[choo-chee]

as the name says it, it will be nice to have an option to specify something other than the black color. It will be useful for testing placing of a model on an aerial photo, for example...

[RobMitchell]

Yeah custom alpha backgrounds is a must for me. Would be really useful.

[Bubbaloo]

How would you be able to knock out the background in post? With solid black, you can use the tool "remove black matte" in PS, but I wouldn't think you could properly knock out the aliased edges with other colors/images in the background. I would think you would always have a halo around your objects because of this.

[choo-chee]

sorry I wasn't clear, I mean that maxwell render window will allow me to see an "alpha" image in it's background (not rendering it.... real alpha will be black) so I can be sure of my super-imposing.... also sometimes - as in MAYA you cannot have maxwell render the image planes - it will be nice to have an alpha that does get rendered ....

[polynurb]

+1
yep, also in FIRE this would be really usefull.
just for quick and dirty pre-comps within the host-app.

[numerobis]

+1
and it would be helpful if maxwell could read this background image from the host app like max or in Sketchup a photo match image...

[damienf]

+1
This is a must for me too.

Working on product shots that will end up over white background (mostly).

Being able to set the background to white (or other custom colors) in FIRE and MAXWELL RENDER would be of a big help for evaluating setup and renders.

[Nova66]

+1