Environment Pane Best Practices?

tring01

I was recently casting about in panes I've never used looking for new things to learn.  I opened the Environment Pane and found the ability to throw a background image on my scene that renders lightning fast in any render engine.  Where has this been all my life?

I went looking for tutorials and documentation on the use of this pane and cannot find any.  It looks like a very powerful tool that I would like to learn all about.  Can anyone point me to a resource, or perhaps fill me in with the best practices when using it?  For example.  I'm thinking of speeding up my iRay renders by first rendering the scene without any characters, and then using that render as an environment image behind my characters.  That way IRay should only have to render the character.  Should be super helpful for animations.  Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance.

XoechZ

Yes, I think it is a common practise to render figures in front of pre-made backgrounds. But you have to be careful. This way, your character will not cast any shadows on the floor or other things. And this will look very unnatural. So I would use this method only with portraits or close-ups, where you can see a wall in the back, but not the ground.

tring01

I was able to render this really complex background in 3Delight in about 10 minutes.  It was taking a lot longer than that in IRay, even with all the materials updated.  Then it only took 1:20 to render M7 in IRay in front of it. This is pretty interesting.  You're right though.  It's hard to get the scene right.