Posted by Larry Martin on June 28, 1999 at 12:12:32:
In Reply to: Background skys & textures posted by Paul Bessieres on June 24, 1999 at 12:57:23:
Hello Paul,
Let me see if I can take a stab at your questions. I confess that I don't use the backgrounds very much so there may be better answers out there that anyone is free to followup with.
1. The background image is an image file that can be modified in any image editing application like Adobe Photoshop. The nice thing about this is that you can use your own images for backgrounds if you so choose. You can rotate, stretch, colorize, etc... the image and develop the best background for your model.
2. Artifice supplies several nice background "Envirodomes" that you can use in Lights and Textures (L&T). Use the "File -> Merge File..." function while in L&T to import that into the rendered model. I believe they come in a folder on the CD called "Envirodomes". I don't know if they are included in the Lite package.
3. I assume you are refering to when in L&T shadowcasting mode. The shadows are part of a rendering plug-in from Lightworks that DW is able to take advantage of through QD3D. I am guessing but I think that is a nature of the plug-in. However, if you run the shadow casting while in regular DW, you will find that the shadows do stay. In fact, that may be a part of the confusion as to why it appears to sometimes drop out of shadow casting and sometimes not. I like the shadow casting here because I can change from saved view to saved view without waiting for another shadow calculation. I wish that the Lightworks plug0in would do that too.
Anyway, I hope that helps.
Larry