Sorry fellas for asking such a simple question but how do we assign something like Ant aliased noise to the black background so that it will be seen when rendered?

Simple question and googling did not help.

You didn't specify what you are rendering with, so I'll assume Karma.

Here's a very informative post [www.sidefx.com] on how to set-up background plate so that it will be visible on beauty render. One caveat: currently background plates do not seem to be renderable with XPU, or at least I couldn't get them to work on this architecture.

Normally, to use output from COP nodes (like Anti-aliased noise you mention) we would reference it with op:. While Karma CPU interprets this reference correctly and is capable of displaying COP output in the viewport, it will throw an error about a missing image when the scene is rendered to disk:


So currently using op:with background plates is probably not an option, unless someone has a workaround he's willing to share. But, you can still output your noise background to image sequence and then link those files from Background Plate LOP.

Thanks but I am still on mantra. Does it make a lot of different?

In the View tab of render camera properties, make sure that Enable Background Image is enabled, then link up an image file or sequence in Background Image parameter.

As to using op:to load data directly from COP network, I stumbled upon this thread [www.sidefx.com]. I think it's still an issue, because I just tried and it seems that using opin vm_backgrounddoesn't work (19.5.403). So I guess if you want to use background generated by COPs, you need to export it first.

But how am I going to assign a procedural texture (e.g. AntiAlias Noise as I mentioned in my first post)?
I have worked in other packages and it is very easy to assign a computer generated texture to the background.
I want to have full control over the details without having to go to a 2d package or sth.

Like I said. You create your texture in COPs, export it to an image sequence, then link the sequence as camera's background image.

Or, do the opposite --- render the scene out without any background and then comp it with your procedural background inside COPs.