Background picture ?

[Helinet]

I have a nice (jpeg) photo of Andromeda galaxy. I'd like to put that galaxy to the night sky in my picture using "Background - Surface shaders - New shader - image map shader". But all I get is a beautiful starry night sky without a galaxy. How could I do that ?

//EDIT

A picture added. There, where now is just stars should be the galaxy

[dandelO]

Are you using 'through camera' projection, and have it set to use the correct POV camera?

[Helinet]

Are you using 'through camera' projection, and have it set to use the correct POV camera?

Uh oh... I don't know. I'm a complete newbie with this TG2. Where can I find these settings ?
Does TG make this background image to fit the screen automatically ?

[dandelO]

In the projection settings of the image map shader. Choose 'through camera' and select the render camera for it(or another of your choosing that's set up to fill the screen.

Image map shaders should automatically be set this way at defaults, though(without a specific camera being assigned, that is).

[Helinet]

There it was ! Now the picture is visible as it should be. Thank you very much !

[tempaccount]

I guess this thread isn't old enough yet for me to make a new one..

I'm trying to make something very similar, but I can't seem to get my image visible at all. I have made a new Image map shader and connected it to the surface shader of the Background node. I can see the image properly in the *node* preview when I don't select a projection camera for it, but regardless, nothing ever shows up in the preview window or actual render.

[dandelO]

Using the 'colour function' of the shader doesn't really give you any results because that colour(I assume) has to travel through the atmosphere etc. before it reaches the camera. I never see colour from this method, anyway.

If I need to use an image background, I'd put it into the 'luminosity function' of the 'default shader' I use for the background node, that way you'll see it show up in the preview/render windows.

* Using 'ray trace everything' isn't a good idea if you're doing this, especially for stars, they're so small and the background sphere doesn't benefit from the ray tracer, your stars won't show up. *

[jaf]

Why don't you render with the atmosphere off and then using photoshop or equivalent, cut out the black area which would be the sky, and layer in your background?

[tempaccount]

Thanks Dandel0, that luminosity trick worked great for my purposes! I'll be using it.

and jaf, well, that's essentially what I'm trying to do, but it would be helpful to line up my shots (my background picture and the rendered image) in terragen, so I don't have to composite the image together just to notice it doesn't match at all.

[tempaccount]

I actually made a nice discovery on this, I created a plane close to the camera; with the default settings so it's aligned horizontally with the camera. For the surface shader I used the same image map shader (through camera projection, no camera defined) and I could actually create a foreground image.

Here's it in action, with just a piece of a photo I took in 2006 on the bottom of the picture

Now if I could just figure out an image format that supports transparency in terragen..