Vray Sun/Sky with bitmap background

[OPEN_RANGE]

This seems like a very basic thing and I feel like I used to somehow use this but maybe that was before I started with vray.

I use basic linear work flow. In an exterior scene I use physical camera, vray sun/sky. I have vray sky in the Max Environment map slot and also instanced into vray environment and vray reflection map slots. On render I see the sky in background. If I turn off/uncheck the vray sky in the Max environment it still affects the render as before but I get black background and "perfect" alpha. So far so good.

I want to be able to show a bitmap/site photo behind my rendering. I want to be able to adjust my scene materials and lighting to match the bitmap background photo. I do not want that background photo to be affected by any rendering process or lighting or etc.

I tried putting the background photo into the Max environment slot. I instanced the map to the material editor and made sure it was set to environment screen mapping, still just renders with black background.

I see the background image button in the vray frame buffer. I click the button but nothing seems to happen. I can't seem to find any info in the vray docs on how to use this.

Any help sorting this out will be much appreciated.

[Alex_M]

For your particular situation I think it's best to use the "Background image" option in VFB as it isn't affected by color corrections. I have no problem with using "Background image" like the one you mentioned. After you activate it, do you also click on the arrow pointing downward? You need to click it and load an image. Please check my screenshot below.

[OPEN_RANGE]

Alex thank you so much! That's what I was looking for. I had no idea that background image was available in the vfb color corrections panel. I don't often use those controls and I just never noticed or knew that was there.

Thanks again!