camera match background

[mikeh]

I just switched to max 2015 and the latest vray. I need the render to include the image I have placed in the background that my scene is set to match. There used to be a place to check in the render dialogue that allowed that. Now I can't find it in the new dialogue UI. Am I blind? (most likely) or has it moved to some other place?
mh

[mikeh]

okay, I found (after hitting the "advanced button) where one unchecks the box in mapping to allow the background image to render. But that no longer allows the background image to render. I must be forgetting something. The background image is in the environment slot. What am I forgetting. Its driving me nuts.
mh

[mikeh]

never mind. apparently with Vray 3, one has to do a few more steps to get things to render. of course, the vray help was no help.
mh

[vlado]

Which were those steps?

Best regards,
Vlado

[mikeh]

drag the file in the environment slot to the material editor (instancing it), access the output, then increase it to some number that makes the background image visible. trial and error at that point. Maybe I had to do that in previous versions and just forgot. Can't remember having to go thru that before.
mh

[joconnell]

Ah yes.

Are you using the vray physical camera? If so it might be darkening your bitmap quite a bit, you can switch to advanced in the colour mapping tab and there's a tick box called "affect background" and that'll stop any colour mapping or exposure from darkening your environment map.

[Syclone1]

Cool beans, I was looking for that yesterday but couldnt remember where the heck it was lol.

Ah yes.

Are you using the vray physical camera? If so it might be darkening your bitmap quite a bit, you can switch to advanced in the colour mapping tab and there's a tick box called "affect background" and that'll stop any colour mapping or exposure from darkening your environment map.

[mikeh]

Ah yes.

Are you using the vray physical camera? If so it might be darkening your bitmap quite a bit, you can switch to advanced in the colour mapping tab and there's a tick box called "affect background" and that'll stop any colour mapping or exposure from darkening your environment map.

if you leave "affect background" checked, the image doesn't render. if you uncheck it, it renders (just very dark, as in black, unless you increase the output). I'm not sure what you are talking about.
mh

[joconnell]

Exactly that - affect background is the tick box that tells vray whether colour mapping or exposure will apply to your background plate so if you're using the physical camera with a very low exposure, there might not be enough intensity in a non hdr image to take the darkening that the camera applies. In terms of actually loading in an image to have in the background of your render though, that was never anything to do with vray and more a function of 3dsmax's rendering > environment dialog.