User’s Reference Volume III AUTODESK 3DS MAX 9 ® ®
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toc Contents 17 Rendering..................................................... 1 Advanced Lighting with the Scanline Renderer... 44 Rendering .................................................................... 1 Render Scene Dialog .................................................. 2 Rendered Frame Window ........................................... 5 Render Output File Dialog .......................................... 9 Advanced Lighting Panel ..........................................
iv Contents Depth of Field with the mental ray Renderer............ 90 Caustic Lighting Effects............................................. 92 Global Illumination with the mental ray Renderer... 93 mental ray Volume Shading ...................................... 95 mental ray Displacement........................................... 96 mental ray Contour Shading ..................................... 96 Render to Texture: Objects to Bake Rollout............ 158 Render to Texture: Output Rollout ...........
Contents Rendering Effects .................................................... 218 Rendering Effects Command.................................. 218 Effects Panel and Rollout......................................... 219 Merging Effects ....................................................... 220 Hair and Fur Render Effect ..................................... 220 Lens Effects Rendering Effects ............................ 223 Lens Effects Rendering Effects ................................
vi Contents Lens Effects Focus Filter.......................................... 362 File Link ................................................................. 416 Glow Filter ............................................................. 364 File Link................................................................... 416 Working with Drawing Files ................................... 417 File Link Tips...........................................................
Contents Suggested Workflow for Revit to 3ds Max Projects ................................................................. 452 Materials and Linked Revit Objects .................... 453 Materials and Linked Revit Objects ........................ 453 Applying Materials to Linked Revit Objects........... 454 Editing Revit Materials in 3ds Max......................... 454 UVW Mapping on Revit Elements ......................... 455 Using Revit Materials on 3ds Max Geometry .........
viii Contents IGES Log Files ......................................................... 560 Importing IGES Files............................................... 560 IGES to 3ds Max Import Table................................ 561 Exporting IGES Files ............................................... 562 3ds Max to IGES Export Table ................................ 563 JSR-184 Files ......................................................... 563 Exporting JSR-184 Files ..........................................
Contents New Schematic View ............................................... 652 Delete Schematic View ............................................ 652 Saved Schematic Views............................................ 653 Schematic View Selection Right-Click Menu ......... 653 Quad Menu.............................................................. 694 Additional Quad Menus.......................................... 696 Animation Quad Menu ........................................... 697 Layers .............
x Contents Perspective and Orthographic Viewport Controls ................................................................ 738 Zoom Viewport ...................................................... 739 Zoom All ................................................................. 740 Zoom Extents / Zoom Extents Selected.................. 740 Field of View Flyout ................................................ 741 Field-of-View Button .............................................. 741 Zoom Region ..............
Contents General Preferences................................................. 815 File Preferences........................................................ 819 Viewport Preferences .............................................. 821 Gamma and LUT Preferences ................................. 824 Rendering Preferences............................................. 826 Animation Preferences ............................................ 828 Inverse Kinematics Preferences...............................
xii Contents
Rendering Note: 3ds Max does not append any color-space information to rendered output. If necessary, you can apply a color space such as sRGB to output images in an image-editing program like Adobe Photoshop. Environments and Rendering Effects A variety of special effects, such as film grain, depth of field, and lens simulations, are available as rendering effects. Another set of effects, such as fog, are provided as environment effects.
2 Chapter 17: Rendering Rendering Effects (page 3–218) Environment and Atmosphere Effects (page 3–271) Object-Level Rendering Controls You can control rendering behavior at the object level. See Object Properties (page 1–117). • Raytracer panel (page 2–1528) Contains global controls for ray-traced maps and materials. • Advanced Lighting panel (page 3–44) Contains controls for generating radiosity and light tracer solutions, which can provide global illumination for your scene.
Render Scene Dialog • mental ray renderer (page 3–78) See also The mental ray renderer created by mental images is also available. It renders the scene in a series of square “buckets.” Render Scene (page 3–12) The mental ray renderer provides its own method of global illumination, and can also generate caustic lighting effects. To render a still image: In the Material Editor, a variety of mental ray shaders (page 2–1710) provide effects that only the mental ray renderer can display.
4 Chapter 17: Rendering Typically, a dialog appears that lets you configure options for the chosen file format. Change settings or accept the defaults, and then click OK to continue. Viewport—Chooses the viewport to render. By default, this is the active viewport. You can use this drop-down list to choose a different one. The list contains only currently displayed viewports. The Save File check box turns on. 7. Click the Render button at the bottom of the dialog.
Rendered Frame Window Rendering Progress dialog Rendered Frame Window Rendering menu > Render > Render Scene dialog > Render > Rendered Frame Window appears. File menu > View Image File > Choose a file to view. > Open > Rendered Frame Window displays the file. The rendered frame window displays rendered output. It has controls to: • Save the image to a file. • Place a copy of the rendered image on the Windows clipboard, ready for pasting into another graphics application. • Create a clone of the window.
6 Chapter 17: Rendering • Hold down Shift and then drag to pan. If you have a three-button mouse, you can use its third button or its wheel to zoom and pan: • Roll the wheel to zoom in or out. • Press the wheel, and drag to pan. Note: You can use any third-button pointing device to pan the image. To enable this, open the Customize menu > Preferences dialog. Go to the Viewports panel (page 3–821), and in the Mouse Control group choose the Pan/Zoom option.
Rendered Frame Window Layer—This spinner appears on the rendered frame window toolbar when you render to the RPF (page 3–631) or RLA (page 3–630) file format. It lets you see the information at different layers of the following channels: sequence. Holding down Ctrl and clicking an arrow jumps to the first image or the last image in the sequence. Available if the rendered frame window is invoked using View File in the File menu.
8 Chapter 17: Rendering the above illustration, the pixel in question is the 308th from the left edge and the 141st from the top edge. Also shown in this group are channel values for red, green, blue, alpha, and monochrome, both as 16-bit integers (0 to 65535) and as floating-point values between 0.0 and 1.0. Note: With high-dynamic-range images, the floating-point values can be greater than 1.0 or less than 0.0. Red—The red component value (0 to 65535) and the floating-point value.
Render Output File Dialog Render Output File Dialog Rendering menu > Render > Render dialog > Common panel > Common Parameters rollout > Render Output group > Click Files. > Render Output File The Render Output File dialog lets you assign a name to the file that the rendering will output. You can also determine the type of file to render. Depending on your choice of file type, you can also set up options such as compression, and color depth and quality.
10 Chapter 17: Rendering Interface • Small Icons: Displays the contents of a directory as small icons, tiled across the width, without the details. • List: Displays the contents of a directory without the details. • Details: Displays the contents of a directory with full details such as size and date. List of files—Lists the contents of the directory, in the format specified by the View menu.
Rendering Commands Setup—Displays controls for the selected file type. These vary with each different file format. Change the settings as necessary, and then click OK or Cancel. Info—If you highlight an existing file in the list, clicking Info displays expanded information about the file such as frame rate, compression quality, file size, and resolution. The information here depends on the type of information saved with the file type.
12 Chapter 17: Rendering Rendering Effects (page 3–218) Environment and Atmosphere Effects (page 3–271) Distributed Bucket Rendering Rollout (mental ray Renderer) (page 3–124). Network Rendering (page 3–173) Missing Mapping Coordinates Render Scene If the renderer finds a parametric object that requires mapping, it automatically sets its Generate Mapping Coordinates toggle before rendering the scene. The toggle remains set after the rendering is done.
Render Type By default, the rendering appears in a window. To render a view without using the dialog, click Quick Render (page 3–17) or use Render Last (page 3–25) (press F9 ). Tip: Render Type Main toolbar > Render Type drop-down list To render an animation: 1. Activate the viewport to render. Click Render Scene. 2. The Render Scene dialog (page 3–2) appears. 3. Open the Common Parameters rollout (page 3–27). Choose a time range in the Time Output group.
14 Chapter 17: Rendering 4. Drag in the middle of the window to move it. Interface Drag the window’s handles to adjust its size. To preserve the window’s aspect ratio, you can hold down Ctrl while you drag a handle. 5. Click OK. 3ds Max displays a progress dialog that shows the progress of rendering and the rendering parameter settings. To stop rendering, click Cancel in this dialog, or press Esc . To render a blowup: 1. Make the viewport active. 2. Choose Blowup from the list. View—(The default.
Render Type Region—Renders a region within the active viewport, and leaves the remainder of the rendered frame window intact. Use this option when you need to test render a part of the scene. Tip: Use the Clear button before rendering to remove any existing image from the window. Blowup—Renders a region within the active viewport and enlarges it to fill the output display. A rectangular selection region appears when you render with either Blowup or Region selected in the Render Type list.
16 Chapter 17: Rendering Objects within the bounding boxes, including objects in front of or behind the selection, are rendered. When no objects are selected, Crop Selected renders the entire frame. Render Bounding Box/Selected Dialog Select objects. > Main toolbar > Choose Box Selected from the Render Type drop-down list.
Quick Render Flyout Constrain Aspect Ratio—When on, constrains the original aspect ratio of the selection’s bounding box. Changing the Width value also changes Height, and vice versa. Default=on. You assign which renderer to use for production rendering on the Assign Renderer rollout (page 3–35) of the Render Scene dialog > Common panel. Selection Aspect Ratio—Displays the original aspect ratio of the selection’s bounding box.
18 Chapter 17: Rendering • Viewport—The ActiveShade rendering appears in the active viewport. • Floater—The ActiveShade rendering appears in its own window. Only one ActiveShade window can be active at a time. If you choose one of the ActiveShade commands while an ActiveShade window is already active, you get an alert that asks whether you want to close the previous one. If the previous ActiveShade window was docked in a viewport, the viewport reverts to the view it previously showed.
ActiveShade quad menu, then clicking the object you want to select. In an ActiveShade viewport, only one object at a time can be selected. • Because of the preceding item, filters are coarser than in full-scale renderings, but they still have significant subpixel information. Tip: When an object in an ActiveShade window has • There is a limitation of 16 subdivisions per pixel. Because of this, any objects behind the sixteenth occluding object for a given pixel will be ignored.
20 Chapter 17: Rendering To update an ActiveShade window after moving an object or changing object geometry: 1. Right-click the ActiveShade window. 2. In the Tools (lower-right) quadrant of the quad menu, choose Initialize. To see the toolbar in an ActiveShade viewport: 1. Click the viewport to make it active. 2. Press the Spacebar to display the toolbar. Pressing spacebar again toggles the toolbar off, and so on. You can also turn toolbar display on or off by right-clicking and using the quad menu.
ActiveShade Floater ActiveShade Floater Main toolbar > Quick Render flyout > Quick Render (ActiveShade) Menu bar > Rendering > ActiveShade Floater Click ActiveShade Floater to create an ActiveShade rendering in its own window. Only one ActiveShade window can be visible at a time. If you change a viewport to an ActiveShade view while a floating ActiveShade window is open, you get a message that asks whether you want to close the floating window, or stop the operation.
22 Chapter 17: Rendering The viewport reverts to the view it previously showed. • If the toolbar is not visible, press the Spacebar to display it, then right-click the toolbar and choose the kind of view to display. ActiveShade Commands (Quad Menu) When you right-click an ActiveShade window, the lower-left quadrant of the quad menu displays a set of commands for ActiveShade (page 3–17). Interface Material Editor—Displays the Material Editor (page 2–1409).
Preset Rendering Options During the initialize pass, progress is indicated by a row of pixels (white by default) that traverses the top edge of the ActiveShade window. Update—Updates the ActiveShade window. Updating shading takes the buffer created by the first pass, initialization, and uses information in that buffer to change the color of pixels when you make changes to lights and materials in the scene.
24 Chapter 17: Rendering the bottom of the preset list, two choices let you create your own custom presets: Load Preset—When you choose Load Preset, 3ds Max displays a file selector dialog that lets you choose the RPS file to load. Each category corresponds to one panel of the Render Scene dialog. Choose which panel’s settings you want to load from the RPS file, and click Load. Once you load a custom preset file, its name appears on the drop-down list, along with the default choices.
Show Last Rendering Show Last Rendering Rendering menu > Show Last Rendering 3. Choose a preset paper size, or specify a custom size in inches or millimeters. Alternatively, specify an image size in pixels. 4. Choose or specify a DPI (dots per inch) ratio Show Last Rendering displays the last rendered image. If no image has yet been rendered, this command is not available. for the printed output. 5. Choose an output orientation: Portrait or Landscape. 6.
26 Chapter 17: Rendering • Custom Choose Unit—Lets you specify whether the • A - 11 x 8.5 in. (at 300 dpi) measurement units for Paper Width and Paper Height are in millimeters (mm) or inches. • B - 17 x 11 in. (at 200 dpi) • C - 22 x 17 in. (at 150 dpi) Choose DPI Value—Provides four buttons for • E - 44 x 34 in. (at 75 dpi) commonly used dots-per-inch settings: 72, 150, 300, and 600. Click one to set it in the DPI property, below.
Common Panel (Render Scene Dialog) Save File—When on, the software saves the rendered image to disk when you render. Save File is available only after you specify the output file using the Files button. Default=off. Files—Opens the Select TIFF File dialog, which lets you specify the output file name and location. If, during the current session, you already rendered an image to disk using the Render Scene dialog (page 3–2), the last file name you used appears in this field.
28 Chapter 17: Rendering • In the Output Size group, choose one of the pre-formatted film or video formats from the drop-down list. • In the Output Size group, choose Custom from the drop-down list, and then adjust the Width, Height, and Aspect Ratio values manually. Tip: Smaller images render much more quickly. For example, you can use 320 x 240 to render draft images, then change to a larger size for your final work. To save the rendered still image in a file: 1.
Common Parameters Rollout (Render Scene Dialog) Interface Active Time Segment—The Active Time Segment (page 3–904) is the current range of frames as shown in the time slider. Range—All the frames between and including the two numbers you specify. Frames—Nonsequential frames separated by commas (for example, 2,5) or ranges of frames, separated by hyphens (for example, 0-5). • File Number Base—Specifies the base file number, from which the file name will increment. Range= -99,999 to 99,999.
30 Chapter 17: Rendering Drop-down list—The Output Size drop-down list lets you choose from several standard film and video resolutions and aspect ratios. Choose one of these formats, or leave it set to Custom to use the other controls in the Output Size group. These are the options you can choose from on the list: • Custom • 35mm 1.316:1 Full Aperture (cine) • 35mm 1.37:1 Academy (cine) • 35mm 1.66:1 (cine) • 35mm 1.75:1 (cine) • 35mm 1.85:1 (cine) • 35 MM Anamorphic (2.35:1) • 35 MM Anamorphic (2.
Common Parameters Rollout (Render Scene Dialog) ratio. When it is on, the Image Aspect spinner is replaced by a label, and the Width and Height spinners are locked to each other; adjusting one alters the other to maintain the aspect-ratio value. In addition, when the aspect ratio is locked, altering the Pixel Aspect value alters the Height value to maintain the aspect-ratio value. Note: In viewports, the camera’s cone changes to reflect the image aspect ratio you set in the Render Scene dialog.
32 Chapter 17: Rendering you’ve imported complex geometry in which the face normals are not properly unified. You can render to any of the still or animated image file formats (page 3–608) that are writable. Super Black—Super Black rendering (page 3–1018) If you render multiple frames to a still-image file format, the renderer renders individual frame files and appends sequence numbers to each file name. You can control this with the File Number Base setting.
Configure Preset Dialog (page 3–616) of the kind created by previous versions of 3ds Max. Use Device—Sends the rendered output to a device such as a video recorder. First click the Devices button to specify the device, for which an appropriate driver must already be installed. Rendered Frame Window—Displays the rendered Get Current Settings—Gets the current Width, Height, and Pixel Aspect settings from the Output Size group, and assigns them to the spinners on this dialog.
34 Chapter 17: Rendering Tip: If you turn on Notify Progress, almost certainly you want this value to be greater than the default! Notify Failures—Sends an email notification only if something occurs to prevent the completion of a rendering. Default=on. after rendering has completed. You can also use the “Execute Now” buttons to run the scripts “by hand.” Interface Notify Completion—Sends an email notification when a rendering job is complete. Default=off.
Assign Renderer Rollout File—Click to open a file dialog and choose the Interface post-render script to run. Delete File—Click to remove the script.
36 Chapter 17: Rendering Choose Renderer Dialog Main toolbar > Render Scene button > Render Scene dialog > Common panel > Assign Renderer rollout > Click a Choose Renderer (“...”) button. Rendering menu > Render > Render Scene dialog > Common panel > Assign Renderer rollout > Click a Choose Renderer (“...”) button. This dialog appears when you click one of the Choose Renderer (“...”) buttons on the Assign Renderer rollout (page 3–35).
Renderer Panel (Render Scene Dialog) The Renderer panel contains a single rollout: Default Scanline Renderer Rollout (page 3–38) Additional panels are: Final Gather Rollout (mental ray Renderer) (page 3–111) • Processing panel • Advanced Lighting Panel (page 3–44) Translator Options Rollout (mental ray Renderer) (page 3–119) • Raytracer Global Parameters Rollout (page 2–1528) Diagnostics Rollout (mental ray Renderer) (page 3–123) • Render Elements panel (page 3–130) Distributed Bucket Rendering Roll
38 Chapter 17: Rendering Default Scanline Renderer Main toolbar > Render Scene > Render Scene dialog > Choose Default Scanline Renderer as the active draft or production renderer. > Renderer panel > Default Scanline Renderer rollout Rendering menu > Render > Render Scene dialog > Choose Default Scanline Renderer as the active draft or production renderer. > Renderer panel > Default Scanline Renderer rollout This rollout sets parameters for the default scanline renderer (page 3–1006).
