Making the 'Floor' Transparent

Brotherlobo

Greetings,

There has got to be a way to make the 'floor' transparent. I am working on a possible cover design but the floor just makes a black line across the horizon. How can I make that go away?

Also, if you have any critques on the design...fire away.
This is still a WIP. You can guess where the title would go and some of the empty space to the right of the figures would be cropped out.

BTW -- only working in DAZ 4.5 and Photoshop CS3

Jaderail

Just Delete the floor. It's not really needed, your figures will be happy to just hang in the air.

Brotherlobo

I must be having a 'blonde moment' because I cannot figure out a way to select the floor, therefore I cannot delete the floor.

Jaderail

Is it part of a Prop set? Or is it just a primitive plane?

Brotherlobo

The only way I could get the space background (or at least the only way I could figure out) was using the Millennium Environment w/ The Heart of Space add on.

If there is another way...I'm listening

Jaderail

AH, Did not know that was the ME. Let me check mine.

NOPE, no way to turn the ground off. Try this, Find the Image that gets added to the ME, it's just a image file and probably in textures. Make a Primitive Plane and position it, then add that image to the plane in the Diffuse Channel of Surfaces for the Plane. That should work. You will need to scale the plane to get the image to look good but it should work.

merc-daz3d_c669b168a9

Backdrop image files for the Millennium Environment are split into Left, Centre, and Right sections, so you'd need three planar primitives (aligned carefully) to display all of a given backdrop. It's probably easier to load the M.E. with the desired image set, then go to the Surfaces tab, find the "TilingTerrain" material, and set its Opacity to zero.

Also, under the Scene tab, the "Terrain" bone within the Environment character seems to work for setting the ground plane to be hidden.

I tried this under DS3, since I had it open, getting ready for an overnight render. I'll start that running, and try the M.E. in DS4 to see if these techniques still work there.

Alan

EDIT: Yep, in my DS 4.0 (not ready to risk 4.5 yet) the Scene tab and the Surfaces tab do the same jobs as outlined above. Either select the "Terrain" bone inside the M.E. character and click off its visibility eye icon, or go into surface selection mode, pick the ground, and set the "TilingTerrain" material to zero Opacity.

Brotherlobo

Thanks for the suggestions Jaderail and Alan, I'll give that a go and let you know how it turnes out.

Brotherlobo

Okay...finally figured it out.

Evidently, the first time I tried this - I didn't realize that there was a 'ground' set to apply. But even after that, it was still black. Taking Alanscape's suggestion, I played with the 'TilingTerrian' under the Surface tab. It took some time, but I ended up with 'Opacity Strength' at 100 but needed to change the 'Ambient Color' to White -255

The image isnt perfect or finished yet, but thanks to your advice I am much closer.