hello. i’m trying to learn a bit about putting objects into a photograph. i’ve got a background image in my viewport and the same one in my enivornment. i’m using mental arch&design chrome preset on a teapot. i have a matte/shadow/reflect on a plane sitting under the teapot.

for the teapot, i’ve added an environment/background camera map to the environment within the chrome a&d. i’ve added the same background image as the map in the env/bg cam map.  here’s my result.

i’m not sure exactly what’s going on here, but i’m not sure i’m doing this right. in my teapot material should the environment be an environment probe/chrome ball image? ps. i don’t have a chrome ball image matching what you see in this render.

thanks,

Max Design 2011 & 2012 | Windows 7 Pro 64-bit | HP Z600 | nVidia Quadro fx1800

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Yes, Chrome ball shader is the best solution; put into the reflection slot of Environment/Background switcher. If as you said you don’t have chrome ball image,
putting the background image as spherical map into the reflection slot of the switcher
could be a solution as well.

ivan

thanks.  so i think i have the general idea now on a process. the help file helped a lot! they even had a tutorial of it.

so i’ve got:

Env/Background Switcher in my Env/Effects > Env map. This has been instanced to material editor where the background has the Env/Background Camera map, where my bitmap is.

In the Env/Reflections, I have the Environment Probe/Chrome Ball which has the same bitmap (this is where i could choose map and then bitmap and use spherical but instead i just have the bitmap image).

I’ve instanced the Evn/Background Camera map to my matte/shadow/reflection for the shadow planes.

Now, see the attached two images. One of them, I dropped in some wineglasses and put a a&d material with the solid glass preset (not physical). The glasses are very visible and pretty much reflect white.  The 2nd image, I used the Env option inside the a&d material, bitmap>screen mode (and made the glass more blue to make it easier to see).

So now my question is, given that i’m not using an actual chrome ball probe, for glass refractions, it seems to me that the better option is to use the Evn inside the a&d material. Meaning, it looks better. Oh, I also upped the IOR on the glass to like 2.5 otherwise the background just shines strait through.

Max Design 2011 & 2012 | Windows 7 Pro 64-bit | HP Z600 | nVidia Quadro fx1800

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grue 22 April 2011 11:19 AM

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So now my question is, given that i’m not using an actual chrome ball probe, for glass refractions, it seems to me that the better option is to use the Evn inside the a&d material. Meaning, it looks better. Oh, I also upped the IOR on the glass to like 2.5 otherwise the background just shines strait through.

This is a usable option if you are happy with the result you are getting.
In case there is no chrome ball image, I personally prefer to put HDRI spherical map somewhat similar to the background image into the reflection slot of the switcher.
In your particular case (big distance of the camera) the reflected image is not that important you can use just anything. Must look good and if something looks good it probably is: a rule of a thumb in this business. :)

ivan