Default Scanline Renderer Rollout • Assign a 100% self-illuminated diffuse texture using Environment/Screen projection (see Coordinates Rollout (2D) (page 2–1625)). Use Plate Match/MAX R2 antialiasing when you need to match foreground objects with an unfiltered background, or when you need to match the antialiasing qualities of the 3ds Max 2 renderer. Procedures To set up an object for motion blurring: 1. Select the object to blur. 2. Right-click the object, and then choose Properties from the quad menu.
40 Chapter 17: Rendering Interface Shadows—When off, cast shadows aren’t rendered. This can speed up rendering for tests. Default=on. Force Wireframe—Set to render all surfaces in the scene as wireframes. You can choose the thickness of the wireframe in pixels. Default=1. Enable SSE—When on, rendering uses Streaming SIMD Extensions (SSE). (SIMD stands for Single Instruction, Multiple Data.) Depending on the CPU (or CPUs) of your system, SSE can improve render time. Default=off.
Default Scanline Renderer Rollout Name Description Area Computes antialiasing using a variable-size area filter. Blackman This is the original 3ds Max filter. Tip: Leave Filter Maps turned on unless you are making test renderings and want to speed up rendering time and save memory. A 25-pixel filter that is sharp, but without edge enhancement. Filter Size—Allows you to increase or decrease the Blend A blend between sharp area and Gaussian soften filters.
42 Chapter 17: Rendering Sampler drop-down list—Lets you choose which supersampling method to apply. Default=Max 2.5 Star. The options for a supersampling method are the same as those that appear on the SuperSampling rollout (page 2–1459) in the Material Editor. Some methods offer expanded options that let you better control the quality of the supersampling and the number of samples taken during rendering.
Default Scanline Renderer Rollout dialog for that object. Image motion blur blurs the object by creating a smearing effect rather than multiple images. It takes camera movement into account. Image motion blur is applied after scanline rendering is complete. • MeshSmooth on polygons with Keep Faces Convex on. • Anything with Displacement Material. In general, if you have objects with changing topology, use scene or object motion blur rather than image motion blur.
44 Chapter 17: Rendering that are out of range (0 to 1). Typically, specular highlights can cause color components to rise above range while using filters with negative lobes can cause color components to be below range. You choose one of two options to control how the renderer handles out of range color components: • Clamp—To keep all color components in range Clamp will change any color with a value greater than 1 down to 1 while any color below 0 will be clamped at 0.
Light Tracer with a Skylight (page 2–1296). Unlike radiosity (page 3–51), the Light Tracer does not attempt to create a physically accurate model, and can be easier to set up. Outdoor scene lit by Skylight and rendered with light tracing Tip: While you can use light tracing for indoor scenes, radiosity is usually the better choice in such cases. Previewing the Effect of Light Tracing • To get a quick preview of the effect the Light Tracer will have, lower the values of Rays/Sample and Filter Size.
46 Chapter 17: Rendering Rays/Sample has a high value and Adaptive Undersampling is on. Light Tracer parameters, Shift +right-click the spinner to create those keys. Important: If you use a texture map with the Skylight, you should use an image-processing program to thoroughly blur the map before using it. This helps reduce variance and the number of rays needed for light tracing. You can blur the map beyond recognition, and it will still look correct when used for regathering.
Light Tracer Interface Above: Increasing the Sky Lights value Below: Increasing the Object Multiplier value General Settings group Global Multiplier—Controls the overall lighting level. Default=1.0. Color Bleed—Controls the strength of color bleeding. Color bleeding results when light is interreflected among scene objects. Default=1.0. Note: This setting has little effect unless Bounces is greater than or equal to 2.
48 Chapter 17: Rendering Decreasing this value results in a grainier effect, but renders more quickly. Default=250. Tip: To get a “first draft” preview of the effect of light tracing, reduce the value of Rays/Sample and the Filter Size. Changing the Filter Size value Increasing Filter Size reduces noise in the rendering. Changing the number of rays per sample The higher the value, the less grain Color Filter—Filters all light falling on objects.
Light Tracer For volumetric lighting to work with light tracing, Bounces must be greater than 0. Volumes [amount]—Multiplies the amount of light regathered from volumetric lighting effects. Increase to increase their impact on the rendered scene, decrease to decrease their effect. Default=1.0. Increasing the number of bounces increases the level of global illumination and the amount of color bleeding in the rendering. Cone Angle—Controls the angle used for regathering.
50 Chapter 17: Rendering Initial sample spacing values Subdivision Contrast—The contrast threshold that determines when a region should be further subdivided. Increasing this value causes less subdividing to occur. Too low a value can cause unnecessary subdividing. Default=5.0. Initial sampling uses a regular grid. Adaptive undersampling concentrates on transition areas. Tip: If you use adaptive undersampling, try adjusting the Subdivision Contrast value to obtain the best results.
Modeling Global Illumination with Radiosity Radiosity the computer graphic techniques required to visualize them accurately. Radiosity is rendering technology that realistically simulates the way in which light interacts in an environment. This topic provides you with a conceptual overview of what radiosity is and how this global illumination technique relates to other rendering techniques available in 3ds Max.
52 Chapter 17: Rendering The color of any specific point on a surface in a model is a function of the physical material properties of that surface and the light that illuminates it. Two general shading algorithms: local illumination and global illumination are used to describe how surfaces reflect and transmit light. Local Illumination Local illumination algorithms describe only how individual surfaces reflect or transmit light.
Modeling Global Illumination with Radiosity task as quickly as possible, ideally in real time (30 images per second). Currently, no single global illumination algorithm can accomplish both goals. Ray-Tracing Left: Specular reflection Right: Diffuse reflection The way in which the photons are reflected from a surface depends primarily on the smoothness of the surface. Rough surfaces tend to reflect photons in all directions.
54 Chapter 17: Rendering iterations is reached or until no more surfaces are intersected. Ray-tracing: Rays are traced from the camera through a pixel, to the geometry, then back to their light sources. The ray-tracing algorithm is very versatile because of the large range of lighting effects it can model. It can accurately account for the global illumination characteristics of direct illumination, shadows, specular reflections (for example, mirrors), and refraction through transparent materials.
Modeling Global Illumination with Radiosity Lighting Algorithm Advantages Disadvantages Ray-Tracing Accurately renders direct illumination, shadows, specular reflections, and transparency effects. Computationally expensive. The time required to produce an image is greatly affected by the number of light sources. Memory Efficient Process must be repeated for each view (view dependent).
56 Chapter 17: Rendering from fast, interactive lighting studies to images of exceptional quality and realism. See also How Radiosity Works in 3ds Max (page 3–56) Radiosity Workflows (page 3–57) Animation with Radiosity (page 3–60) Radiosity Controls (page 3–61) Lighting Analysis (page 3–76) Advanced Lighting Override Material (page 2–1601) Refinement Steps for Radiosity The radiosity process involves three stages of increasing refinement.
Radiosity Workflows distribution. As with any statistical sampling process, the greater the number of rays used in the approximation, the greater the accuracy of the solution. During the initial quality stage, the overall appearance of the lighting level of the scene is established. The results can be interactively displayed in shaded viewports. The initial quality stage performs repeated passes, which are shown in the dialog’s progress bar. 2.
58 Chapter 17: Rendering imported to 3ds Max, the room will measure 244 units long (20’*12+4”). To process radiosity for photometric lights using a physically based workflow: Tip: Use the Measure Distance tool (page 2–15) to quickly check dimensions in 3ds Max. 1. Ensure that your geometry is set to a physically Physically Based Workflow 2. Place photometric lights in your scene. The correct scale and that the materials have valid reflectance values.
Radiosity Workflows decay), the radiosity engine will always solve for these lights using the physically correct Inverse Square attenuation. This means that the amount of energy that bounces between surfaces might not be equivalent to the way the Standard lights render. Lighting Analysis After you generate a radiosity solution, you can use the Lighting Analysis tool (page 3–76) to analyze the lighting levels in your scene. This dialog provides data on material reflectance, transmittance, and luminance.
60 Chapter 17: Rendering 6. In the Interactive Tools group of the Radiosity Processing rollout, click Setup to display the Environment panel (page 3–272), where you set exposure controls. 7. When working with non-physically based lights, always use the Logarithmic Exposure Control (page 3–297). On the Logarithmic Exposure Control rollout, select Affect Indirect Only. This will cause the exposure control to affect only the results of the radiosity solution.
Radiosity Controls Object Animation The radiosity solution is calculated for each frame if any object is animated in the scene (the default is to calculate the current frame only). You specify the parameters (goals/quality) you want to reach on the Advanced Lighting panel. It is recommended to run a solution first and verify if it’s successful before proceeding to the whole animation. These parameters will then be reprocessed for each frame.
62 Chapter 17: Rendering 2. Choose Tools > Measure Distance to measure some object in the scene for which you know the size; for example, a door or window. The distance displays in the Coordinate Display of the status bar. Tip: You can use the Move transform to adjust the location of the light or its target. 7. 3. Choose Customize > Units Setup and adjust the Scene Unit Scale.
Radiosity Controls 1. Create or load a scene containing the 11. On the same rollout, use the Physical appropriate geometry for lighting. There is no need to adjust any scale factors. 2. On the Create panel, click Lights. Standard is the default choice of light type. 3. In the Object Type rollout, click a light type such as Target Spot. 4. Drag in a viewport. The initial point of the drag is the location of the spotlight, and the point where you release the mouse is the location of the target.
64 Chapter 17: Rendering Light Painting Rollout (Radiosity) (page 3–70) Interface Rendering Parameters Rollout (Radiosity) (page 3–71) Statistics Rollout (Radiosity) (page 3–75) Radiosity Rollouts Radiosity Processing Parameters Rollout Main toolbar > Render Scene > Render Scene dialog > Choose Default Scanline Renderer as the active production renderer. > Advanced Lighting panel > Select Advanced Lighting rollout > Choose Radiosity from the drop-down list.
Radiosity Processing Parameters Rollout Once the full Initial Quality percentage has been reached, clicking Continue has no effect. Stop—Stops the radiosity processing. The Start menu changes to Continue. You can later click Continue to resume radiosity processing, as described for the Start menu. Keyboard shortcut: Esc Process group The options in this group set the behavior of the first two stages of the radiosity solution, Initial Quality and Refine.
66 Chapter 17: Rendering This is useful when you are creating animations, when the radiosity needs to be processed at every frame, and the same level of quality between frames has to be maintained. Update Data When Required on Start—When on, the radiosity engine must be reset and then recalculated if the solution is invalidated. In this case, the Start menu changes to read Update & Start. When this is pressed, the radiosity solution is reset and the calculation starts over again.
Radiosity Meshing Parameters Rollout Note: Direct Light Filtering works only when you use Shoot Direct Lights (page 3–69). If you’re not using Shoot Direct Lights, everything is considered indirect lighting. Radiosity Meshing Parameters Rollout Main toolbar > Render Scene > Render Scene dialog > Choose Default Scanline Renderer as the active production renderer. > Advanced Lighting panel > Select Advanced Lighting rollout > Choose Radiosity from the drop-down list.
68 Chapter 17: Rendering Interface Meshing (shown in light red) subdivides flat surfaces in the scene. Left: No mesh. The solution looks very flat. Middle: Coarse mesh, every 24 inches. The lighting improves. Right: Fine mesh, every 4 inches. The lighting reveals more subtle effects. Note: A tight meshing is not necessary when you use the regathering feature on the Rendering Parameters rollout (page 3–71).
Radiosity Meshing Parameters Rollout Radiosity solutions with different Contrast Threshold values. The best solution is at the center, with Contrast Threshold=60.
70 Chapter 17: Rendering random sampling. These lights also are not able to affect the adaptive subdivision of objects. Include Point Lights in Subdivision—Controls whether point lights are used when shooting direct lights. If this switch is off, then point lights are not included in illumination calculated directly at vertices. Default=on. Include Linear Lights in Subdivision—Controls whether linear lights are used when shooting direct lights.
Rendering Parameters Rollout (Radiosity) Intensity—Specifies the intensity of the illumination in lux or candelas depending on the units you have selected in the Customize > Units Setup dialog (page 3–848). filtering amount will also discard any changes to the solution you made with the light painting tool. Pressure—Specifies the percentage of the sampled energy to be used when you add or remove illumination. Add Illumination—Adds illumination starting at the vertex of a selected object.
72 Chapter 17: Rendering and shadows. This second option is usually slower but more accurate. With Render Direct Illumination, the radiosity solution provides only the indirect lighting. When Render Direct Illumination is the method you choose, you can turn on regathering to correct artifacts and shadow leaks. Regathering provides the slowest but the best-quality rendering.
Rendering Parameters Rollout (Radiosity) The radiosity mesh is the foundation for the regathering process. In the following illustrations, solutions were processed with an Initial Quality of 0%. There is a high variance between small surfaces when a dense mesh is used. Regathering gives acceptable results regardless of mesh density. But more subtle details appear with a denser mesh; for example, at the base of the sculpture. the indirect illumination from the scene.
74 Chapter 17: Rendering polygons in your scene. During the Initial Quality stage, this bright energy gets bounced in random directions, leading to a “sparkle” effect. Typically you can detect these polygons before regathering. Pixel radius of 10 Left: 10 rays per sample Middle: 50 rays per sample During the final Regathering stage, bright spots can be avoided by setting Clamp Values somewhat below the luminance of these bright surfaces and spots.
Statistics Rollout (Radiosity) taken. The ideal settings for adaptive sampling vary greatly from scene to scene. Adaptive sampling initially takes samples from a grid superimposed on the pixels of the scene. Where there is enough contrast between samples, it subdivides that region and takes further samples, down to the minimum area specified by Subdivide Down To. Lighting for areas not directly sampled is interpolated.
76 Chapter 17: Rendering Light Object—Lists the number of light objects processed. other software; do this by using the Lighting Data Exporter utility (page 3–303). Note: Self-illuminated objects count as one light per face. See also Meshing Size—Lists the size of radiosity mesh Modeling Global Illumination with Radiosity (page 3–51) elements in world units. Note: Transparent, 2–sided, and translucent Radiosity Workflows (page 3–57) objects’ faces are counted twice.
Using Multi-Pass Rendering Effects Point Transmittance—The transmittance of the surface material at the point on the object where you clicked. Object Avg—The amount of light intensity for the object as a whole. Object Min—The object’s minimum luminance or illuminance value. Object Max—The object’s maximum luminance or illuminance value. Scene Max—The scene’s highest luminance or illuminance value. Selection Information group Multi-pass depth of field Object Name—The name of the selected object.
78 Chapter 17: Rendering (page 3–89) and Depth of Field with the mental ray Renderer (page 3–90). mental ray 3.5 Renderer The mental ray® renderer from mental images® is a general-purpose renderer that can generate physically correct simulations of lighting effects, including ray-traced reflections and refractions (page 3–88), caustics (page 3–92), and global illumination (page 3–93). Note: mental images and mental ray are registered trademarks, and photon map is a trademark of mental images GmbH & Co.
Rendering with the mental ray Renderer times. This is especially important when you have enabled placeholder objects (see the Processing panel > Translator Options rollout (page 3–119)). If you use distributed rendering to render a scene, it might be hard to understand the logic behind the rendering order. In this case, the order has been optimized to avoid sending lots of data over the network.
80 Chapter 17: Rendering • Output dithering options aren’t supported (in Main menu > Customize > Preferences > Preference Settings dialog > Rendering panel > Output Dithering group). • The mental ray renderer does not fully support G-buffer options in post processing and image file output. The mental ray renderer generates all required G-buffer channels, but does not include transparency information.
Getting Good Results with mental ray Rendering immediately, especially if you’re primarily accustomed to the 3ds Max scanline renderer and its workflow. For example, see 3ds Max Materials in mental ray Renderings (page 3–83). Below are some basic rules of thumb for using mental ray 3.5 in 3ds Max.
82 Chapter 17: Rendering flat top. Now, you go to render the glass. After rendering the scene, however, there’s something wrong: the inner surfaces of the glass don’t seem reflective enough, and the wine isn’t refracting properly. What’s wrong? What’s wrong is that you probably have the number of reflections and refractions set too low for the number of surfaces you have. To check this, go to the Renderer panel > Rendering Algorithms rollout (page 3–116) and look at the Maximum Trace Depth spinners.
3ds Max Materials in mental ray Renderings • Be careful of the total number of photons you’re emitting: A very high number (100,000 and above) can dramatically increase your rendering time. Then again, for some simple scenes, you might actually be able to set these to 1,000,000 and still render in an acceptable amount of time. Warning: The number of photons specified for each light indicates the number of photons that need to be stored for each light, not the number of photons to be shot.
84 Chapter 17: Rendering Materials The mental ray renderer does not support these materials: • Advanced Lighting Override material • Lightscape material • Morpher material Raytrace Material The mental ray renderer supports all Raytrace material settings except for the antialiasing parameters and the settings found under Rendering > Raytracer Settings and Rendering > Raytrace Global Include/Exclude. All these options are specific to the default scanline renderer.
Enhancements to Standard Features In addition, object properties, lights, and the Material Editor have additional controls to support mental ray rendering. Object Properties Enhancements Several new parameters have been added to the mental ray panel (page 1–126) of the Object Properties dialog. These options support the mental ray indirect illumination features of caustics (page 3–92) and global illumination (page 3–93).
86 Chapter 17: Rendering Effects rollout. (This rollout also contains some contour-shading controls.) Note: When you use the mental ray renderer, reflected or refracted light rays do not always respect a camera’s clipping planes (set in the Clipping Planes group of the Parameters rollout). Also, large clipping-plane values can cause poor quality in the rendering of shadow maps. To fix this, narrow the clipping range or switch to ray-traced shadows.
mental ray Messages Window Interface Interface Example of mental ray Messages window Three status fields appear above the messages area: • Num. CPUs—Shows the number of CPUs in use. • Num. threads—Shows the number of threads being rendered. • mental ray version—Shows the current mental ray renderer version, in detail.
