I output all my still images for catalog as tifs with an alpha channel.  I have a scene that has a surf wall in the background so FG has an environment to bounce some light off of. Is there a way to have the surf wall effect the environment, even reflect in my shiny materials, but not render in the background of the image?

The reason I ask this is because right now I have to render one image with the surf wall to get the lighting I want, and another without the surf wall to get my alpha channel.  ...Just trying to avoid the double renders.

TIA

Dean

Max Design 2014 / Win 7 Pro
Xeon E5-2687W @ 3.10 GHz (x2); 64 GB Ram; Nvidea 4000 and GTX 570

Hey Dean,

Right Click on the object you do not wish to render.

Go to ‘Object Properties’.

Turn off ‘Visible to Camera’ in the ‘Rendering Control’ area.

Loads of other options there to play with.

Cathal

Use the environment/Background Raytype Switcher. This will let you have one colour/map for the background and another for the environment - lighting and reflections. If you are using a Background plane for reflections, use the Matte/Shadow/Reflection Shader with Environment/Background Camera Map.
For more detail look up mr Production Shaders. There is a PDF with Max and a Few topics in this forum.

Thank you both for the input!

Max Design 2014 / Win 7 Pro
Xeon E5-2687W @ 3.10 GHz (x2); 64 GB Ram; Nvidea 4000 and GTX 570