Background Images

Reference

Panel: Properties region ‣ Background Image

A background picture in your 3D View is very helpful in many situations: modeling is obviously one, but it is also useful when painting (e.g. you can have reference pictures of faces when painting textures directly on your model...), or animation (when using a video as background), etc.

Note

Background images are only available for orthographic views.

Settings

../../../_images/editors_3dview_background_images.png
Axis
Choose which views the image is visible from. This is helpful when you have several reference images from different views (e.g. top, front and side).
Data Source

The source of the background image.

Image
Use an external image, image sequence, video file or generated texture.
Movie Clip
Use one of the Movie Clip data-blocks.
Opacity
Controls the transparency of the background image.
Front/Back
Choose whether the image is shown behind all objects, or in front of everything.
Stretch/Fit/Crop

Controls how the image is placed in the camera view.

Stretch
Forces the image dimensions to match the camera bounds (may alter the aspect ratio).
Fit
Scales the image down to fit inside the camera view without altering the aspect ratio.
Crop
Scales the image up so that it fills the entire camera view, but without altering the aspect ratio (some of the image will be cropped)
X/Y

Position the background image using these offsets.

In orthographic views, this is measured in the normal scene units. In the camera view, this is measured relative to the camera bounds (0.1 will offset it by 10% of the view width/height)

Flip Horizontally
Swap the image around, such that the left side is now on the right, and the right now on the left.
Flip Vertically
Swap the image around, such that the top side is now on the bottom, and the bottom now on the top.
Rotation
Rotate the image around its center.
Size
Scale the image up or down from its center.