88 Chapter 17: Rendering This is equivalent to the preference, Open Message Window On Error. Clear—Click to clear all messages from the messages area. mental ray Concepts Ray-Traced Reflections and Refractions with the mental ray Renderer The mental ray renderer can generate reflections and refractions by ray tracing. Ray tracing traces the path of rays sampled from the light source. Reflections and refractions generated this way are physically accurate.
Shadows with the mental ray Renderer Shadows with the mental ray Renderer The mental ray renderer can generate shadows by ray tracing. Ray tracing traces the path of rays sampled from the light source. Shadows appear where rays have been blocked by objects. Ray-traced shadows have sharp edges. In 3ds Max, a special shadow generator type, mental ray Shadow Map, is provided to support the mental ray renderer.
90 Chapter 17: Rendering but this works better for rotary motion than for traveling motion. Depth of Field with the mental ray Renderer Motion blur added to rendering of an animated wheel as it speeds up and rolls forward Depth of field is a way to enhance the realism of a rendering by simulating the way a real-world camera works. With a broad depth of field, all or nearly all of a scene is in focus. With a narrow depth of field, only objects within a certain distance from the camera are in focus.
Depth of Field with the mental ray Renderer To render depth-of-field effects with mental ray, ray tracing (the Ray Trace toggle) must be enabled on the Render Scene dialog > Renderer panel > Rendering Algorithms rollout (page 3–116). You must also enable depth of field for the camera: in the camera’s Multi-Pass Effect group, choose “Depth Of Field (mental ray)” as the depth-of-field type. (If you choose the scanline renderer’s Depth Of Field option, the rendering that results can be out of focus.
92 Chapter 17: Rendering Decreasing the f-stop to narrow depth of field Swimming pool rendered without caustics Focal plane set at the nearest apple, and f-stop set to 0.1. Reflective caustics added to swimming pool Increasing the f-stop to broaden depth of field Focal plane in same location, f-stop increased to 1.0. You set the f-Stop in the camera’s Depth Of Field rollout. See Depth of Field Parameter (mental ray Renderer) (page 2–1383).
Global Illumination with the mental ray Renderer Refractive caustics rendered with the default of Radius turned off. Radius value increased to 2.5. Filter type changed to Cone. Radius size is based on scene extents; specifically, 1/100 the radius of the full scene. Photon count increased to 50,000 (in Global Light Properties group) for greater detail in the caustics. Radius value explicitly set to 1.
94 Chapter 17: Rendering To calculate global illumination, the mental ray renderer uses the photon map technique (page 3–994). Important: The mental ray renderer generates global illumination without requiring you to generate a radiosity solution. A photon map is a model of global illumination in its own right. Scene rendered without global illumination Note: In order to use global illumination in mental ray, the photons must be able to bounce among two or more surfaces.
mental ray Volume Shading Usually when you assign a volume shader to a material, you want to make its surface transparent so the shading within the volume is visible. You can do this with the mental images Transmat shader. mental ray Volume Shading Volume shading shades a three-dimensional volume, rather than a surface. Typically, volume shaders provide atmospheric effects such as mist and fog. To assign a volume shader to a camera, use the Render Scene dialog.
96 Chapter 17: Rendering If the active renderer is not already the mental ray renderer, go to the Common panel, and on the Assign Renderer rollout, click the “...” button for the Production renderer. A Choose Renderer dialog is displayed. Highlight “mental ray Renderer” in the list, and then click OK. Leave the Render Scene dialog open, or minimize it. 3. Procedure To add displacement to a mental ray rendering: 1. Choose Customize > Preferences.
mental ray Contour Shading Model rendered without contours Rendering of the model’s contours only Contours Only output shader, background set to white Note: Contour shading does not work with distributed bucket rendering. Procedure To add contours to a mental ray rendering: 1. Choose Customize > Preferences. Go to the mental ray panel, and turn on Enable Mental Ray Extensions. Model with contours added to the rendering Scene.
98 Chapter 17: Rendering Another technique would be to use the mental ray material (page 2–1544), and assign shaders to both the Surface and Contour components. Tip: The Simple contour shader renders uniform lines whose color and width you can control. The other contour shaders provide variant contour styles with more direct user controls. 4. On the Render Scene dialog, go to the Renderer panel. On the Camera Effects rollout, turn on Enable in the Contours group.
Sampling Quality Rollout (mental ray Renderer) Samples per Pixel group Set the minimum and maximum sample rate. Minimum—Sets the minimum sample rate. The value represents the number of samples per pixel. A value greater than or equal to 1 indicates that one or more samples are computed per pixel. A fractional value indicates that one sample is computed for every N pixels (for example, 1/4 computes a minimum of one sample for every four pixels). Default=1/4. Maximum—Sets the maximum sample rate.
100 Chapter 17: Rendering (fully opaque, or 255 in eight-bit encoding). Default=0.05. • Color swatch—Click to display a Color Selector (page 1–161) to let you specify the R, G, and B threshold values interactively. Options group Lock Samples—When on, the mental ray renderer uses the same sampling pattern for every frame of an animation. When off, the mental ray renderer introduces a quasi-random (Monte Carlo) variation in the sample pattern from frame to frame. Default=on.
Camera Effects Rollout (mental ray Renderer) Camera Effects Rollout (mental ray Renderer) Rendering menu > Render > Render Scene dialog > Renderer panel > Camera Effects rollout Main toolbar > Render Scene > Render Scene dialog > Renderer panel > Camera Effects rollout Note: The Renderer panel appears only when the mental ray renderer is the currently active renderer.
102 Chapter 17: Rendering To render with contours: 1. Use the mental ray Connection rollout to assign a contour shader to an object’s material. The mental ray material also lets you assign a contour shader. 2. On the Render Scene dialog > Renderer panel > Camera Effects rollout, in the Contours group, turn on Enable. 3. Change the contour output shader if you so desire. Note: By default, only one contour contrast and store shader are provided with 3ds Max.
Camera Effects Rollout (mental ray Renderer) Interface Blur All Objects—Applies motion blur to all objects, regardless of their object property setting. Default=on. Shutter Duration (frames)—Simulates the shutter speed of a camera. At 0.0, there is no motion blurring. The greater the Shutter Duration value, the greater the blurring. Default=0.5. Shutter Offset (frames)—Sets the beginning of the motion-blur effect relative to the current frame. The default value, 0.
104 Chapter 17: Rendering Note: In previous versions of the software, this parameter was located on the Sampling Quality rollout, as the Contrast group > Temporal settings. Contours group These controls enable contours, and let you use shaders to adjust the results of a contour shader. You assign the primary contour shader to the Contour component of the mental ray Connection rollout (page 2–1461) or a mental ray material (see Advanced Shaders Rollout (mental ray Material) (page 2–1548)).
Camera Effects Rollout (mental ray Renderer) Shader Library Shader List (page 2–1723) 3ds Max Submerge lume Note: You can also assign Volume shaders to the units, at which the scene is completely in focus. Default=100.0. For Camera viewports, the focus plane is set by the camera’s target distance. Volume component of the mental ray Connection rollout (page 2–1461) and the mental ray material (see Material Shaders Rollout (mental ray Material) (page 2–1544)).
106 Chapter 17: Rendering Caustics and Global Illumination Rollout (mental ray Renderer) Rendering menu > Render > Render Scene dialog > Indirect Illumination panel > Caustics and Global Illumination rollout Main toolbar > Render Scene > Render Scene dialog > Indirect Illumination panel > Caustics and Global Illumination rollout Note: The Indirect Illumination panel appears only when the mental ray renderer is the active renderer.
Caustics and Global Illumination Rollout (mental ray Renderer) Interface The settings for generating and receiving caustics are located on the Object Properties dialog > mental ray Panel (page 1–126). Enable—When on, the mental ray renderer calculates caustics effects. Default=off. Multiplier/color swatch—Use these to control the intensity and color of the indirect light accumulated by caustics. The defaults, 1.0 and white, produce physically correct rendering.
108 Chapter 17: Rendering Filter—Sets the filter to use for sharpening caustics. Enable—When on, the mental ray renderer Can equal Box, Cone, or Gauss. The Box option requires less rendering time. The Cone option makes caustics appear sharper. Default=Box. calculates global illumination. Default=off. The Gauss filter uses a Gauss (bell) curve, and can be smoother than the Cone filter. Filter Size—Controls the sharpness of caustics when you choose Cone as the caustic filter.
Caustics and Global Illumination Rollout (mental ray Renderer) map. When on, use the numeric field to specify the distance threshold below which mental ray merges photons. The result is a smoother, less-detailed photon map that uses significantly less memory. Default=off, 0.0. off, each photon is calculated to be one-tenth the size of the scene extents (page 3–1007). Default: check box=off; value=1.0. This spinner is unavailable if the check box is turned off.
110 Chapter 17: Rendering Max. Depth—Limits the combination of reflection and refraction. Reflection and refraction of a photon stop when the total number of both equals the Maximum Depth setting. For example, if Maximum Depth equals 3 and the trace depths each equal 2, a photon can be reflected twice and refracted once, or vice versa, but it can’t be reflected and refracted four times. Default=5. Max. Reflections—Sets the number of times a photon can be reflected. At 0, no reflection occurs.
Final Gather Rollout (mental ray Renderer) whether it generates or receives caustics or global illumination. Turning this on is an easy way to ensure that caustics and global illumination are generated, though it can increase rendering time. Default=off. This setting does not alter the object’s local object properties settings for mental ray. When you turn off All Objects Generate & Receive GI And Caustics, the prior object properties settings are in effect once again.
112 Chapter 17: Rendering The presets affect the following settings: • Initial FG Point Density less noisy, but also increases rendering time. Default=250. • Rays per FG Point Note: In previous versions of the software, this • Interpolate Over Num. FG Points The preset settings are defined in the text file mentalray_fg_presets.ini, found in the \plugcfg folder in the program installation. You can modify the existing presets and add new ones by editing this file.
Final Gather Rollout (mental ray Renderer) Read Only (FG Freeze)—Determines whether or Trace Depth group not mental ray uses the final gather map file as is. When off, mental ray can add new final gather points if necessary. When on, mental ray uses only the data in the specified file, and does not generate any new final gather points. Available only when you’ve specified an FGM file. Default=off.
114 Chapter 17: Rendering Use Radius Interpolation Method—When on, makes the remaining controls in this group available. Also makes the Interpolate Over Num. FG Points check box unavailable, indicating that these controls override that setting. Interface Radius—When on, sets the maximum radius within which final gathering is applied. Reducing this value can improve quality at a cost of rendering time.
Shadows and Displacement Rollout (mental ray Renderer) shadow map file, the mental ray renderer uses the shadow map instead of ray-traced shadows. loads an existing file. The state of Rebuild determines whether the ZT file is saved or loaded. To stop using a shadow map and use ray-traced shadows, delete the map’s name from the file name field. Enable—When on, the mental ray renderer renders shadow-mapped shadows. When off, all shadows are ray-traced. Default=on.
116 Chapter 17: Rendering Edge Length—Defines the smallest potential edge length due to subdivision. The mental ray renderer stops subdividing an edge once it reaches this size. Default=2.0 pixels. Max. Displace—Controls the maximum offset, in world units, that can be given to a vertex when displacing it. This value can affect the bounding box of an object. Default=20.0. Tip: If displaced geometry appears to be “clipped,” try increasing the value of Maximum Displace.
Rendering Algorithms Rollout (mental ray Renderer) Interface Use Fast Rasterizer (Rapid Motion Blur)—When on, uses a fast rasterizer method to generate the first generation of rays to trace. This can improve rendering speed. Default=off. This option works well with object motion blur, and also with scenes that have no motion blur. The following settings are available for the fast rasterizer: • Samples per Pixel—Controls the number of samples per pixel used by the fast rasterizer method.
118 Chapter 17: Rendering Autovolume also enables a camera to move through the nested or overlapping volumes. Default=off. The Large BSP method has the same controls as BSP. See Ray-Trace Acceleration: Parameters for the BSP Methods (page 3–129). To use Autovolume, Ray Trace must be turned on, Scanline must be turned off, and the shadow mode must be set to Segments. (You set the shadow mode on the Shadows And Displacement rollout (page 3–114).
Translator Options Rollout (mental ray Renderer) Max. Reflections—Sets the number of times a ray can be reflected. At 0, no reflection occurs. At 1, the ray can be reflected once only. At 2, the ray can be reflected twice, and so on. Default=6. Max. Refractions—Sets the number of times a ray can be refracted. At 0, no refraction occurs. At 1, the ray can be refracted once only. At 2, the ray can be refracted twice, and so on. Default=6. 2.
120 Chapter 17: Rendering Interface Use Placeholder Objects enables it to increase available memory by deleting object geometry from the scene database. This can dramatically reduce memory usage, but with a possible cost in rendering speed. Memory Limit—The mental ray renderer keeps a count of the memory it uses at render time. If it reaches the memory limit and Use Placeholder Objects is on, the geometry for some objects will be discarded in order to allocate memory for other objects.
Translator Options Rollout (mental ray Renderer) This can make renders faster, because the bitmaps don’t need to be reloaded every time. 3ds Max will not read the texture from disk if it was already loaded previously (for example, in a previous render, for a Material Editor preview, or for displaying the map in a viewport). • Rendering uses a pyramid filter shader that is identical to the standard 3ds Max pyramid filter system.
122 Chapter 17: Rendering override material, this button displays the material name. Export to .mi File group These controls let you save the translated scene in a mental ray MI file (page 3–972). Note: Exporting to an MI file is not available when you render to texture (page 3–144). Export on Render—When on, saves the translated file to an MI file. Turn off to avoid saving the translated scene. Save is available only when you have clicked Files to specify an MI file. Default=off.
Diagnostics Rollout (mental ray Renderer) Render Elements group Interface This toggle is for when you are rendering separate elements (page 3–130). Render Final Image—When on, renders a final, “beauty” pass in addition to the separate elements. When off, renders only the elements. Default=off. Mapping group Skip Maps and Textures—When on, rendering ignores maps and textures, including projection maps, and uses only surface colors (diffuse, specular, and so on). Default=off.
124 Chapter 17: Rendering • Density—Renders the photon map as it is projected into the scene. High density is displayed in red, and lower values render in increasingly cooler colors. • Irradiance—Similar to the Density rendering, but shades the photons based on their irradiance. The maximum irradiance is rendered in red, and lower values render in increasingly cooler colors. BSP—Renders a visualization of the parameters used by the tree in the BSP ray-trace acceleration method (page 3–129).
Distributed Bucket Rendering Rollout (mental ray Renderer) • raysat_3dsmax.exe • raysat_3dsmaxserver.exe where is the current 3ds Max version number. You can use the 3ds Max installation program to install these files: see the Installation Guide for more information. licenses, you can use Backburner to manage distributed bucket rendering. You can use the environment variable MRMAX_OFFLINE_DBR_OVERRIDE to control whether batch rendering uses distributed bucket rendering.
126 Chapter 17: Rendering local system, with buckets “arriving” in an indeterminate order. Example: To use mental ray distributed bucket rendering with Backburner: This procedure demonstrates how to multiply the number of CPUs used for rendering without having to purchase mental ray standalone licenses, using the 3ds Max satellite technology.
Distributed Bucket Rendering Rollout (mental ray Renderer) Distributed Maps—When on, specifies that all texture maps can be found on each of the slave machines doing distributed rendering. This saves time by avoiding the necessity for mental ray to distribute all the maps to each slave via TCP/IP. When off, specifies that all maps used in rendering reside on the local system; that is, the system on which you start rendering. Default=off. Figure 3 – Distributed Bucket Rendering 7.
128 Chapter 17: Rendering Add—Click to display an Add/Edit DBR Host dialog Interface (page 3–128), which lets you add a host processor to the RAYHOSTS file. Edit—Click to display the Add/Edit DBR Host dialog (page 3–128), and edit the highlighted host processor’s entry in the RAYHOSTS file. Available only when a single list entry is highlighted. Remove—Click to remove the currently highlighted host processors from the list and the RAYHOSTS file.
Ray-Trace Acceleration: Parameters for the BSP Methods Depth—Sets the maximum number of levels Ray-Trace Acceleration Parameters in the BSP tree. Increasing the Depth value reduces rendering time, but increases memory consumption and preprocessing time. Default=40.
130 Chapter 17: Rendering Resolution—Sets the number of grid voxels in the Browse (“...” )—Click to display a file selector dialog X, Y, and Z dimensions. If the value is zero (the default), the mental ray renderer automatically sets a value. Default=0 (automatic). and choose a name for the VUE file to create VUE File Renderer Rendering menu > Render > Render Scene dialog > Choose VUE File Renderer as the active production renderer.
Render Elements Panel and Rollout Other elements do not include the scene background. Include this element if you want to use the background in compositing. The background is not trimmed against geometry, so elements should be composited over the background. See Compositing Rendered Elements (page 3–134). • Blend: A custom combination of the previous elements. The Blend element displays an additional Blend Element Parameters rollout (page 3–140). • Diffuse: The diffuse component of the rendering.
132 Chapter 17: Rendering selections in other image-processing or special-effects applications, such as Autodesk Combustion. For example, you could select all of the objects with a given material ID in Combustion. The material ID corresponds to the value you set for the material with the material ID channel. Any given material ID will always be represented by the same color. The correlation between a specific material ID and a specific color is the same in Combustion.
Render Elements Panel and Rollout rendering pass, so rendering elements costs little extra render time. Rendering to elements is available only when you do production rendering with the default scanline renderer (page 3–38) or the mental ray renderer (page 3–78). Example Here is a rendering of a fountain, against a checkered background, and various elements. Note: The default scanline renderer supports a maximum of 32 render elements per scene.
