The new way backgrounds are dealt with has ruined my workflow and is now very convoluted. Partly outlined in this post a while back: VFB Background offset - #6 by hermit.crab
I’m aligning a model to a background photograph to get a camera match. Previously I’d set the background, click “As foreground” and change the opacity to see through to the render layer. I can still click that option, though is says “deprecated”) but can’t change the opacity.
I now have to move the background into the Foreground folder to change the opacity, then move it to the background folder once done, then if more tweaks are needed switch it backwards and forwards to the foreground folder. When you’re dealing with 30 odd backgrounds this is completely unmanageable.
At some points I’ll also have a render up and want to quickly check a colour balance by against the photo so have to do the same process switching back and forth.
Can anything be done about this? It’s taking much longer now to a task that was relatively straightforward.
Thanks for the feedback! Of course our intention was not to make things more complicated. Explaining your particular workflow helps a lot! We will try to make this more straightforward.
I’m sorry to hear that you find the new workflow limiting - this was not our intention.
The main idea behind the Foreground and Background folders is to give you a way to compose an image either in front or in the back of your render and have it correctly affected by the Lens Effects and the Sharpen filter.
The legacy Background layer was always rendered on top of the post effects which was inconvenient in most cases.
Now you can also comp multiple images with alphas one on top of the other and position them precisely in the stack.
If I understand your workflow correctly the following might help:
Create an image layer on the top of the layers stack (outside of the FG/BG folders) and load your image file
Select the layer and create an Image Alpha Mask
Invert the mask
Now, toggling the Mask off should replicate the legacy As Foreground option. The opacity of the layer can be changed
That helps a little thanks, but it’s still frustrating in that I have to put it into the foregrounds folder, click the image, make the adjustments to the offsets, then click foregrounds folder to be able to change opacity, then back to the image itself where the rest of the controls are, and so on.
You don’t have to put the Image in the Foreground folder.
Just keep it in the regular layers stack as with the old Background - it’ll work exactly the same way.
And as Christophe pointed out, the opacity of each Image layer can be changed when you need it.
The Foreground folder is for images that you want to comp in front of the render and have them affected by the Lens Effects and Sharpen. In your case this doesn’t seem to be a requirement.
That’s done it, thanks. I hadn’t seen the opacity slider within the image options
There is another issue for your info - Using region render, resizing the window also moves around the background image - you can see the yellow selection window show up even though region render is selected so it seems to be picking up both.
To recreate- have a BG image selected in the layers stack, turn on region render, this unhighlights the BG image and allows resizing of thewindow, but then select a different element of the layers stack then reselect the background image. Now when you resize the window it moves the BG at the same time.
Thanks for reporting, this is most probably happening with the original region render. It does not with the multi-region region tool. It is of course fixable but soon or later it will be removed and leave only the multi-region render which can also create rectangle region.
Having used this a bit more now it’s still very frustrating. Changing the opacity was easier and quicker on the slider as it was before. I also liked the ability to be able to set the background image to foreground at the click of a button. That way I can quickly look at materials/lighting etc in the photo and make the adjustments to suit.
To do that I still have to move it backwards and forwards between the main stack and the background folder.
No you don’t need to move the layer to reach that behavior i.e. just have to click somewhere to toggle foreground/background. You just need to add and toggle an inverted image alpha mask on your image (assuming it is outside the background folder of course) - see screenshot.
By enabling or disabling the mask, the image will either be applied as a regular foreground layer or restrict to the alpha pixels (i.e. a background).
You can work on the image property tab and still have access to the “enable mask” checkbox in the tab list so that’s the same.
On the opacity slider, I totally agree. Tbh I don’t know why it was changed to a spinner. Note however you can still click and hold the spinner up/down arrow, then move the mouse up/down while holding to modify the spinner more interactively. I don’t argue that it is better than a slider though.
