rendering with White Background color

[thorsnuts]

Hello... is there a way to render with a white bg color instead of black... while still keeping the alpha channel clean?

thanks

[Hirazi Blue]

The inelegant way is to use the deprecated 2D Background Color output shader. I am sure there also is a more elegant way, but ATM I can't recall such a method.

[thorsnuts]

hahhhahaha yes.. but I was going for the other way as well. I tried that way at first but when I deleted it from the pass it seemed to bug out.

thanks though

[Hirazi Blue]

Here's another - admittedly slightly silly - notion: add a toon ink lens shader to your camera,
set the desired background and set the "Spread" of the ink lines to zero...
While it's definitively silly it does seem to work (but I haven't tested it thoroughly),
haven't checked what it does to the alpha channel, though.

[SpookyMunky]

If you want to keep the alpha channel clean for compositing then it's best to add the white background after you have rendered.. Using the 2d background color / toon paint trick ( works ) leads to the white background adding a halo effect around the object due to the anti aliasing picking up the color.

[thorsnuts]

Thanks guys... The compositing is the what I usually do but in this particular case I'm rendering glass over white and wanted to Light and set materials accordingly. Its a pain in the ass going back and forth to get the proper look. But like you said the 2D output thing get weird.

I felt like I've set the render bg color to white once but completely forgot.

thanks anyway

[FXDude]

You can also have a white environment sphere that has no alpha (and perhaps no primary rays)

[NNois]

why not using a constant in the environment ?