Advanced Foreground Techniques

Transparent Foreground Trees

We want to place some trees in the foreground, but make them transparent to the rendered scene is visible behind the trees.

Rendered image with transparent foreground trees.
(Using Multiply Mode - where trees make rendered image darker where they intersect.)

1. Place some trees in an empty model (or on a layer, so you can turn off all other layers) and render them.

rendered Foreground trees

1. Save the rendering as an alpha PNG image - the sky and ground will be trimmed from the image.
2. Using the Foreground Setup Tab , select the saved tree image as a foreground.
   - Be sure to turn of masking (which causes the image to only be placed over actual geometry)
   - Try with and without Multiply Mode to find the effect which you like best.)

Foreground settings

1. Render the image

Rendered image with transparent foreground trees.
(Without multiply mode - trees are blended in with the rendered image.)

See also

• Foreground Setup Tab