[choo-chee]

I think I've asked something like this before, but couldn't be sure...so:
I want to render my image plane with Maxwell, the same I do with Maya, as the background channel.
However Maxwell doesn't recognize this plane and trying to match a shaded square to the film gate (behind the model itself...) is not accurate enough.
Is there a way to actually make Maxwell render an image plane in some way? I don't want to just do it in post as some areas require the reflections from the background...

[Mihnea Balta]

Currently the only way is to try to match a plane manually. There are some issues in the engine which prevent the Maya image plane from being exported as-is, but we will try to resolve this in the future. You can add a background by using the background IBL channel and unchecking "spherical mapping", but it will not produce reflections; it would be exactly as rendering with alpha and adding the background in photoshop or whatever.

[choo-chee]

thanks, that's what I'm doing right now.
If I knew how to get the image plane's x,y,z coordinates for each vertex, I could replicate a simple plane instead.... maybe it's another way?

[3dtrialpractice]

I know you can toggle ON the visibility of actual image plane of the camera so maybe you can just eye it like that (I think its called display fulcrum maybe you would be lucky and it would allow you to snap locators to that image plane representation you can control the "depth of the image plane as you prob know in the image plance attribute editor tab that woudl def change how the reflections work with your scene it being clos or far)

also check creativecrash.com for maya scripts that would make a polygon plane from imageplane or parent one to camera, etc..

[3dtrialpractice]

thought about something but am workin on another maya project so can't test it but should work.
If you have cam in scene you want camera with a physical poly "imageplane" for reflections

Create a new camera WITH AIM
camera is set at origin with the AIM in Z space and YOU CAN SNAP a locator or poly plane with maped image to that AIM using point snap
now you just constrain your poly "image plane" to the camera via aim constrain
next you would snap your new camera to your old camera and you should be able to match the XYZ rotation to the values of the original camera.
now you you need to do is play with the poly planes Z offset & scale to get the depth that you need so the poly"imageplane" is behind your 3d objects

try it out (of course you would have to map a mxi or hdr image to your poly"imageplane" for it to really show up and/or mess with how renderable it is (maybe only show in reflections..etc)

-luke

[choo-chee]

thanks, didn't think of that, gonna try it next project I need to.