Need Clouds to reflect but..

I have a photo of a site that I need to use as a background. I have it setup as a Flat and have set the y postion to align it. The problem is that leaves nothing to "reflect" even if it is checked. What I need are some clouds in the sky to reflect in the windows of a building.

An automatic sky with the option for random clouds (and how many) would be a perfect feature. then you could use the Sky reflected if off and still have a flat background image.

Or an option for a forground image that can just be reflected..

Since we don't have either yet.. Any ideas how I can do this? Any help is really appreciated..

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Permalink Reply by Simon Loisel-Goudreau on June 9, 2011 at 7:38am

I actually posted a thread exactly like that a couple days ago:

http://irendernxt.com/forum/topics/background-reflexion-on

Thing is, there were a couple good ways to do it but I Found out that just using photoshop with the eraser and magic wand while having the background image as the layer under your render does the job.

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Permalink Reply by Mark Bauer on June 9, 2011 at 7:47am

Simon,

Thanks for the reply

I had tried all the same things in the thread! (nice reality check).

Was your final solution a "photoshop" one?

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Permalink Reply by Render Plus on June 9, 2011 at 8:36am

We use a "manual" background by default to solve wome ghosting problems we had when viewing the background through windows. (There is a rumor that this problem has been fixed and that we can switch back to the automatic background as the default)

You can turn off the manual backgrounds on the support dialog - which is available from the More Setup Tab.

Then reflections may work - I haven't had a chance to test them since Richcat made that suggestion in the other thread.

We also have been considering having a program to create a HDRI sky with computer generated clouds This would let you create your own HDRi's of any resolution. (It would be surprising if no one had a function like thjat already)

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Permalink Reply by Render Plus on June 9, 2011 at 9:01am

Did you try using any of our HDRi skies with clouds?

You can make the sky invisible, but reflective (and perhaps make the background non-reflective) in order to see the reflections.

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Permalink Reply by Mark Bauer on June 9, 2011 at 9:24am

Al,

I tried the HDRI but it drowns out the Background image that I need to use. But I'll give this a try. Also

Way back in my Accurender days it had an option to automatically generate clouds and sky.

Al Hart said:

We use a "manual" background by default to solve wome ghosting problems we had when viewing the background through windows. (There is a rumor that this problem has been fixed and that we can switch back to the automatic background as the default)

You can turn off the manual backgrounds on the support dialog - which is available from the More Setup Tab.

Then reflections may work - I haven't had a chance to test them since Richcat made that suggestion in the other thread.

We also have been considering having a program to create a HDRI sky with computer generated clouds This would let you create your own HDRi's of any resolution. (It would be surprising if no one had a function like thjat already)

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Permalink Reply by Render Plus on June 9, 2011 at 10:04am

Make sure the sky is off - and set for reflection only. Make sure background is not set for reflection.

Here is a sample I just made - with the HDRi sky reflecting in the dome, and the background visible.

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Permalink Reply by Mark Bauer on June 9, 2011 at 12:57pm

Al,

Now that I'm thru the deadline.. I went back and tried this method. Maybe its a scaling issue, but if I do this I get no reflections in the windows at all. The background still shows up as it should. FYI - to get thru for today I put a giant face 1000'h x 2000'w filled with a cloud pattern in the distance and got the reflections needed by playing with material pattern scaling. But this all will still need more experimentation. Thanks again for all your help.

Al Hart said:

Make sure the sky is off - and set for reflection only. Make sure background is not set for reflection.

Here is a sample I just made - with the HDRi sky reflecting in the dome, and the background visible.

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Permalink Reply by Render Plus on June 9, 2011 at 3:00pm

When you want to test this try a small model like mine and include a mirror dome - the dome makes it much easier to see if the reflections are there. Because there are many other things that can get messed up - transparency of windows, angle of reflection of windows, etc.

I always include a dome while testing because often we don't get the results in windows we expect.