134 Chapter 17: Rendering Compositing Rendered Elements In general, you can composite elements using additive composition, which is independent of the compositing order. The main exceptions are the background element, atmospheres, and shadows. • Background: The background is not trimmed against geometry, the background should be composited under the other elements. • Atmosphere: The atmosphere element should be composited over all other elements.
Render Elements Panel and Rollout group to assign an output file name and file type for the element rendering. 3. If the element is one (such as Blend or Z Buffer) that has additional parameters, adjust these parameters in the appropriate rollout. To render the separate elements: 1. Add the elements you want to render. Tip: You can use the Enable button (in the Selected Element Parameters rollout) to disable individual elements for a particular rendering pass.
136 Chapter 17: Rendering Merge—Click to merge the render elements from another 3ds Max scene. Merge displays a file dialog so you can select the scene file to get the elements from. The list of render elements in the selected file is added to the current list. This field is useful if you have changed the name of an element. Output Path—Shows the path and file name for the element. Delete—Click to delete the selected elements from Selected Element Parameters group the list.
Render Elements Dialog Output to Combustion group When on, generates a Combustion Workspace (CWS) file (page 3–611) that contains the elements you are rendering. You can use this file in the Combustion software, and you can use Combustion workspaces in the Combustion map (page 2–1639). Warning: If you are rendering elements to composite over a background, make sure that the file format for the Diffuse, Shadows, and Alpha elements supports an alpha channel.
138 Chapter 17: Rendering Render Element Output File Dialog Rendering menu > Render > Render Scene dialog > Render Elements panel > Render Elements Rollout > Selected Element Parameters group > Files button Main toolbar > Render Scene button > Render Scene dialog > Render Elements panel > Render Elements Rollout > Selected Element Parameters group > Files button 6. Change any settings as necessary, and then click OK to close the Render Element Output File dialog.
Render Element Output File Dialog • Thumbnails: Displays the contents of a directory as thumbnails, without the details. • Tiles: Displays the contents of a directory as large icons, without the details. If you widen the dialog, these tile across the width. • Small Icons: Displays the contents of a directory as small icons, tiled across the width, without the details. • List: Displays the contents of a directory without the details.
140 Chapter 17: Rendering frames in the Common Parameters rollout of the Render Scene dialog. If you have selected a still image file type, each frame will append a four-digit number to the name you have selected, incremented with each frame. Preview—When on, enables display of the image as a thumbnail in the Image Window. Image Window—Displays a thumbnail of the selected file, when Preview is turned on.
Lighting Texture Element Rollout Lighting Texture Element Rollout Matte Texture Element Rollout Main toolbar > Render Scene button > Render Scene dialog > Render Elements panel > Render Elements rollout > Add button > Render Elements dialog > Add Lighting element to the elements list (or select an existing Lighting element in the list).
142 Chapter 17: Rendering Warning: If you use Exclude, make sure the Effect ID and G-Buffer ID parameters are not turned on. These modes do not provide good results when used in combination. The mental ray renderer supports this element, but the mental ray Motion Blur camera effect must be turned off. Also, some mental ray materials do not support render elements.
Z Element Parameters Rollout Setting a Maximum Velocity increases the precision of the motion information. See the procedure, above: Procedure (page 3–142). Default=1.0. Interface Update—Turn on when you render test frames, as described in the above procedure. After each rendering, Maximum Velocity is set to the value recorded by update. Use the largest of these values, and then turn off Update before you render the full animation. Default=off.
144 Chapter 17: Rendering Lighting— When on, the diffuse render element displays the color of objects after lighting has been applied. When Lighting is turned off, the element displays the diffuse color of objects before the lighting gets applied. For textured objects, this will look like a 3D projection of the texture. However, objects with a single color will look “flat”.
Render to Texture shaded viewports. They show how the baked texture will appear on DirectX devices. 5. Click Render. After you click Render in the Render To Texture dialog, a number of things happen. (This is a typical set of events; the dialog gives you a lot of control over how texture baking actually occurs.) • The elements you chose are rendered, each to its separate bitmap file. Flattened texture-mapping coordinates for the banana • A Shell material (page 2–1600) is applied to the object.
146 Chapter 17: Rendering See also Baked Texture Elements (page 3–146) Target Map Slot Assignments (page 3–150) Render to Texture Dialog (page 3–156) Render to Texture: General Settings Rollout (page 3–157) Render to Texture: Objects to Bake Rollout (page 3–158) Rendered light map applied to the banana Render to Texture: Output Rollout (page 3–160) Render to Texture: Baked Material Rollout (page 3–162) Render to Texture: Add Texture Elements Dialog (page 3–164) Shell Material (page 2–1600) DirectX Manage
Baked Texture Elements Note: Automatically generated reflections and refractions do not work well with rendered textures, although they are included in the Complete and Blend texture maps. The available element maps are described in the sections that follow. Limitations of Composite and Blend Materials If the object has a Composite or Blend material applied to it, only certain elements render correctly. Which elements render correctly depend on the renderer you are using.
148 Chapter 17: Rendering Shadows Map A shadows map saves only the shadows cast onto the object. Component Options (Selected Elements Unique Settings) There are no unique settings for a shadows map. Lighting Map A lighting map saves only the lighting cast onto the object. Component Options (Selected Elements Unique Settings) For a lighting map, you can choose not to render shadows, direct light, or indirect light.
Baked Texture Elements Blend Map A blend map is like a complete map, except that all its components, not just shadows, are optional. Component Options (Selected Elements Unique Settings) For a blend map, you can choose not to render any of the following components: • Lighting • Diffuse color • Specular color • Reflections • Shadows • Ambient color • Self-illumination color • Refractions different purposes. Use them to mask layers in Adobe Photoshop, for items such as painted edits and texture maps.
150 Chapter 17: Rendering Component Options (Selected Elements Unique Settings) Target Map Slot Assignments Select objects. > Rendering menu > Render to Texture > Render to Texture dialog > Output rollout > Target Map Slot: drop-down list > Specify how baked textures appear in the material. For an ambient occlusion map, you can set the following unique settings: Samples— Sets the number of rays cast. More rays results in a smoother image. Default=16.
Troubleshooting Normal Bump Maps the most straightforward and simplest workflow involves these steps: Components of Normal Bump Mapping 1. Create a detailed, high-resolution model. In the 3ds Max interface, controls for normal bump maps appear in three locations: 2. Create a simpler, low-resolution model.
152 Chapter 17: Rendering sometimes give unexpected results. Usually there is a workaround for the problem, or more than one. This topic describes some situations that can arise, and ways to correct them. Parallel Projection Loses Detail If the projection cage is set up so projected rays run parallel to part of the high-resolution geometry, that portion of geometry can be lost in the normal bump map.
Troubleshooting Normal Bump Maps With the corrected cage, the upper indentation appears correctly in the normal bump map. Raising and scaling the upper end of the projection cage. When the cage is adjusted this way, the indentation appears in the normal bump map. Tip: In situtations like this, another solution can be to use Break on the vertices in the region of the low-resolution object where detail is missing from the map.
154 Chapter 17: Rendering Flipped seams in rendering of pants Left: Left side shows a discontinuous red stripe Right: Right side shows a discontinuous blue stripe The arrows show how the maps are misaligned. Breaking low-res vertices causes the indentations to render in the normal bump map. However, projection now misses some areas of the geometry, so the cage needs to be adjusted further.
Troubleshooting Normal Bump Maps Noise when Rendering a Normal Bump Map with the mental ray Renderer If you use the mental ray renderer to render a normal bump map, and the model has overlapping faces (for example, where the low-resolution and high-resolution objects overlap in space), then the normal bump map can show noise where the faces overlap. Normal bump maps corrected using Flip Horizontal Red and blue are more evenly distributed, with blue predominating.
156 Chapter 17: Rendering UVs, or symmetrical mapping. If you are working with a character or other model that has mirrored UVs, we recommend that you follow this procedure: 1. Either add an Unwrap modifier or go into an existing Unwrap modifier where the symmetry exists. 2. Move half of the overlapping texture coordinates on the W axis so that they’re slightly offset from the other half. Render To Texture will use the texture coordinates with the higher W value.
Render to Texture: General Settings Rollout Render—Renders the scene, or the elements listed in the Objects To Bake rollout. Interface Unwrap Only—Applies the Automatic Flatten UVs modifier to all selected objects without rendering anything. Close—Closes the dialog and saves any changes to settings you have made. Original/Baked—When set to Views, the original or baked material is displayed in the viewports. When set to Render, the original or baked material is used in the rendering.
158 Chapter 17: Rendering Network Render—When on, you can assign the rendering task to Server systems. If you click Render, the Network Job Assignment dialog (page 3–190) displays where you can specify a server, or multiple servers, to take on the task. Default=off. Interface 3ds Max can use the Split Scan Lines option when rendering to textures with a render farm. However, if you enable projection mapping and turn on Sub-Object Levels, this option is unavailable.
Render to Texture: Objects to Bake Rollout If the baked texture shows visible seams when you view it in shaded viewports or renderings, try increasing this value. Projection Mapping group This group contains the controls for generating a normal bump projection. See Creating and Using Normal Bump Maps (page 3–150) Enabled—When on, normal bump projection is enabled using a Projection modifier (page 1–769). When off, the Projection modifier is not used. Default=off.
160 Chapter 17: Rendering Sub-Objects—These controls are for basing the rendered texture on a sub-object selection of the source object. • Use Existing Channel—When chosen, unwrapping uses an existing map channel. • Channel—When Use Existing Channel is active, lets you choose the channel to use for unwrapping. • Use Automatic Unwrap—(The default.
Render to Texture: Output Rollout • Target Map Slot column—Shows which map slot will be occupied by the baked texture in the material. The output list can display entries in black, gray and blank. If a group of objects is selected that has already has output assignments, maps that are shared by all will appear black, maps not shared by all will appear gray. If resolutions or target types are shared they will appear black, if not they will be blank.
162 Chapter 17: Rendering the Selected Elements Unique settings group is not displayed): See also Map Type Components Render To Texture Dialog (page 3–156) Complete Shadows Specular Lighting Render to Texture (page 3–144) Render to Texture: General Settings Rollout (page 3–157) Shadows Diffuse Lighting Shadows Shadows Lighting Render to Texture: Objects To Bake Rollout (page 3–158) (none) Render to Texture: Output Rollout (page 3–160) Shadows Automatic Mapping Rollout (page 3–163) Direc
Render to Texture: Automatic Mapping Rollout Save Source (Create Shell)—Makes a new Shell material and assigns it to the object. When this option is turned on, you can then choose to either Duplicate Source To Baked, or to Create New Baked. Duplicate Source To Baked—Makes a copy of the existing material as the Baked material. Create New Baked—Puts a new material in the Baked Material slot.
164 Chapter 17: Rendering Rotate Clusters—Controls whether clusters are Min—The minimum size, in pixels, of the length rotated to minimize the size of their bounding box. For example, the bounding box of a rectangle rotated 45 degrees occupies more area than one rotated 90 degrees. Default=on. and width of the automatically sized map. Default=32. Threshold Angle—The angle used to determine the Max—The maximum size, in pixels, of the length and width of the automatically sized map. Default=1024.
Render to Texture: Projection Options Dialog 3–146) for a description of the available elements. Click an element to select it. Use Ctrl +click to select (or deselect) additional elements individually. Use Shift +click to select a group of contiguous elements. You can also double-click a single element name to add it to the list and close the dialog. Add Elements—Click to add these elements to the list in the Objects To Bake rollout (page 3–158) of the Render To Texture dialog.
166 Chapter 17: Rendering viewports, they must line up with each other exactly. There are no special requirements for the mapping coordinates of the high-res objects. • UV Match—When chosen, normals are obtained by matching the target object’s local UV coordinates to those of the source. The objects’ UV coordinates (page 3–1028) need to be perfectly aligned.
Render to Texture: Projection Options Dialog world-projected normals will appear to “swim” through the texture. • Screen—Project using screen coordinates; that is, flat projection in the Z axis. This method is useful mainly for stationary objects seen from a single angle only; for example, a statue seen through a window. • Local XYZ—Project using the object’s local coordinates.
168 Chapter 17: Rendering minimum or maximum height value is updated based on your selection. current viewport. You can also render a preview to a specified device. Buffer min Height—After you render a normal bump projection, this value is set to the minimum distance that a projection ray travelled. Default=0.0. When the preview is complete, the software starts the Media Player with the preview _scene.avi file ready to play.
Make Preview Interface is 640x480, and you set the Percent Of Output spinner to 50, the preview resolution is 320x240. Note: The size of the preview image is limited by the size of the viewpanel region (the region that contains the viewports). The spinner is clamped to the maximum value that allows the preview image to still fit in the viewpanel region. Display in Preview group Specifies the types of objects to include in the preview.
170 Chapter 17: Rendering output file type. For example, you can output the preview as a Quicktime movie by specifying a file name with a .mov extension. If you specify a single-image format, such as .tga, the preview is output as a series of sequentially numbered files. Use Device—Lets you output the preview to an external device, such as a digital recorder. The button at right displays the name of the currently assigned device.
Panorama Exporter Render Setup Dialog Interface The Panorama Exporter rollout has two buttons, which let you create or view a panoramic rendering. Render—Opens the Render Setup dialog (page 3–171) for the Panorama Exporter. Viewer— Opens the Panorama Exporter viewer (page 3–173).
172 Chapter 17: Rendering 50, when you close the Render Scene dialog (or render), the camera Lens spinner has changed to 59.722, but the scene still looks the same in the viewport and the rendering. If you use one of the preset formats rather than Custom, the aperture width is determined by the format, and this control is replaced by a text display. significant effect on the performance of a radiosity solution.
Panorama Exporter Viewer Render—Click to render the panorama. Cancel—Click to cancel the rendering. Close—Click to close the dialog, saving any changes you’ve made. Panorama Exporter Viewer Rendering menu > Panoramic Exporter > Viewer button Utilities panel > Utilities rollout > Panorama Exporter > Viewer button • Hold down the right button and move the mouse to rotate the camera around the panorama.
174 Chapter 17: Rendering the rendering of each job while you’re away from the computer. Commonly, jobs are assigned submitted just before you leave the office. when you arrive the next morning, all your rendering are waiting for you to review. Network rendering is designed to render whatever is set up in your scene; that is, it will render the viewport, part of a viewport, camera view, and so on, as saved in the scene file.
Basic Procedures for Network Rendering See also Basic Procedures for Network Rendering (page 3–175) Network Job Assignment Dialog (page 3–190) Batch Rendering (page 3–201) Troubleshooting Guide (page 3–183) Basic Procedures for Network Rendering This topic contains basic procedures to follow when network rendering with 3ds Max. The following conditions are assumed: • 3ds Max has been installed on all machines to use as rendering servers.
176 Chapter 17: Rendering The Backburner Server dialog displays. After a few moments, messages appear in both the Server and Manager windows indicating that the Server has successfully registered with the Manager. 5. Start 3ds Max and load the first scene you want to render. 6. From the Rendering menu, choose Render, or click the toolbar Render Scene button. 7. Set the rendering parameters and specify an output file name.
Basic Procedures for Network Rendering 9. Click the Server name to highlight it in the list window, and then click the Submit button. The Manager submits the job to the Server, both running only on this system, and the Server begins rendering each still frame or the animation. 10. To render additional jobs, load each into 3ds Max, and then repeat steps 6-9. You can submit as many jobs as you like. The software will queue the jobs up and render them in the order that you submitted them.
178 Chapter 17: Rendering 5. Click OK to accept the default settings. The Backburner Server dialog displays. After a few moments, messages appear in both the Server and Manager windows indicating that the Server has successfully registered with the Manager. 6. Repeat steps 3-5 on all the Server systems you intend to make available for your rendering jobs. 7. Return to the Manager system, start 3ds Max, and load the first scene you want to render. 8.
Basic Procedures for Network Rendering Basic Procedure 3: Network Rendering from Manager and Servers 3. When rendering across a network, you first assign one machine to be Manager, and then any number of others as Servers. In this procedure, you’ll use the Manager computer as a rendering Server as well. 1. On the same computer, go to Start menu > Programs > Autodesk > Backburner and choose the Server menu item. This starts Server and creates the server data that is stored in the backburner.xml file.
180 Chapter 17: Rendering File dialog starting with Save In > My Network Places. Then navigate to the output folder, specify a file name and output format (Save As Type), and click Save. At this point, you can load and submit additional scenes. When the first job is complete, the next job will automatically begin rendering on the Servers. 9. In the Render Output group, turn on Net Render, and then click the Render button. The Network Job Assignment dialog appears.
How Network Rendering Works and jobs, always striving for the most efficient usage of the rendering network. An idle rendering Server is automatically detected by the Manager and is considered for job or frame assignment. If a Server goes off-line for some reason, the Manager reclaims the Server’s current frame and reassigns the frame to the next available rendering Server. The Basic Process Following is a step-by-step description of the sequence of events when you use network rendering: 1.
182 Chapter 17: Rendering Starting Network Rendering Once you’ve set up the network rendering system and software (page 3–186), there are two steps to starting a network rendering session: • Start the Manager program on one machine and the Server program on every other machine in the network. See Basic Procedures for Network Rendering (page 3–175). The machine being used as a manager can also be used as a rendering server.
Troubleshooting Guide 10. After setting any other rendering parameters, turn on Render Output group > Net Render and click Render. The Network Job Assignment dialog appears. If you use Video Post, set the file location with an Add Image Output Event. After you click Execute Sequence, be sure to turn on Net Render before you click Render. To submit a network rendering job: 1. Start the Backburner Manager and Backburner Server. 2.
