I’m not sure if Blender 2.8 does something like this automatically, but I want my background to reflect in the glass I have in my scene. However, when I go to World and change my surface to Background and add the image, all I get in the Preview box is black rectangle. Am I setting it up right or am I missing something?
Add as an envronment texture, not an image texture.
Thank you. That’s showing something at least. Though instead of seeing the image, I get two rectangle colours on the left and right. Is it supposed to do that?
We could probably do with a .blend file. Pack the image you are using into it first.
I’m stumped. It’s only that image. Using several HDR images was fine, but not that one/
I’m doing a render so I can’t test right now. But does it work if you save out the image as a file (rather than packed), then load it back, then save it again (to i.e. exr) and use this? I’ve had jpg files that read fine elsewhere, but would crash Blender - resaving the image fixed it for me.
Nope, I get the same result doing that as well. Whether .exr or png. :-\
I don’t see a problem with it, other than not being an equirectangular image in the first place. I’m not sure what needs to be done to the coordinates in order to make this work. The image is heavily cropped top and bottom, as well as not being 360 degree horizontal. For an environment map to work, it is supposed to be equirectangular. This one is, I don’t know, part of a cylinder or section of sphere or something. The horizon is supposed to be in the middle.
Several other problems in there; dimensions are way off, visible lights (see reflections), glass shader. See what I believe is a more correct glass shader for the circumstances (thin glass panes):
Ratio wise, the environment map “fix” isn’t ideal. But mirroring it and filling the bottom with dark to rise the horizon makes it kinda work at least.
I don’t quite get it, to be honest. :-\ Maybe its ratio is due to how I set up the image on my background plane…? I really don’t know. I tried getting another sunset background and set it up similarly, and I get the same result when trying to make it an environment texture.
Have I set it up right…? I did a UV unwrap of the plane, projected it from view, added the image in the UV/Image Editor, scaled it and positioned its vertices so it filled the UV and loaded up the Image Texture to the material.
How do you know an image is equirectangular?
Nope. I tried converting with GIMP and Hugin but no joy. Maybe take a look at HDR Haven for an alternative. https://hdrihaven.com/hdris/category/?c=sunrise-sunset
I’ve tried one of those as well. I get the same sort of issue. I don’t have it where it splits down the middle with one colour on the left and one on the right, but the image is majorly zoomed in in a similar way.
Do you have a screenshot of what you think is wrong when using a hdrihaven texture? Note that only the world texture must be equirectangular (or mirror ball). A camera backplate plane should use what you’d see in a regular photo.
What pixels you see depend on the zoom of the camera. And you shouldn’t be using an orthogonal camera (isometric view, with no perspective), as those can’t for geometric reasons not be used with world environment maps.