Solid colored background with HDR environment

[reckless]

How can I have a solid white or black color in the background of a product render, with an HDR environment ?
In Vray its easy to isolate background from the environment. How can I do that with Octane?

I am trying to create a simple product shot with matte ground plane, white background, and a HDR environment.

Without getting into render layers and post work of course.
I want to achieve this within the max plugin.

Any leads would be super helpful. Thanks.

[reckless]

would be great if some one could pitch in on this.

[WhaleHunter]

reckless - "pitching in" in the absence of response

There may be two options that are suitable for you as I understand:

1. If you are using v2.21 - check the alpha channel box. Save as .exr or .png, you can simply comp in PS over any colour you want. (previous versions have same ability, from memory there are 2 check boxes - keep environment -off and alpha channel -on)
one thing to consider here is that the alpha channel edge pixels will be mixed with the hdr if there is dof; set aperture to 0 if you want the cleanest alpha edge possible.

or if you don't want to do simple post or have a few to do,

2. set up a white cyclorama and (studio) light it accordingly (no matte required)

[reckless]

Thanks whale
I've been playing around with the second option you mentioned. But I am making a simple animation with fly-bys
and turntables, so the colorama ends up blocking the environment.

Will try the alpha channel option. Will have to give DOF in the post though,
because of pixel merging with the BG.

But thanks anyways. I was looking for Vray kinda workflow where I can separate the BG and environment with separated vray dome lights etc.
But Octane doesn't seem to have those options yet.

[jackief]

This is a huge shortcoming... I would consider the things above to be workarounds.. not solutions to the problem. I do heavy compositing with lots of DOF and and HDR.. the lack of this feature is a huge pain. Not knocking octane as I absolutely love it. I just hope this standard thing will be included in the next revision.

[senorpablo]

I agree, this is an important feature which is missing in Octane.

Iray and Mentalray both provide this functionality of being able to specify separate images for lighting and display.

[Gestaltdesign]

I am new to Octane and was pretty shocked (disappointed) after purchase to see no backplate option, definitely a 'biggie' on the request list. Hope it makes it in soon.

[gueoct]

i have to join the lamentation, too
Yes, it´s a missing BASIC feature!

[Cathodeus]

I tried to do a picture today with Hdri envmap as environment lighting method. Than i checked alpha and use background .

So when i render within octane inside max no prob i do have the perfect picture with my grey background [ kernel is showing it].



But !!!!!!


When i save that picture the grey background is missing and instead it's black [as if no background were set] ...

Wait a minute ??? Do octane is lying to me ??? Why is it not saved as i see it ???

[Goldisart]

if I understand correctly . you need to use background... in octane render ... and save with no alpha or with alpha if you want further editor such as photoshop...
1 .

2.