184 Chapter 17: Rendering The gray icon means that the server is currently not available to render a job. This state can occur for several reasons, including: All errors are recorded in the appropriate log file. You can learn more about log files in Configuring Backburner Log Files. • The server has not been correctly started. (See Setting Up Backburner Manager for the Rendering Network and Setting Up Backburner Server for the Rendering Network.
Troubleshooting Guide ERR: Frame error Texture coordinates must be applied to the specified object to render it on the server. ERR: Load Error: Missing DLL’S Following this error, you will also receive a listing of each of the missing DLLs in the scene. Files needed by the server are not available to render the job. Make sure that all the plug-in DLLs used in a job reside on each of the servers rendering the job. ERR: Job not found.
186 Chapter 17: Rendering Post and render the sequence out to the desired output type (for example, AVI). PROBLEM: When I click the Render button on the Render Scene dialog, I get an error dialog stating: Error Retrieving Configuration File This error usually is the result of a corrupt installation of the Backburner applications which caused an errant registry setting. SUGGESTION PROBLEM: Clicking Render button results in Backburner plugin error: Error creating 3ds Max plugin instance for Backburner.
Setting Up Directories Refer to the Installation Guide for details about installing 3ds Max. Note: A system using the scanline renderer, that is intended to act a dedicated rendering server, does not require authorization for 3ds Max. Setting Up Directories During network rendering, common directories (directories that are shared across the network) allow access to files needed by all the rendering servers. You can organize, share, and (if necessary) mount these directories.
188 Chapter 17: Rendering • Decide on a machine to accept final output. It should have enough disk space to store the largest completed animation file you’re likely to render. • Create or choose a directory for final output. • Share that directory as a resource available to the network. Creating a Local Output Directory A local output directory lets you use available storage on each rendering server. Rendered frame files are sequentially numbered when assigned by the network manager.
Using Configure User Paths Before beginning this setup, choose a common drive letter for all servers to mount. If you have other drives mounted, you might need to switch assignments to free the drive letter for this mount. If a Map or Target directory is on a rendering server, mount the directory on this machine like all the others, even if the directory is on the local disk. When using a mounted directory, be sure that the directory to be mounted is correctly shared.
190 Chapter 17: Rendering Procedures To add bitmap paths to the External Files panel from within the software: 1. Run the software on a machine running an Fonts=d:\3dsmax\fonts Scenes=d:\3dsmax\scenes Import=d:\3dsmax\meshes Export=d:\3dsmax\meshes ... authorized copy of the program. 2. Choose Customize > Configure User Paths to open the Configure User Paths dialog, and then click the External Files tab, if necessary. 3.
Network Job Assignment Dialog Procedure To use the Network Job Assignment dialog: The Network Job Assignment dialog is accessible when you turn on the Net Render toggle. The Net Render toggle can be accessed from three different dialogs used for rendering. You see a listing of all servers available for network rendering. Each server is marked with a colored icon to denote its current status: Green—Running and not rendering any jobs. Yellow—Rendering another job.
192 Chapter 17: Rendering Interface click Disconnect to disconnect from the current manager so you can choose a different manager. Automatic Search—Determines whether the software connects to a specific manager or searches for one using a subnet mask when you click Connect. When off, the software attempts to connect to the manager you specify in this group. When on, it searches the network for a manager using the specified subnet mask. Refresh—Updates the Server and Job lists.
Network Job Assignment Dialog jobs that must finish before the current job can start. Options group Enabled Notifications—Lets the software send rendering-related messages via email. When this is on, its Define button becomes available. For information, see the Notifications dialog (page 3–196) topic. Define—Opens the Notifications dialog, which lets you set notifications parameters. Split Scan Lines—Lets you subdivide the rendering of each frame among the rendering servers.
194 Chapter 17: Rendering rendering servers can use to find bitmaps that are not found on the primary map paths. When on, you can manually enter the path and file name in the field below the check box, or click the ellipsis button and browse to the MXP file. Note: Create MXP files with Configure User Paths (page 3–808). Status group Displays text messages describing the current status of the job assignment.
Network Job Assignment Dialog • Number of CPUs • Total Physical Memory - in bytes To change job settings and manage jobs, use the monitor. • Operating System Advanced—Opens the Advanced Settings dialog • Work Disk Space - in megabytes • Historical Performance Index - see note below • Handle - a hexadecimal identification number for the machine • User - current user name Note: The Historical Performance Index value, listed under the Perf.
196 Chapter 17: Rendering Job Dependencies Dialog Rendering menu > Render > Render Scene dialog > Turn on Net Render (Render Output group) > Render > Network Job Assignment dialog > Connect to a Manager. > Priority group > Dependencies Rendering menu > Render To Texture > Render To Texture dialog > Turn on Net Render (Render Settings group) > Render > Network Job Assignment dialog > Connect to a Manager.
Strips Setup Dialog Interface To—Enter the email address of the person who needs to know the rendering status. SMTP Server—Enter the numeric IP address of the system you use as a mail server. See also Configuring Backburner Log Files Strips Setup Dialog Rendering menu > Render > Render Scene dialog > Common tab > Turn on Net Render (Render Output group) > Render > Network Job Assignment dialog > Options group > Turn on Split Scan Lines.
198 Chapter 17: Rendering 7. In the Options group, turn on Split Scan Lines, Interface and then click Define. The Strips Setup dialog appears. The dialog displays the output resolution, and lets you determine how to split up the rendering job by specifying the number of horizontal strips into which the image will be subdivided. 8. Specify the vertical size of each strip in pixels or as a percentage of the total image height, or set the number of strips. Changing one also changes the other. 9.
Advanced Settings Dialog won’t be finished until the slower machine renders its half of the final image. But if you set Number Of Strips to 4, the faster machine can render three of the strips while the slower machine renders one, effectively halving the total render time. number, specify pre-render scripts and affect job handling and archive settings. Interface This setting is interdependent with and inversely proportional to the Strip Height setting; increase one, and the software decreases the other.
200 Chapter 17: Rendering Wait for MAX to Unload—When a job is complete, the manager tells the server to unload the software, then waits for a reply from the server saying 3ds Max is down and it’s ready for a new job. This spinner specifies the amount of time the Manager will wait for the Server to reply to this notification. If a server exceeds the specified value, it is flagged as "failed" by the manager, and no more frames are sent to it.
Batch Rendering Defaults—Returns all settings to their defaults. OK—Accepts any changes and closes the dialog. Cancel—Closes the dialog without saving changes. Batch Rendering “Batch rendering” is a term used to describe the process of rendering a series of tasks or jobs that have been assigned to a queue.
202 Chapter 17: Rendering 2. Start 3ds Max, and load the first scene you want to batch render. 3. Open the Render Scene dialog and adjust the various rendering parameters for the way you want to render the scene, including active viewport, file output, etc. 4. Turn on Net Render in the Render Output group, and then click Render. 5. In the resulting Network Job Assignment dialog (page 3–190), click the Connect button. 6. Click the Submit button.
Batch Rendering - Batch Render Dialog 7. In the Render Output group, turn on Net Render. 8. Click Render. To assign network jobs: At this point, the Network Job Assignment dialog (page 3–190) appears. Its main purpose is submit the current job to the Backburner Manager with all its render settings, including job name and net rendering specifics. The Backburner Manager then takes over and begins the rendering process. 1.
204 Chapter 17: Rendering • Whether to render a specific camera view or the active viewport. • The output path where rendered images get stored. • Which scene state (page 3–518) is restored prior to rendering. 4. Review the Selected Batch Render Parameters settings and, if necessary, turn on Override Preset and then change the Frame Start, Frame End, Width, Height, and Pixel Aspect settings. 5. Click the Output Path button to set a drive location, file name and file format for the rendered image.
Batch Rendering - Batch Render Dialog 4. Click the Submit button to send all the Batch Render camera tasks to Backburner for network rendering to all the workstations that are running Backburner Server. If you are running the Backburner Queue Monitor, you’ll see all the camera tasks listed as rendering jobs in the Job section of the Queue Monitor. No warning appears to confirm deletion and you cannot undo a deletion.
206 Chapter 17: Rendering Frame End—The last frame to be rendered for the highlighted task. Its default state also matches the Time Output group settings on the Common panel of the Render Scene dialog. want, you can change the task’s name to something more descriptive.
Batch Rendering - Batch Render Dialog (-------------------------) from the top of the drop-down list. specify a drive location and name for the batch file that is saved. Render—Starts the batch rendering process or opens the Network Job Assignment dialog if Net Render is turned on. Choose the dashed line to render the active viewport. Note: Choosing a camera changes only the camera the task uses. It does not change the name of the task.
208 Chapter 17: Rendering Batch Render Tool - Batch Render Warning Dialog Rendering menu > Batch Render > Click Render to render tasks that do not have an output path set. Rendering menu > Batch Render > Click Render to render tasks that could overwrite previously saved files. OK—Allows you to continue with the batch The Batch Render Warning dialog informs you of certain conditions you may have overlooked while assigning the rendering tasks.
Command-Line Rendering path are not automatically saved and only appear in the rendered frame window (page 3–5). Cancel—Cancels the batch rendering. Warning: Command-line rendering is a professional feature and can perform destructive operations. You will not see messages or warning dialogs informing you about potential mistakes, such as overwriting an existing frame on your drive.
210 Chapter 17: Rendering Example: Rendering to a JPG file at 800x600 resolution: in a BAT file. You can build your text file using any text editor. Perhaps the last time you rendered your scene, you had the output resolution set to 320x240 and rendered a BMP file. Re-rendering the scene using different output settings is fast and efficient with command-line rendering. Note: A TXT file can specify only a single scene to 1. Open a command prompt window. -bitmapPath=\\mapServer\maps\myMaps -cam=myCamer
Command-Line Rendering Switches file using any text editor. For this example, let’s say you have three scenes, in various stages, and you want each rendered using different settings. 1. Open your text editor. 2. On the first line, enter the following text. This example assumes that the scene is far from finished, but that you want to test a chunk of animation.
212 Chapter 17: Rendering “c:\program files\autodesk\3dsmax9\ 3dsmaxcmd” -outputName=“c:\program files\autodesk\3dsmax9\renderoutput\ myImage.jpg” -w=640 -h=480 “c:\program files\autodesk\3dsmax9\scenes\myscene.max” will give you the same results. The use of the equal sign can give your command-line files more of an INI file appearance. Note: The switch -submit:[manager_name] is the only case where a colon is necessary.
Command-Line Rendering Switches Switch Effect Switch Effect -dateFormat: Specifies a date format to be used in message timestamp, at verbosity level 5. Defaults to locale-dependent format. For details, use the 3dsmaxcmd3dsvizcmd -x option. -gammaValueIn: Sets the Input Gamma value. -gammaValueOut: Sets the Output Gamma value. -continueOnError If an error is encountered, the software attempts to continue rendering.
214 Chapter 17: Rendering Switch Effect Switch Effect -useAdvLight:<1/0> Toggles use advanced lighting. “1”=On, “0”=Off. -waitRender: -computeAdvLight:<1/0> Toggles compute advanced lighting. “1”=On, “0”=Off. The amount of time to wait for 3ds Max to render, in minutes. Default=600. -ditherPaletted:<1/0> Toggles Output Dithering (paletted). “1”=On, “0”=Off. -waitUnload: The amount of time to wait for 3ds Max to unload, in minutes. Default=10.
Backburner Command Line Control For each of the following -RLA_xxxx switches, there is a corresponding -RPF_xxxx option. Switch Effect -RLA_COLORDEPTH:8, 16 or 32 Sets the RLA color bitdepth. -RLA_ALPHA:<1/0>: Toggles RLA Alpha. “1”=On, “0”=Off. -RLA_PREMULTALPHA:<1/0> Toggles RLA Premultiplied Alpha. “1”=On, “0”=Off. -RLA_DESCRIPTION: Lets you specify an RLA description (in quotes). Switch Effect -RPF_TRANSPCHANNEL Turns on RPF Transparency Channel.
216 Chapter 17: Rendering Backburner as “custom” jobs. This cmdjob.exe tool, found in the Backburner program folder, provides more flexibility in running custom jobs than is offered by the 3ds Max 3dsmaxcmd.exe plug-in. For a list of the command-line switches that you can use with the Backburner command line plug-in, see Command-Line Rendering Switches (page 3–211). Some examples of how these commands can be used with 3ds Max are listed below.
Effects and Environments A variety of special effects, such as film grain, depth of field, and lens simulations, are available as rendering effects (page 3–218). Another set of effects, such as fog, are provided as environment effects (page 3–271). Environment and Effects Dialog Rendering menu > Environment Rendering > Effects You apply effects and environments by using the Environment and Effects dialog. Interface The fog environment effect adds atmosphere to a street scene.
218 Chapter 18: Effects and Environments Effects Panel and Rollout (page 3–219) Environment Panel (page 3–272) Rendering Effects Rendering Effects enable you to add post-production effects without having to render the scene to see the results. Through the Effects panel (page 3–219) on the Environment and Effects dialog, you can add various effects and view them prior to final rendering of an image or animation. Render Effects let you work interactively.
Effects Panel and Rollout Render Effects have the added advantage of allowing animated parameters and references to scene objects. You can also adjust and view the effects interactively. Add—Displays a dialog listing all available rendering effects. Select the effect you want added to the window list, and then click OK.
220 Chapter 18: Effects and Environments Update Effect—Manually updates the preview rendered frame window when Interactive is not on. What is shown in the rendered frame window is only an update of any changes made in Rendering Effects. Any changes made to the scene itself will not be rendered. Merging Effects Rendering menu > Effects > Environment and Effects dialog > Effects panel > Merge The Merge button on the Effects panel (page 3–219) lets you merge effects from other 3ds Max (.max) scene files.
Hair and Fur Render Effect Interface • geometry—Creates actual geometry for the rendered hair at render time. This geometry is assigned the material ID set by the Hair And Fur modifier > Geom Mat ID parameter. Note: “Geometry” hair derives its texture from the growth object, not from any maps applied via the Material Parameters rollout. Compositing options aren’t available with “geometry” hair. The “geometry” option works with both the default scanline renderer and the mental ray renderer.
222 Chapter 18: Effects and Environments rendering itself, not the 3ds Max scene. This mode omits features such as illumination textures on the hair, and light falloff calculation might be slightly inaccurate, but rendering is somewhat faster. Raytrace the Reflections/Refractions—Available only for the “buffer” Hairs option. When on, reflections and refractions are ray-traced. When off, they are calculated as usual. Turning this option on can increase realism at the cost of render time. Default=off.
Lens Effects Rendering Effects Add List—Adds multiple objects to the list. Click Add List and then in a viewport, click each object to add in turn. To finish, right-click the viewport or click Add List again to turn it off. Replace—To replace an object in the list, highlight its name in the list, click Replace, and then in a viewport click the replacement object. Delete—To remove an object from the list, highlight its name in the list and then click Delete.
224 Chapter 18: Effects and Environments 3–238), Manual Secondary (page 3–242), Star (page 3–246), and Streak (page 3–250). Lens Effects Globals rollout, Parameters panel Procedures To add an effect: 1. Select the desired effect from the list on the left side of the Lens Effects Parameters rollout. 2. Click the (>) arrow button to move it into the column on the right. To delete an applied effect: 1. Select the effect from the list on the right side of the Lens Effects Parameters rollout. 2.
Lens Effects Rendering Effects different Lens Effect, even if the differences are very small. For example, if you set up a Ray effect, you will get slightly different rays in the lens flare if you adjust the seed value. Angle—Affects the amount that the Lens Effect rotates from its default position, as the position of the effect changes relative to the camera. Squeeze—Squeezes the size of the overall Lens Effect, either horizontally or vertically to compensate for different frame aspect ratios.
226 Chapter 18: Effects and Environments Inner Radius—Sets the inner radius around the Interface effect that another scene object must intersect in order to completely occlude the effect. Glow Element rollout, Parameters panel Outer Radius—Sets the outer radius around the effect that another scene object must intersect in order to begin to occlude the effect. Size—Decreases the size of the effect when being occluded. Intensity—Decreases the intensity of the effect when being occluded.
Glow Lens Effect Occlusion—Determines how much the Lens Effects Scene Occlusion parameters will affect the particular effect. The value entered determines what percentage of occlusion set in the Lens Effects Globals panel will be applied. Squeeze—Determines whether the effect will be squeezed. When activated the effect will be squeezed according to Lens Effects Globals under the Parameters panel in the Squeeze spinner.
228 Chapter 18: Effects and Environments Glow Element rollout, Options panel channel (page 2–1443) assigned to it. Assign the Material ID channel in the Material Editor, using the Material ID channel flyout (page 2–1444). The Lens Effect will be applied only to areas of the geometry where that particular ID channel is present. Tip: In some cases you might want to apply different Lens Effects settings to different pieces of geometry or IDs.
Glow Lens Effect channel is interpreted opposite that of the Mask channel. Range=0 to 255. might need to use the Perimeter option at times when the alpha channel is unavailable. Z Hi/Z Lo—Highlights objects based on their distance (Z-Buffer distance) from the camera. The Hi value is the maximum distance and the Lo value is the minimum. Any objects between these two Z-Buffer distances will be highlighted.
230 Chapter 18: Effects and Environments Ring Lens Effect Interface Ring Element rollout, Parameters panel Rendering menu > Effects > Environment and Effects dialog > Effects panel > Add > Add Effect dialog > Lens Effects > Choose Ring, and click the (>) arrow button. Adding a ring to the light The ring is a circular color band that surrounds the center of the source object. Warning: This effect is not supported by the mental ray renderer (page 3–78). Name—Displays the name of the effect.
