afterwards 

    Ultrascatter and lots of planes with images of foliage with matching cutout opacity go a long way in filling out a background, there are plenty of those in my library including from the named Millennium Environment addon textures , open cylinders with transparency mapped hills, Stonemasons backgrounds from his sets 

     

  • mysecretidmysecretid Posts: 10

    WendyLuvsCatz said:

    you need a cyclorama shaped like a bowl or half bowl

    I made my own from a sphere flattened on the base spherically UV mapped for panoramic images but a half one could take wide angle images

    there are cycloramas in the store but most are just curved planes

    the Millenium environment is somewhat like I described but has a separate terrain base

    https://www.daz3d.com/millennium-environment

    you can load your own wide images (photos or renders) on it and add cutout opacity maps (using an image editor to make sky black and rest white if photos)

    I use it surprisingly a lot

    Thank you for your suggestions! As above, I didn't have much luck with attaching a photograph to a primitive plane, in that the image never looked convincing enough, lighting-wise, no matter how I tweaked the lights/emission, or how I shot it.

    I expect that a cyclorama, or a similarly curved shape, might be better for realism, but I freely admit I'm not good at working with shaping primitives in DAZ, so I will probably have to go another route. I did look for ready-made "shaped" cycloramas for DAZ online, at your suggestion, but couldn't find much on offer that I could tweak for the needs of my specific scene.

    I think, for now, I'm going to have to look at trying to create an HDR skydome enronment for my scene which captures the sky and surroundings, but which leaves my tower-top set alone. Here's hoping I'm up to the task! :-)

    Thank you for offering your help. It's definitely appreciated! 

  • mysecretidmysecretid Posts: 10

    jmucchiello said:

    A dFormer can easily curve a plane.

    Thank you again, but I must confess, I'm currently terrible at working with dFormers. I understand the theory of how to use them, but I'm embarrassingly bad at implementing them. No talent for the tools, I guess. Thanks anyway!

  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 40,832

    finite dome keeps it relative to camera movement 

  • garrett_3dgarrett_3d Posts: 290

    mysecretid said:

    Thanks, Garrett! I suspect we're talking about two different kinds of background/backdrop in DAZ3D here.

    When I was talking about a Backdrop (capital B) in my scene, I was referring to the Backdrop feature in DAZ Studio, specifically, not just a standard background. It's kind of a hidden feature.

    If go to the Environment tab of the Scene section of your scene in DAZ (i.e. not the Render Settings section) you'll see a drop-down at the top that you can toggle which reads None initially. If you click the toggle, you'll see a choice which reads Backdrop. You can select a picture from your drive and drop it into that slot by clicking on the left spot.

    This chosen picture will then become a background image for your entire scene, so long as you have iRay switched on.

    The problem (in my case) is that this Backdrop image instantly reorients itself to whichever direction your active camera in pointing at the moment. There's no parenting involved, it's simply how the Backdrop feature seems to work.

    The irony, in my case, is that the Backdrop feature works pretty much perfectly for my scene, except that I need to shoot from more than one camera angle, which breaks the illusion, because the same view is shown in every direction.

    Thank you for trying to help me out. It is very much appreciated. Be well!

     

    Hidden - that's why I've not found it yet. 

     

    Toddles off to check..... 

  • garrett_3dgarrett_3d Posts: 290

    Just tried it with a random background photo of my track bike. In perspective view or camera view, it rotates everything added to the scene around on the central axis. The background itself remains static and the view of it never changes.

     

    I suspect what you may need to do is use a backdrop prop with custom image, which is what I assumed you meant initially.

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