Edit: Just found out how. Thanks for the info
Set up background plane imported as image (look in addons). Add a bit of emission to the material. Add ground plane - fractal subdivided, smoothed, with textures as needed, set light emitters and off you go…to the hardest part -animation.
Happy blending!
Thanks so much!
I got a little too ahead of myself. I didn’t work while I was in Cycles. It worked in Blender render but when I switched to Cycles, it didn’t. I tried to import it in cycles but I guess I have the wrong settings?
Object wise it would be the same, but material creation is completely different. BI materials do not fit in cycles and vice versa.
Best is to keep separate scene (new scene, full copy) or file for each of them.
You need to get in touch on how cycles materials are done. In essence nothing extraordinary. If you have, say, that sky plane with image texture - in cycles, first, delete that bi material, then assign new. You’ll have a choice of base ones, Diffuse, Glossy, Glass, Emission, Mix and some others. That’s the basis of material, guess self explanatory enough. For plane you want Diffuse and Emission Mixed, so start with Mix. That has 2 inputs where you could choose Diffuse -matted, oposite to glossy and Emission. For Diffuse color click dot icon and choose texture - your image which is available from image icon dropdown.
Open Node editor window somewhere and see the Big picture of your newly created cycles material. Tweak parameters while in 3dview switched to rendered view observing changes.
For the World choose Background material and Sky as a texture. That will give kind of jumpstart for the scene. Add plain mesh plane above, set material to plain Emission and you have light.
Happy blending!