Ring Lens Effect Plane—Sets the location of the effect along the axis of the effect which extends from the center of the effect through the center of the screen. Thickness—Determines the thickness, in pixels, of the effect. Glow Behind—Gives the effect the ability to be displayed behind objects in your 3ds Max scene. Occlusion—Determines how much the Lens Effects Scene Occlusion parameters will affect the particular effect.
232 Chapter 18: Effects and Environments Mix—Mixes colors set in Radial Color and colors set in Circular Color. Setting the spinner at 0 will only use values set in Radial Color while setting the spinner at 100 will only use values set in Circular Color. Any value between 0 and 100 will mix between the two values.
Ring Lens Effect channel (page 2–1443) assigned to it. Assign the Material ID channel in the Material Editor, using the Material ID channel flyout (page 2–1444). The Lens Effect will be applied only to areas of the geometry where that particular ID channel is present. Tip: In some cases you might want to apply different Lens Effects settings to different pieces of geometry or IDs. To accomplish this, add additional Lens Effects entries to the Lens Effects Parameters list.
234 Chapter 18: Effects and Environments might need to use the Perimeter option at times when the alpha channel is unavailable. Bright—Filters the source objects based on their brightness values.
Ray Lens Effect Interface Num—Specifies the overall number of rays that Ray Element rollout, Parameters panel appear in the lens flare. Rays are randomly spaced around the radius. Angle—Specifies the angle for the rays. You can enter both positive and negative values so, when animated, the rays rotate in a clockwise or counterclockwise direction. Sharp—Specifies the overall sharpness of the rays. Higher numbers produce crisp, clean, and clear rays. Lower numbers produce more of a secondary glow look.
236 Chapter 18: Effects and Environments Falloff Curve—Displays the Radial Falloff dialog (page 3–257) in which you can set weights for the colors used in Radial Color. By manipulating the Falloff Curve you can make the effect use more of one color or map than the other. You can also use a map to determine the falloff when a light is used as a Lens Effects source.
Ray Lens Effect channel (page 2–1443) assigned to it. Assign the Material ID channel in the Material Editor, using the Material ID channel flyout (page 2–1444). The Lens Effect will be applied only to areas of the geometry where that particular ID channel is present. Tip: In some cases you might want to apply different Lens Effects settings to different pieces of geometry or IDs. To accomplish this, add additional Lens Effects entries to the Lens Effects Parameters list.
238 Chapter 18: Effects and Environments Additional Effects group Additional Effects allows you to apply maps such as Noise to your Lens Effect. You can display the Material/Map browser by clicking the long button next to the Apply check box. Apply—Applies the selected map when activated. Edge filter applied to rays emanating from object Perim(eter) Alpha—Applies the Lens Effect only to the perimeter of an object based on its alpha channel.
Auto Secondary Lens Effect camera position changes relative to the source object, the secondary flares move. Interface Auto Secondary Element rollout, Parameters panel Max—Controls the maximum size of secondary flares in the current set. This number is defined as a percentage of the overall image. Axis—Defines the overall length of the axis the automatic secondary flares will be distributed along.
240 Chapter 18: Effects and Environments Radial Color group The Radial Color settings affect the inner and outer colors of the effect. You can set the color swatches to set the inner and outer colors of the Lens Effect. Each color swatch has a percentage spinner that determines at what point that color should stop and the next should start. You can also use bitmaps such as gradient or cellular to determine the radial color. displays the Radial Size dialog (page 3–259).
Auto Secondary Lens Effect when you right-click any object and select Properties from the menu. Then, set the Object Channel ID under the G-Buffer ID controls. Material ID—Applies the Lens Effect to an object or part of an object with a specific Material ID channel (page 2–1443) assigned to it. Assign the Material ID channel in the Material Editor, using the Material ID channel flyout (page 2–1444). The Lens Effect will be applied only to areas of the geometry where that particular ID channel is present.
242 Chapter 18: Effects and Environments keeps all of the edges clean because it relies on the scene alpha channel to derive its effect. Perim(eter)—Applies the Lens Effect only to the perimeter of an object based on Edge interference. Although not as precise as Perimeter Alpha, you might need to use the Perimeter option at times when the alpha channel is unavailable. Bright—Filters the source objects based on their brightness values.
Manual Secondary Lens Effect Interface Intensity—Controls the overall brightness and Manual Secondary Element rollout, Parameters panel opacity of the individual effect. Higher values produce a bright, more opaque effect, and lower values produces a dim, transparent effect. Plane—Controls the distance, in degrees, between the flare source and the manual secondary flare. By default, the flare plane exists at the center of the chosen node source.
244 Chapter 18: Effects and Environments Lens Effect. You can also use bitmaps such as gradient or cellular to determine the radial color. Manual Secondary Element rollout, Options panel Falloff Curve—Displays the Radial Falloff dialog (page 3–257) in which you can set weights for the colors used in Radial Color. By manipulating the Falloff Curve you can make the effect use more of one color or map than the other.
Manual Secondary Lens Effect Material ID—Applies the Lens Effect to an object or part of an object with a specific Material ID channel (page 2–1443) assigned to it. Assign the Material ID channel in the Material Editor, using the Material ID channel flyout (page 2–1444). The Lens Effect will be applied only to areas of the geometry where that particular ID channel is present. Tip: In some cases you might want to apply different Lens Effects settings to different pieces of geometry or IDs.
246 Chapter 18: Effects and Environments Perim(eter)—Applies the Lens Effect only to the perimeter of an object based on Edge interference. Although not as precise as Perimeter Alpha, you might need to use the Perimeter option at times when the alpha channel is unavailable. Star Lens Effect Rendering menu > Effects > Environment and Effects dialog > Effects panel > Add > Add Effect dialog > Lens Effects > Choose Star, and click the (>) arrow button.
Star Lens Effect Interface Star Element rollout, Parameters panel Width—Specifies the width of the individual spokes, as a percentage of the overall frame. Angle—Sets the starting angle in degrees in which the star spokes point. You can enter both positive and negative values so, when animated, the star spokes rotate in a clockwise or counterclockwise direction. Taper—Controls the taper of the individual spokes of the star. Taper widens or narrows the tips of the individual star points.
248 Chapter 18: Effects and Environments Radial Color group The Radial Color settings affect the inner and outer colors of the effect. You can set the color swatches to set the inner and outer colors of the Lens Effect. You can also use bitmaps such as gradient or cellular to determine the radial color. around the light or object. You can also use a map to determine where the effect should be placed. A check box is used to activate the map.
Star Lens Effect Properties from the menu. Then, set the Object Channel ID under the G-Buffer ID controls. the Lens Effect applied to them are determined by the settings in the Image Filters group box. Material ID—Applies the Lens Effect to an object or part of an object with a specific Material ID channel (page 2–1443) assigned to it. Assign the Material ID channel in the Material Editor, using the Material ID channel flyout (page 2–1444).
250 Chapter 18: Effects and Environments keeps all of the edges clean because it relies on the alpha channel to derive its effect. Perim(eter)—Applies the Lens Effect only to the perimeter of an object based on Edge interference. Although not as precise as Perimeter Alpha, you might need to use the Perimeter option at times when the alpha channel is unavailable.
Streak Lens Effect Interface Streak Element rollout, Parameters panel Width—Specifies the width of the streak, as a percentage of the frame. Angle—Specifies the angle for the streak. You can enter both positive and negative values so, when animated, the streak rotates in a clockwise or counterclockwise direction. Taper—Controls the taper of the individual spokes of the streak. Taper widens or narrows the tips of the individual streak points.
252 Chapter 18: Effects and Environments Falloff Curve you can make the effect use more of one color or map than the other. You can also use a map to determine the falloff when a light is used as a Lens Effects source. Streak Element rollout, Options panel Section Color group Section Color determines the color of the effect by using three different color swatches that are matched to the three sections of the effect. A map can also be used to determine section color.
Streak Lens Effect channel (page 2–1443) assigned to it. Assign the Material ID channel in the Material Editor, using the Material ID channel flyout (page 2–1444). The Lens Effect will be applied only to areas of the geometry where that particular ID channel is present. Tip: In some cases you might want to apply different Lens Effects settings to different pieces of geometry or IDs. To accomplish this, add additional Lens Effects entries to the Lens Effects Parameters list.
254 Chapter 18: Effects and Environments might need to use the Perimeter option at times when the alpha channel is unavailable. Lens Effects Dialogs Bright—Filters the source objects based on their brightness values. The effect is only applied to objects with a brightness above the spinner setting This option can be inverted by clicking the I button next to the spinner Hue—Filters the source objects by their hue. Select the hue by clicking the color swatch next to the spinner.
Circular Falloff Graph (Lens Effects) Interface Move—Moves selected points in any direction. Click and hold the Move button to display the flyout where you can select a button to move in any direction, move only in the horizontal direction, or move only in the vertical direction. The Move function remains active until you click another button. The button is yellow while it is active. Scale Point—Scales a point vertically. Click once to enable Scale Point.
256 Chapter 18: Effects and Environments Zoom Extents—Fits the curve within the graph window both vertically and horizontally so that the entire curve is visible. Zoom Horizontal Extents—Fits the curve horizontally within the graph window so that the full length of the curve is visible. Zoom Vertical Extents—Fits the curve vertically within the Circular Falloff graph window so that the full height of the curve is visible. Zoom Horizontally—Scales the width of the Circular Falloff graph window.
Radial Falloff Dialog (Lens Effects) direction, move only in the horizontal direction, or move only in the vertical direction. The Move function remains active until you click another button. The button is yellow while it is active. Scale Point—Vertically scales a point up or down. Click once to enable Scale Point. The Scale Point function remains active until you click another button. The button is yellow while it is active. Zoom Vertically—Scales the length of the Radial Density dialog window.
258 Chapter 18: Effects and Environments You can also manually enter a horizontal or vertical position by entering a value into the two entry boxes. Interface Move—Moves selected points in any direction. Click and hold the Move button to display the flyout where you can select a button to move in any direction, move only in the horizontal direction, or move only in the vertical direction. The Move function remains active until you click another button. The button is yellow while it is active.
Radial Size Dialog (Lens Effects) active until you click another button. The button is yellow while it is active. Zoom Extents—Fits the curve within the dialog window both vertically and horizontally so that the entire curve is visible. Zoom Horizontal Extents—Fits the curve horizontally within the dialog window so that the full length of the curve is visible. Zoom Vertical Extents—Fits the curve vertically within the Radial Falloff graph so that the full height of the curve is visible.
260 Chapter 18: Effects and Environments Zoom Extents—Fits the curve within the dialog window both vertically and horizontally so that the entire curve is visible. Zoom Horizontal Extents—Fits the curve horizontally within the dialog window so that the full length of the curve is visible. Zoom Vertical Extents—Fits the curve vertically Interface Move—Moves selected points in any direction.
Blur Rendering Effect Directional—Applies the Blur effect in any direction according to the Directional parameters. The U Pixel Radius and Trail blur the pixels horizontally while the V Pixel Radius and Trail blur the pixels vertically. Rotation is used to rotate the axis of the horizontal and vertical blurring. U Pixel Radius—Determines the horizontal Interface intensity of the Blur effect. Increasing the value increases the number of surrounding pixels that each pixel will use to compute its blur.
262 Chapter 18: Effects and Environments center or an arbitrary location set by the X and Y Origin spinners. The Blur effect will apply the least amount of blur to the center origin of the effect and gradually increase the blur to the pixels further away from the center. This can be used to simulate motion blur caused by camera zoom. Blur Parameters rollout, Pixel Selections panel Pixel Radius—Determines the intensity of the Radius Blur effect.
Blur Rendering Effect Non-Background—Affects everything but the Map Mask—Applies the Blur effect according to the background image or animation when chosen. This is useful when the Blur effect has dimmed your scene objects but not the background. By Using Brighten, Blend, and Feather Radius, you can maintain the original colors of the scene. channel selected and mask applied through the Material/Map Browser. After selecting a mask you must select a channel from the Channel list.
264 Chapter 18: Effects and Environments Min Lum—The minimum luminance value a pixel General Settings group must have in order to have the Blur effect applied to it. Max Lum—The maximum luminance value a pixel can have for the Blur effect to be applied to it. Brighten—Brightens the portion of the image that the Blur effect is applied to. Blend—Blends the Object ID Blur effect with the original rendered image. F.
Brightness and Contrast Rendering Effect brightening provides a soft highlight to the Blur effect. Brighten Curve—Lets you edit the brightening Brightness—Increases or decreases all color components (red, green, and blue). Range=0 to 1.0. curve in the Feather Falloff curve graph. Contrast—Compresses or expands the latitude Blend Curve—Lets you edit the blend curve in the between maximum black and maximum white. Range=0 to 1.0. Feather Falloff curve graph.
266 Chapter 18: Effects and Environments Yellow/Blue—Adjusts the blue channel. Preserve Luminosity—When on, retains the luminosity of the image while correcting the color. Ignore Background—When on, allows you to image correct a model without affecting the background.
File Output Rendering Effect Interface TIF Image File (page 3–634) (TIF) Devices—Opens a dialog so you can send the rendered output to a device such as a video recorder. Clear—Clears any file or device selected in the Destination group box. Driver group These buttons are available only when you choose a device as the image source. About—Provides information on the source of the image-handler software used to bring the image into the software. Setup—Displays a setup dialog specific to the plug-in.
268 Chapter 18: Effects and Environments parts of the scene should be rendered into the Depth channel image. Copy—After choosing a camera with the None button, click Copy to use the camera’s clipping planes to determine which part of the scene should be rendered into the Depth channel image file. None—Enables you to select a camera to use for copying clipping planes. Click the none button to activate it. The None button will turn green until a camera has been selected in the viewport.
Motion Blur Rendering Effect Motion Blur Rendering Effect Rendering menu > Effects > Environment and Effects dialog > Effects panel > Add > Add Effect dialog > Motion Blur Work with transparency—When on, motion blur is applied to objects behind transparent objects. When off, objects behind transparent objects receive no motion blur. Turning off this toggle can improve rendering speed. Default=on. Duration—Specifies how long the "virtual shutter" is open. When this is set to 1.
270 Chapter 18: Effects and Environments be rendered. The order of the rendered effects is listed in the Effects tab of the Environment and Effects dialog. Interface Tip: To minimize sampling artifacts in out-of-focus areas with the default scanline renderer, try using the Blend filter in the Antialiasing group of the Render Scene dialog (page 3–2) (on the Renderer panel). The Depth of Field Parameters rollout contains the following parameters.
Environment and Atmosphere Effects focal node. You can also press H to display the Select Objects dialog (page 1–78) from which you can select objects to use as a focal node. Remove—Removes the object selected as the Focal Node. Environment and Atmosphere Effects Rendering menu > Environment > Environment and Effects dialog > Environment panel Use Camera—Specifies that the focal length from the camera selected in the Camera Selection list be used to determine the focal point.
272 Chapter 18: Effects and Environments approximately 100 to 1. In a bright room, this drops to approximately 30 to 1. Real environments can have dynamic ranges of 10,000 to 1, or larger. Procedures Exposure Controls (page 3–293) map light energy values to colors. They affect the brightness and contrast of both rendered images and viewport displays. They don’t affect the actual lighting levels in the scene, but only how those levels are mapped to a valid display range.
Environment Panel On the Environment panel, the name of the Environment Map button changes to show the type of map you chose, and Use Map turns on. After you have set up the map, you can later turn off Use Map to test rendering the scene without the mapped background. You have set up the environment map, but to assign a bitmap or adjust map parameters, you need to use the Material Editor. You can also create a standalone map in the Material Editor first, and then choose it with the Material/Map Browser.
274 Chapter 18: Effects and Environments The Environment and Effects dialog is displayed, with the Environment panel visible. 2. Under Atmosphere on the Environment panel, click Add. The Add Atmospheric Effect dialog appears. 3. Choose the kind of effect you want to use, and then click OK. The effect has now been added. Use the Atmosphere rollout to adjust parameters. Interface Common Parameters rollout button.
Environment Panel Atmosphere rollout effects within a list of complicated atmospheric functions. Move Up / Move Down—Moves the selected item in the list up or down to change the order in which the atmospheric effects are applied. Merge—Merges effects from other 3ds Max scene files. Effects—Shows the queue of effects that were added. The effects are evaluated in linear order within the scene during rendering.
276 Chapter 18: Effects and Environments is a combination of the scene and background image’s alpha. Also, when writing TGA files with Pre-Multiplied Alpha set to off, turning on Use Environment Alpha prevents incorrect results. Note that only background images with alpha channels or black backgrounds are supported when compositing in other programs such as Photoshop®.
Fire Environment Effect Example: To create a campfire: 1. Click Helpers on the Create panel and choose Atmospheric Apparatus (page 3–304) from the subcategory list. 2. Click Sphere Gizmo. Drag the cursor in the Top viewport to define an apparatus radius of about 20 units. Turn on the Hemisphere check box in Sphere Gizmo Parameters. 3. Click Non-Uniform Scale.
278 Chapter 18: Effects and Environments object found in the Atmospheric Apparatus subcategory. use the same effect. Assign a different seed to each apparatus to vary the effect. There are three kinds of apparatus: BoxGizmo (page 3–304), SphereGizmo (page 3–307), and CylGizmo. (page 3–306). You can assign single apparatus to multiple fire effects. For example, one apparatus can display both a fireball and a tendril flame effect.
Fire Environment Effect Shape group You control the shape, scale, and pattern of flames within the fire effect using controls under Shape. Two options set the direction and general shape of flames. to change the boundary of the effect and scale the shape of the flames. Use the Stretch parameter to scale only the flames inside the apparatus. You can also use Stretch values to reverse the effect that scaling the apparatus had on the flames.
