[puppet]

hi i just wanted to know how you can get rid of the image world background when you do a hdri renders. i see so many hdri's with pure white backgrounds. maybe i just followed the wrong tutorial. heres what i always get....

[colto]

dont think that u can take the background out of Image world. Instead go into the surface properties, click the enviroment tab, set the reflection options as raytracing + spherical map (or just spherical map if u dont want it to reflect other objects in the scene) then select your image that u wish to reflect. Presto hdri renders without the background.

Note: Your image must be a spherical map for this to work properly though it will still work with a planar image, if the objects reflectivity is high (around 75% or greater) than u will be able to tell that the reflection map is jacked up. Otherwise it shouldn't be noticeable. Hope this helps. Post if u have any more ?'s.

[puppet]

thanks it worked great.

i have another question though. When it comes to the global illumination settings i always use the same ones e.g

- ambient intensity - 9%
- interpolated
- enable radiosity
- shading noise reduction
- rays per evaluation - 6 x 18

are these ok or is there a rule of thumb for different materials?

[colto]

sounds perfect, if u really want to concentrate on getting slightly more realistic renders then u could turn off ambient intensity depending on how the scene is lit. If u make any more good scenes using HDRI then post 'em.