I've been trying, and failing dismally, a new technique for generating lighting and reflections around an object that matches a backplate.
I don't have Photoshop, so I'm without a ready way to create HDR and HDZ environments. I thought there might be a dodge by creating an emissive label ring around the object and then hiding the ring. I thought I'd be able to switch it off because of some advice proffered a while back by Jeff McCartney in the thread below,
http://keyshot.com/forum/index.php?topic=1168.msg4337#msg4337 (http://keyshot.com/forum/index.php?topic=1168.msg4337#msg4337).
The ring was created in Pro/E as a zero-thickness cylinder, with an emissive label cylindrically mapped onto it. The idea is to hide the ring (but preserve its light) and add a matching backplate.
Problem is, I can't switch off the ring. This is how far I've got, with the .bip attached. Any ideas, anyone?
(and I know rocker levers aren't normally found in Christmas trees - this is just an example to test the technique)
What if you scale the ring up so that it is outside your camera view ?
Interesting suggestion, Phillippe. The problem is that a full ring would show up in the background. I suppose I could try a large, semicircle but I would lose the reflections at the back/top of the object.
Partial success. I've taken a picture of our board room table with a few real objects on as a backplate. Then I took three close-ups, from the point of view of the virtual object, facing left, right and forwards (i.e. towards the "photographer").
I've arranged these three images as labels on my emissive ring and made the ring large enough to crop out, as per Philippe's suggestion. The conference phone reflects OK but I can't get the water bottle to show up. I thought it would be a neat touch to see the "photographer" reflected in the rocker cover as well but it isn't coming through.
Any suggestions (apart from "buy Photoshop") would be welcome.