280 Chapter 18: Effects and Environments Characteristics group You set the size and appearance of flames using parameters under Characteristics. All of these parameters depend on the apparatus size and are interdependent on each other. Changing one parameter affects the behavior of the other three. Effect of changing Flame Detail Flame Size—Sets the size of individual flames Value=1.0, 2.0, 5.0 inside the apparatus. The size of the apparatus affects the flame size.
Fire Environment Effect Note: 100 percent transparent objects that intersect the effect become partially visible. To use particles with Fire, consider using 3D particles instead of opacity-mapped particles. Motion group Use the parameters in the Motion group to animate the churning and rise of flames. Phase—Controls the rate of change for the fire effect. Turn on Auto Key and change the phase value at different times.
282 Chapter 18: Effects and Environments Set Up Explosion—Displays the Set Up Explosion Phase Curve dialog. You enter a start time and end time, and then click OK. The Phase value animates automatically for a typical explosion effect. 3. Set Adjust Near Range and Far Range to include Fog Environment Effect 4. Choose Rendering > Environment. the objects you want to fog in your rendering.
Fog Environment Effect Interface To assign the map you can drag a map from a Sample slot or Map button in the Material Editor (or anywhere else in the software; for example, a projector map button) and drop it on the Environment Color Map button. A dialog asks if you want the environment map to be a copy (independent) or an instance of the source map. Clicking the Environment Color Map button displays the Material/Map Browser, where you can choose a map type from the list.
284 Chapter 18: Effects and Environments Near %—Sets the density of the fog at the Near Range (Camera Environment Range parameter). Far %—Sets the density of the fog at the Far Range (Camera Environment Range parameter). Layered group Thins and thickens the fog between an upper and lower limit. You can have multiple layers of fog by adding multiple fog entries to the list.
Volume Fog Environment Effect 3. Under Atmosphere on the Environment panel, click Add. The Add Atmospheric Effect dialog is displayed. Seed button randomly generates a new seed value for you. 4. Choose Volume Fog, and then click OK. To assign volume fog to a gizmo from an apparatus modify panel: 5. Set the parameters for volume fog. 1. Open the Modify panel of an apparatus. Note: If there are no objects in your scene, rendering shows only a solid fog color.
286 Chapter 18: Effects and Environments Interface You can pick multiple gizmos. Click Pick Gizmo and then press H . This displays a Pick Object dialog on which you choose multiple objects from the list. Changing the dimensions of a gizmo changes the region that fog affects, but doesn’t change the scale of the fog and its noise. For example, reducing the radius of a spherical gizmo crops the fog, and moving the gizmo changes the fog’s appearance.
Volume Fog Environment Effect Turbulence—An iterative turbulence pattern. Invert—Reverses the noise effect. Dense fog becomes translucent and vice versa. Left: Original scene Right: Increased fog density Step Size—Determines the granularity of the fog sampling; the "fineness" of the fog. A large step size creates coarse (and to some extent, aliased) fog. Noise Threshold—Limits the noise effect. Range=0 to 1.0.
288 Chapter 18: Effects and Environments Volume Light Environment Effect Rendering menu > Environment > Environment and Effects dialog > Environment panel > Atmosphere rollout > Add > Volume Light Left: Fog with noise Right: Decreasing the size Phase—Controls the speed of the wind. If you have Wind Strength also set to greater than 0, the fog volume animates in accordance with the wind direction. With no Wind Strength, the fog churns in place.
Volume Light Environment Effect Procedures To use volume light: 1. Create a scene with lights. 2. Create a Camera or Perspective view of your scene. Avoid making the view axis parallel to the cone of a spotlight. This tends to create only a washed-out scene, possibly with rendering artifacts. 4. Select Volume Light from the Add Atmosphere or Effect dialog and click OK. 5. Highlight Volume Light from the Atmospheres & Effects list and click setup to adjust the Volume Light parameters.
290 Chapter 18: Effects and Environments Lights group Pick Light—Click the light that you want to enable for volume light in any viewport. You can pick multiple lights. Click Pick Light and then press H. This displays a Pick Object dialog that lets you choose multiple lights from the list. when you want to render transparent objects in volume fog. Density—Sets the density of the fog. The denser the fog, the more the light reflects off it inside the volume.
Volume Light Environment Effect Filter Shadows—Allows you to get better quality volume-light rendering by increasing the sampling rate (at the cost of some increased rendering time). These are the options: but in some cases you may want to increase it (for extremely high sample quality). Low—The image buffer is not filtered but directly sampled instead. This option is fine for 8-bit images, AVI (page 3–609) files, and so on. Medium—Adjacent pixels are sampled and averaged.
292 Chapter 18: Effects and Environments casts light much farther than it actually glows. Default=100. • Fractal—An iterative fractal noise pattern. • Turbulence—An iterative turbulence pattern. Invert—Reverses the noise effect. Dense fog becomes translucent and vice versa. Noise Threshold—Limits the noise effect. When the Left: Original scene Right: Attenuation limits the range of the light. noise value is above the Low threshold and below the High threshold, the dynamic range stretches to fill 0-1.
Exposure Controls Phase—Controls the speed of the wind. If you have Wind Strength also set to greater than 0, the fog volume animates in accordance with the wind direction. With no Wind Strength, the fog churns in place. Because there’s an animation track for phase, you can use the Function Curve editor to define precisely how you want your wind "gusts" to happen. Wind moves the fog volume in the specified direction over time. Wind is tied to the phase parameter so as the phase changes, the wind moves.
294 Chapter 18: Effects and Environments larger dynamic range of the (simulated) physical scene, into the smaller dynamic range of the display. Interface Left: Linear exposure control maps intensity evenly. Right: Logarithmic exposure control maps most intensities to low and mid tones. Tips: • If the primary lighting from your scene comes from standard lights (rather than photometric lights), use the Logarithmic Exposure Control and turn on Affect Indirect Only.
Automatic Exposure Control Automatic Exposure Control Rendering menu > Environment > Environment and Effects dialog > Environment panel > Exposure Control rollout > Choose Automatic Exposure Control from the list. > Automatic Exposure Control rollout This parameter is animatable. Contrast—Adjusts the contrast of the converted colors. Range=0 to 100. Default=50. This parameter is animatable. Exposure Value—Adjusts the overall brightness of the rendering. Range=-5.0 to 5.
296 Chapter 18: Effects and Environments a reflector is about 4500 cd because the light flux is concentrated into a narrow angle. Photometric lights are unaffected by the Physical Scale value. This parameter is animatable. Color correction check box and color swatch—When the check box is turned on, color correction shifts all colors so the color displayed in the color swatch appears as white. Default=off.
Logarithmic Exposure Control The exposure value can be thought of as an exposure compensation setting in cameras with automatic exposure control. This parameter is animatable. Physical Scale—Sets a physical scale for exposure control to use with lights that are not physically based. The result is an adjustment of the rendering that approximates the eye’s response to the scene.
298 Chapter 18: Effects and Environments 3–78). Logarithmic Exposure Control is best for scenes with a very high dynamic range. Left: The intensity of an IES Sun light completely overexposes a scene. Right: Logarithmic exposure control corrects the overexposure. Logarithmic Exposure Control is the best type of exposure control for animations because it doesn’t use histograms. Tip: If you’re rendering to texture (page 3–144), use the Logarithmic exposure control, not the Automatic or Linear control.
Logarithmic Exposure Control terms of its effect on reflections and refractions. Physical Scale does affect the appearance of self-illuminated materials. Range=0.0 to 200,000.0 candelas. Default=1500.0. A single candle is approximately 1 candela (the unit can also be called a "candle"). A 100-Watt (W) incandescent light bulb is approximately 139 candelas (cd).
300 Chapter 18: Effects and Environments scanline renderer. When you use standard lights but leave Affect Indirect Only off, radiosity and exposure control yield results that can be quite different from the default scanline renderer. grayscale where the brightest values are white, and the darkest are black.) The rendering includes the colored or grayscale spectrum bar as a legend for the image.
Pseudo Color Exposure Control • Illuminance (the default) displays values of light incident on surfaces. • Luminance displays values of light reflected off surfaces. Style—Chooses the way to display values. • Colored (the default) shows a spectrum. A display of illuminance shows that it is the same for all three spheres. • Grayscale shows gray tones that range from white to black. The spectrum bar displays the values the rendering will use.
302 Chapter 18: Effects and Environments emit more light than the brightest light object in the scene; in this case, use the object’s Luminance value as the Physical Scale. Range=0.0 to 200,000.0 candelas. Default=1500.0. Left: Linear scale Right: Logarithmic scale Display Range group Minimum (Min.)—Sets the lowest value to measure and represent in the rendering. Values at this quantity or below it all map to the leftmost display color (or grayscale level).
Lighting Data Exporter Utility 2–1312), the Physical Scale value is disregarded, and you don’t need to change it. • If you use Standard lights (page 2–1288), the Physical Scale value acts as a conversion scale that the radiosity engine uses to calculate energy. Set it to the equivalent of the brightest light source in the scene. This will set the appropriate conversion scale for reflections, self-illumination, and all other non-physically based elements a 3ds Max material offers.
304 Chapter 18: Effects and Environments Interface Atmospheric Apparatus Helper Objects Create panel > Helpers > Atmospheric Apparatus (from drop-down list) You can create three types of atmospheric apparatuses or gizmos (page 3–949): a box, a cylinder, or a sphere. These gizmos limit the spread of fog or fire in your scene. BoxGizmo Helper (page 3–304) CylGizmo Helper (page 3–306) SphereGizmo Helper (page 3–307) List of atmospheres—Displays the atmospheres that you can associate with the apparatus.
BoxGizmo Helper This creates a duplicate atmosphere for the apparatus. Its settings are initially identical to the atmosphere you chose. You can adjust them using Setup. Interface Name and Color rollout The Name and Color rollout (page 3–757) lets you rename objects and change their wireframe color. Box Gizmo Parameters rollout Box gizmo with volume fog Procedures To create the BoxGizmo: 1.
306 Chapter 18: Effects and Environments Atmospheres & Effects rollout Cylinder gizmo with volume fog The Atmospheres & Effects rollout, available from the Modify panel, allows you to add and set up atmospheres directly to the gizmo. Procedures Add—Displays the Add Atmosphere dialog (page 1. Drag in a viewport to define the initial radius, 3–304) from which you can add an atmosphere to the BoxGizmo. To create the CylGizmo: then release the mouse and drag vertically to set the initial height.
SphereGizmo Helper This creates a duplicate atmosphere for the apparatus. Its settings are initially identical to the atmosphere you chose. You can adjust them using Setup. Atmospheres & Effects rollout Interface Name and Color rollout The Name and Color rollout (page 3–757) lets you rename objects and change their wireframe color. Cylinder Gizmo Parameters rollout The Atmospheres & Effects rollout, available from the Modify panel, allows you to add and set up atmospheres directly to the gizmo.
308 Chapter 18: Effects and Environments the atmosphere you chose. You can adjust them using Setup. Interface Name and Color rollout The Name and Color rollout (page 3–757) lets you rename objects and change their wireframe color. Sphere Gizmo Parameters rollout Sphere gizmo with volume fog Procedures To create the SphereGizmo: 1. Drag in any viewport to define the initial radius. 2. Adjust the radius with the spinner. To add a new atmosphere: 1. Select the apparatus gizmo. 2.
SphereGizmo Helper Atmospheres & Effects rollout The Atmospheres & Effects rollout, available from the Modify panel, allows you to add and set up atmospheres effects directly to the gizmo. Add—Displays the Add Atmosphere dialog (page 2–1351) from which you can add an Atmosphere to the SphereGizmo. Delete—Deletes a highlighted atmospheric effect. Setup—Displays the Environment panel (page 3–272), where you can edit the highlighted effect.
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Video Post-Production Video Post, available from the Rendering menu, lets you combine (composite) and render output of various types of events, including the current scene, bitmap images, image-processing functions, and so on. The result of video post: a composited frame Video Post is a self-contained, modeless dialog, similar in appearance to Track View. The edit window of the dialog shows when each event occurs in the finished video. Each event is associated with a track that has a range bar.
312 Chapter 19: Video Post-Production Video Post Toolbar (page 3–323): Provides Video Post commands. Video Post Queue Rendering menu > Video Post > Video Post window > Video Post Queue Video Post Queue provides a hierarchical list of the images, scenes, and events to be composited. The Video Post queue in the Video Post dialog is similar to other hierarchical lists in the Track View and Material Editor.
Video Post Status Bar / View Controls This operation might not be allowed if the result would be impossible to execute. At the top level of the queue, you can almost always swap events; at lower levels, an event’s output must be legal input to its parent event. S/E—Shows start and end frames of the selected track. If no track is selected, shows the start and end frames of the entire queue.
314 Chapter 19: Video Post-Production Troubleshooting Video Post While Video Post offers many useful functions and creative effects, invariably you will set up a queue that looks like it should work or even appears to render correctly only to give you an animation that does not include the desired effect. Here are some troubleshooting tips to reference when a queue just isn’t doing what you expect. There are two key things that can cause a Video Post queue to fail.
Useful Video Post Procedures of the events in the queue. This problem is commonly caused when an event is selected while other events are being added. In this case, the Perspective event was select when the Lens Effects Glow and output events were added. • Render a scene with a starfield (page 3–316) There are two ways to create this queue to give you the correct results.
316 Chapter 19: Video Post-Production Then click OK to close the Add Image Output Event dialog. 8. Right-click the Sphere to bring up the Quad Menus and select Properties. 9. Set the Object Channel in the G-Buffer group to 1 and click OK. 10. Click the Execute Sequence button (page 3–325). 4. Click OK to close the Add Input Image Event dialog. 5. Click Add Image Output Event (page 3–339) and then click Files. 6.
Useful Video Post Procedures 4. Click Add Scene Event (page 3–329) and set the view to Perspective. Click OK to close the Add Scene Event dialog. 5. Click Add Image Filter Event (page 3–335) and choose Starfield from the Filter Plug-In list. Click OK to close the Add Image Filter Event dialog. 6. Click Add Image Output Event (page 3–339) and then click Files. 7.
318 Chapter 19: Video Post-Production 8. Click Add Image Layer Event (page 3–337) and choose Cross Fade Transition from the list of compositors and transitions. Click OK to close the Add Image Layer Event dialog. Notice how the Image Layer Event becomes the parent of the two Image Input Events. 9. Click Zoom Extents to view the entire set of tracks. 10. On the Queue track bar, click and drag the right-hand end of the range-bar to frame 20. This adjusts all the tracks. 11.
Useful Video Post Procedures 9. On the Execute Video Post dialog, set the new output resolution you want for the images and then click Render. When the rendering is complete, you will have a new series of resized images that have a name prefix of MyResize. So, if there were ten images listed in the IFL file, there will be ten new images named MyResize0000.tga through MyResize0009.tga stored in your image folder. 5. Click Add Image Output Event (page 3–339) and then click Files. 6.
320 Chapter 19: Video Post-Production 1. Use the IFL Manager Utility (page 3–619) to 11. Click Render on the Execute Video Post dialog. create an IFL file for the set of images that will be the background for your current scene. 2. Choose Rendering > Video Post. 3. Click Add Image Input Event (page 3–332) and then click Files. Choose your IFL file or animation and click Open and then click OK to close the Add Image Input Event dialog. 4.
Useful Video Post Procedures the end of the project, everyone’s animations need to be joined together. 12. Select the Image Output Event and drag the right end of the range-bar to match the total number of frames in the queue. 1. Choose Rendering > Video Post. 2. 3. 13. Choose your first animation file and click Open and then click OK to close the Add Image Input Event dialog. 14. Click Render on the Execute Video Post dialog. Click Add Image Input Event again and click Files.
322 Chapter 19: Video Post-Production 8. Select the first Scene Event and then hold down 3. In the Scene Range group, turn off Lock To the Ctrl key while selecting the second Scene Event. Both events will highlight in gold. Video Post Range and set the Scene Start value to the last frame of animation. 4. Turn off Lock Range Bar To Scene Range and set the Scene End value to 0. 9. Click the Abut Selected button (page 3–329). 10. Click in an empty part of the queue to deselect the two Scene Events.
Video Post Toolbar 10. Click Render on the Execute Video Post dialog. Post from the Rendering menu displays the Video Post data (if any) saved with your 3ds Max scene. Open Sequence Rendering menu > Video Post > Video Post toolbar > Open Sequence The Open Sequence button opens a Video Post sequence stored on disk.
324 Chapter 19: Video Post-Production Save Sequence Rendering menu > Video Post > Video Post toolbar > Save Sequence The Save Sequence button saves the current Video Post sequence to disk. All of the Video Post configuration data, the queue events themselves, and any queue event external data are saved in the MAX file. You can also save the Video Post sequence to a separate file for sharing with other 3ds Max users.
Swap Events Procedure To delete any event in the queue: • Select the event and press the Delete key. You can delete both enabled and disabled events, which are unavailable. Swap Events In this sample queue, the two top level events, Front and Fade, could be swapped. You can almost always swap events at the top level. However, at lower levels, where events start getting nested, the output of a lower level event must be valid input to its parent event.
326 Chapter 19: Video Post-Production 2. Set the time range and output size, and then click Render to create the video. 3. When execution is done, click Close to dismiss the Video Post progress dialog if it is still open. Interface two spinners independently. For other formats, the two spinners are locked to the specified aspect ratio, so changing one changes the other. Resolution Buttons—Specifies a preset resolution.
Configure Presets render you’ll see the Network Job Assignment dialog (page 3–190). Configure Presets Rendering menu > Video Post > Video Post toolbar > Execute Sequence > Right-click any Resolution button. > Configure Presets dialog Edit Range Bar Rendering menu > Video Post > Video Post toolbar > Edit Range Bar The Edit Range Bar provides editing functions for the range bars that appear in the event tracks area.
