3D Viewport user persp background image

Hi there fellow Blender users, I want to place an image on the background and be active in user perspective mode, currently only orthos and Camera are supported.

This is a good way to drop a bunch of image references here and there for modeling and sculpting, instead of splitting more window areas.

One quick hack I found is that you can place a background image on the Camera and then check “Lock Camera to View”, well it works but it’s not exactly the same.

Well, I think it worth a try to advertise this feature, if in any case some developer reads this and is interested to work on it would be awesome. Thanks.:wink:

why not use a textured plane and switch to texture view?

If you just need it for reference you can use an empty (set to image in the properties). If you need it for renders you might try the “import images as planes” add-on (you’ll probably have to turn it on, but it does ship with Blender).

Though I do agree not having it available as a background option has always seemed a bit like an oversight.

I have prepared a special image so it can be more clear on what I suggest.


As you can see, this is the common way of adding images to viewport but with the additional feature that user viewport is supported as well. Now if you try to do this you can do it it can happen only with orthographic views, when you try to do to perspective the background images are lost.

@michael
Well this is the most easy way. The only problem with this is that you can’t bring your images side to side from the model you are currently working on. But I do not doubt that this is the most obvious and standard way.

@xrg and cegaton
Thanks for the suggestion, this is a good trick as well. One thing that bothers me though is that if it is possible to have this empty transformed along with the viewport. Perhaps it might not be possible or it might need a special script for it.

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