328 Chapter 19: Video Post-Production To move a range bar: • Click and drag the center of the range bar left or right. To change the length of a range bar: • Click and drag one of range bar’s endpoints left or right. If multiple range bars are selected, dragging one endpoint changes all selected range bars. To change the number of frames in an event: • Double-click the range bar in the event tracks area or select the event and click the Edit Current Event button.
Abut Selected Procedure To change the number of frames in an event, do one of the following: • Double-click the range bar in the event tracks area. • Click the Edit Current Event button in the toolbar. Abut Selected Rendering menu > Video Post > Video Post window > Select events in the queue. > Video Post toolbar > Abut Selected You can use multiple Scene events to show two views of the same scene simultaneously or to cut from one view to another.
330 Chapter 19: Video Post-Production Other Scene Range options are disabled when Lock To Video Post Range is selected. To offset the scene in time: • Select Lock Range Bar To Scene Range. The Scene Start control is enabled but the Scene End control remains disabled: synchronization is controlled by the Scene Start value and the length of the range bar. The Scene Start value is the scene frame number where playback begins.
Add Scene Event different from object motion blur (page 3–981), which creates motion blur for individual objects in the scene. Scenes created with previous versions of 3ds Max that use both Object Motion Blur and Scene Motion Blur may not render correctly, due to changes to Object Motion Blur. Execute some test frames and adjust your blur settings if needed. When you render with Scene Motion Blur activated, the Render Progress dialog tells you which subsample is being rendered.
332 Chapter 19: Video Post-Production the End spinner based on the Video Post range set for this event. The image can be in one of the following file formats: If you turn off Lock Range Bar To Scene Range, you can change either Start or End spinners to whatever you want. This allows you to keep your scene range locked to its native length, and still provides flexibility for mapping an arbitrary scene range to an arbitrary Video Post range.
Add Image Input Event If you click Files, a file dialog appears to let you choose the bitmap or animation file. If you choose Devices, a Select Image Input Device dialog appears. This dialog has a list of installed device options. 4. Click Options to choose the size and placement of the image in the final video frames. An Image Input Options dialog appears. 5. Adjust other Image Input settings, and then click OK. The Image Input event appears at the end of the queue.
334 Chapter 19: Video Post-Production Devices—Lets you choose an installed hardware input device; for example, a digital disk recorder. Options—Displays the Image Input Options dialog (page 3–334) to allow you to set up alignment, size, and frame range for the input image. Cache—Stores a bitmap in memory. If you are using a single-image bitmap, you can choose this option. Video Post won’t reload or scale the image for each frame.
Add Image Filter Event To control playback of an animated image: Frames group 1. In the Frames group, set the From, To and Step From/To—Specifies the range of frames to use if the values. 2. Select Loop at the End if you want the animation to repeat. Clear Loop at the End if you want the animation to stop after playback. This option applies only when the input animation is shorter than the final video. Interface image input file is an animation or video.
336 Chapter 19: Video Post-Production Lens Effects Filters (page 3–345) Negative Filter (page 3–345) Pseudo Alpha Filter (page 3–346) Simple Wipe Filter (page 3–347) An Image Input Options dialog appears, identical to the dialog you use with Image Input events. If the mask is animated, you also use this dialog to specify its time range and playback speed. Starfield Filter (page 3–347) Interface Procedures The Add Image Filter Event and Edit Filter Event dialogs have the same controls.
Add Image Layer Event Setup—Displays a setup dialog specific to the plug-in. Some plug-ins might not use this button. Mask group Channels—If you are using a bitmap as the mask file, you can use the Alpha channel, the Red, Green, or Blue channel, Luminance, Z-Buffer, Material Effects, or Object ID. Files—Select a file to use as a mask. The name of the selected file appears above the Files button.
338 Chapter 19: Video Post-Production Click to select the first event, then hold Ctrl and click to select the second. 3. Click Add Image Layer Event. An Add Image Layer Event dialog appears. 4. Choose the kind of layer event you want from the Layer Plug-In drop-down list. 5. If the Setup button is enabled for this kind of layer event, click Setup to set the options. 6. Choose a mask if you want the layer event to be masked. 7. Adjust other Image Layer settings, and then click OK.
Add Image Output Event Options—Displays the Image Input Options dialog (page 3–334) where you can set alignment and size, relative to the frames of video output. For animated images, you can also synchronize the mask with the frame sequence of video output. This is the same dialog used for Image Input Event options. Enabled—Enables the mask. If turned off, Video Post ignores any other mask settings. Inverted—When turned on, the mask is inverted.
340 Chapter 19: Video Post-Production If you click Files, a file dialog appears to let you choose the bitmap or animation file. If you choose Devices, a Select Image Output Device dialog appears. This dialog has a drop-down list of installed device options. 3. Adjust other parameters, and then click OK. The Image Output Event appears at the end of the queue.
Add External Event An External event is always a child event. If you select an event in the queue before you add the External event, the External event becomes the selected event’s child. Child events are evaluated before their parents. Procedure To add an external event: 1. Select an event. 2. Click Add External Event. An Add External Event dialog appears. 3. Click Browse. A file dialog appears. 4. Use the file dialog to choose the external program you want to execute, and then click OK. 5.
342 Chapter 19: Video Post-Production -w%w -h%h -oframe%f.tga The string sent to the external program might be: -w0640 -h0480 -oframe0001.tga Write image to clipboard—When on, writes the current rendered image to the Windows clipboard for retrieval by an external application. Read image from clipboard—When on, reads the contents of the Windows clipboard after processing by the external application. When the processed image is saved to the clipboard, it automatically appears in Video Post.
Contrast Filter Enabled—Enables or disables the event. When turned off, the event is disabled and Video Post ignores it when rendering the queue. Each event must be disabled individually. For example, disabling a composite layer event does not disable the composited image events. The range bars of disabled events are unavailable in the event track area.
344 Chapter 19: Video Post-Production Brightness—Set the spinner between 0 and 1.0. Interface This increases or decreases all color components (red, green, and blue). Absolute/Derived—Determines the computation of the gray value for Contrast. Absolute uses the highest value of any of the color components. Derived uses an average of the three color components. Fade Filter Rendering menu > Video Post > Video Post toolbar > Add Image Filter Event > Choose Fade Filter from the Filter Plug-In list.
Lens Effects Filters 3. In the Object Properties dialog, set G-Buffer Object Channel to a nonzero value, and then click OK. The G-Buffer ID can be any positive integer. If you give the same G-Buffer ID value to more than one object, all these objects will be post-processed. Lens Effects Filters Rendering menu > Video Post > Video Post toolbar > Add Image Filter Event > Choose a Lens Effects Filter from the Filter Plug-In list.
346 Chapter 19: Video Post-Production Interface Blend—Sets the amount of blending that occurs. Effect of negative filter When you click the Setup button in the Edit Filter Event dialog for the Negative filter, the Video Post dialog is replaced by a modeless Negative Filter dialog with a Blend spinner. You can turn on Auto Key, move the time slider, and change the Blend value to create keys. (You can also use other 3ds Max functions; for example, you can create objects.
Simple Wipe Filter Simple Wipe Filter Rendering menu > Video Post > Video Post toolbar > Add Image Filter Event > Choose Simple Wipe Filter from the Filter Plug-In list. by the image renders as black unless you use an Image Layer event to composite the Wipe filter with another image. Interface Rendering menu > Video Post > Video Post window > Select a Simple Wipe Filter.
348 Chapter 19: Video Post-Production Procedure Interface To use the Starfield filter: 1. Create a camera and (optionally) animate the camera’s or target’s position, field of view, and roll. 2. Choose Rendering > Video Post and add a Scene Event, using the camera for the view. 3. Select the Scene Event in the queue, click Add Image Filter, select the Starfield filter, and click the Setup button. 4.
Animating Lens Effects Properties Use—When on, the starfield uses motion blur. When off, the stars appear as dots, no matter what the camera’s motion. Lens Effects Filters Amount—The percentage of the frame time that the camera "shutter" is open. Default = 75%. Animating Lens Effects Properties Dimming—Determines how the streaked stars will dim as their trails lengthen. The default of 40 provides a good effect for video, dimming them a bit so they don’t appear to flash.
350 Chapter 19: Video Post-Production When viewing Gradients in Track View, notice that the first two flags have only a color track associated with them. This is because they are the start and end points of the gradient and never move. Any flags created after the first two will also have a position track associated with them. This means that you can animate not only the color of any flag in any gradient, but also its position over time as well.
Lens Effects Flare Filter You might notice that an individual part of the lens flare effect might not appear as bright in the smaller preview windows, compared to the main preview. This is because the brightness of a lens flare in the main preview is a result of combining the brightness of multiple effects, the total brightness being greater than a single part. All of the preview windows are multi-threaded to increase redraw speed and take advantage of multi-processor systems.
352 Chapter 19: Video Post-Production Apply Hue Globally—Globally applies the Hue of the Node Source to the other Flare effects. Angle—Affects the amount that the flare rotates from its default position, as the position of the flare changes relative to the camera. This parameter can be animated. The lock button to the right of the Auto Key button locks the secondary flares so they do rotate. When the button is disabled, the secondary flares will not rotate.
Flare Preferences Blur Int—Controls the strength of the blur when it is applied to the lens flare. The value set in this spinner takes full effect as the flare reaches the Dist Blur distance in your scene. Flares closer to the camera plane get a percentage of the intensity setting. This parameter can be animated. Soften—Provides an overall softening effect for the lens flare This parameter can be animated. Flare Parameter tabs Let you create and control the lens flare.
354 Chapter 19: Video Post-Production Interface other side of the hiding object. The radius makes the flare gently fade when it is occluded, instead of blinking out. Motion Blur—Determines whether or not an animated lens flare is rendered using Motion Blur. Motion Blur renders multiple copies in short increments to the same frame, which gives the illusion of a blurred object in motion. When an object is moving rapidly across the screen, it animates more smoothly if motion blur is turned on.
Flare Glow Parameters Squeeze—Specifies whether the Squeeze setting affects a particular part of the lens flare. This setting depends on the Squeeze setting in the lens flare properties. Interface Inferno—Defines whether the inferno (page 3–360) settings are active for this portion of the lens flare. Occlusion—Defines the percentage of the flare part that appears when it is occluded by another object. A value of 100 indicates that the whole object will disappear.
356 Chapter 19: Video Post-Production Interface Automatic Secondary Flare Parameters Rendering menu > Video Post > Video Post toolbar > Add Image Filter Event > Choose Lens Effects Flare from Filter Plug-In list. > Setup > A Sec tab Size—Specifies the overall size of the ring as a percentage of the overall frame and represents the diameter of the ring. The ring radius should be larger than the glow radius to make the lens flare look convincing.
Manual Secondary Flare Parameters a percentage of the overall image. This parameter can be animated (page 3–349). Sets—Specifies which set of secondary flares you are working with. You can have as many sets of automatic secondary elements as you wish, each having their own properties. By default, seven sets are available. You can scroll through them by clicking the forward and reverse arrow icons beside the name of the set. To add another set to your flare, click the Add button beneath the On check box.
358 Chapter 19: Video Post-Production Tip: In live camera work, there are often one or two secondary elements behind the light source, so you should have one or two as well. On—Turns manual secondary flares on or off. You control the parameters for rays in the Rays panel of the Lens Effects Flare dialog. Interface This option must be selected in both the Manual Secondary and Preferences tabs for the manual secondary flares to render.
Flare Star Parameters Hue—Specifies the gradation of the color of the rays. This parameter can be animated. Sharp—Specifies the overall sharpness of the rays. Higher numbers produce crisp, clean, and clear rays. Lower numbers produce more of a secondary glow look. Values range from 0 to 10. This parameter can be animated. Gradients—Defines the gradient (page 3–377) for the rays.
360 Chapter 19: Video Post-Production Flare Streak Parameters Rendering menu > Video Post > Video Post toolbar > Add Image Filter Event > Choose Lens Effects Flare from Filter Plug-In list. > Setup > Streak tab Angle spinner under Lens Flare Properties. Auto Rotate also ensures that the stars maintain their relative position to the flare as it is being animated. Hue—Specifies the gradation of the color of the streak. This parameter can be animated.
Flare Inferno Parameters Interface the direction set by the Direction spinner. For example, if you want to simulate a raging fire, you want the fractal patterns to move upward. This parameter can be animated (page 3–349). Direction—Specifies the direction, in degrees, of the inferno effect motion. By default, 0 is aligned in the 12 o’clock position, and works clockwise. This parameter can be animated. Note: The Motion and Direction spinners control You add the Inferno effect to other lens flare effects.
362 Chapter 19: Video Post-Production fractal inferno patterns. Higher values result in fractal patterns with brighter colors. Lower values result in the same patterns, with muted colors. This parameter can be animated. Bias—Shifts the colors of the effect toward one end of the color range or the other. At a setting of 50, Bias has no effect. Above 50, the colors are brighter, and below 50, they are darker and softer. This parameter can be animated.
Lens Effects Focus Filter The Lens Effects Focus dialog contains a preview window, and an area below to control the parameters of Focus. Preview group Preview window—Lets you quickly preview the Focus effect. Preview—Displays a generic scene to which you can quickly set up a Focus effect. Appears light green when selected. VP Queue—Lets you preview the scene in the Video Post queue. Preview must be selected for the VP Queue function to work.
364 Chapter 19: Video Post-Production Warning: When you animate Lens Effects parameters, this creates pointers into the actual scene, so Lens Effects animation is lost if you save the Video Post queue in a VPX file (page 3–1031). To preserve the animation, save the Video Post data, including Lens Effects animation, in the MAX file. Button group Reset—Resets Lens Effects Flare to its default settings.
Glow Properties Preview group Procedures Preview window—Lets you quickly preview the To set a material’s Effects Channel ID: glow effect. The preview window is multi-threaded to take advantage of systems with multiprocessors, and updates every time you make a change to any of the glow settings that might affect the scene. 1. In the Material Editor, make the material you Preview—Displays a generic scene to which you can quickly set up a Glow effect. Appears light green when selected.
366 Chapter 19: Video Post-Production Interface available Material Effects channels. This parameter can be animated. The glow will be applied only to areas of the geometry where the ID is present. Note: To apply different glow settings to different The Properties panel is divided into two sections: Source and Filter. Source group Specifies the objects in the scene to which a glow is applied. You can select more than one source option at a time.
Glow Preferences Alpha—Glows the alpha channel of an image. The transparency of an alpha channel is interpreted opposite that of the Mask channel. This parameter can be inverted, and can also be animated. Range = 0 to 255. Z Buffer Hi and Lo—Glows objects based on their distance (Z-Buffer distance) from the camera. The Hi value is the maximum distance and the Lo value is the minimum. Any objects between these two Z-Buffer distances will be glowed. These parameters can be animated.
368 Chapter 19: Video Post-Production Scene group Affect Alpha—Specifies whether or not the glow affects the alpha channel of the image, when rendered to a 32-bit file format. Affect Z Buffer—Specifies whether or not the glow affects the Z-Buffer of the image. When this option is enabled, the linear distance of the glow is recorded, and can be used in special effects that make use of the Z-Buffer. For example, Lens Effects Focus blurs objects based on their Z-Buffer information.
Glow Inferno Interface directions. You can control the Z direction using the Speed option under Inferno Parameters. Quality—Specifies the overall quality of the fractal noise patterns in the inferno effect. Higher values result in more iterations of the fractals, more detail in the effect, and slightly longer render times. This parameter can be animated. Red/Green/Blue—Selects the color channel to use for the Inferno effect.
370 Chapter 19: Video Post-Production fractal patterns. Low values result in less defined, subtler effects. This parameter can be animated. stars applied to each pixel, it will look a lot like twinkling magic. Radial Density—Controls the density of the inferno effect in a radial fashion from the center of the effect to the edge. Wherever there is white in the gradient, you only see inferno noise. Where the gradient is black, you can see the underlying glow.
Highlight Properties Interface your entire scene and how your effect will interact with your geometry. VP Queue—Lets you preview the scene in the Video Post queue. Preview must be selected for the VP Queue function to work. Highlight Control tabs Similar to the Glow settings, Highlight is also broken down into tabbed sections for fine control over each aspect of the Highlight effect.
372 Chapter 19: Video Post-Production Interface The highlights are then only applied to areas of the geometry where that particular ID is present. Note: In many instances, you may want to apply different highlight settings to different pieces of geometry or ID’s. To accomplish this, add additional Lens Effects Highlight entries to the Video Post queue. Then set each different Highlight entry to effect a different Effect or Object ID and proceed.
Highlight Properties inverted by clicking the I button to the right of the spinner, and can also be animated. Z Buffer Hi and Lo—Highlights objects based on their distance (Z-Buffer distance) from the camera. The Hi value is the maximum distance and the Lo value is the minimum. Any objects between these two Z-Buffer distances will be highlighted. These parameters can be animated. Filter group Filters the Source selections to let you control how the highlight is applied.
374 Chapter 19: Video Post-Production Interface Perimeter highlights Effect group Bright—Filters the source objects based on their brightness values. Only objects with a brightness above the spinner setting are selected and highlighted. This option can be inverted by clicking the I button next to the spinner. This parameter can be animated. Hue—Filters the source objects by their hue. Select the hue by clicking the color swatch next to the spinner. You can choose hue values from 0 to 255.
Highlight Geometry Clamp value of 15 As you can see, the Clamp value lets you maximize or minimize the overall number of highlights drawn over the same image. This can be a tremendous time saver. Alt. Rays—Alternates the lengths of points around the highlight. It works on every other ray point, changing from the ray’s full length to a smaller one based on the percentage spinner beneath it. This parameter can be animated. Alt.
376 Chapter 19: Video Post-Production If you want to use Focus to blur a highlight, you must select this option. If you are not sure about whether or not to select this option, leave it disabled, because you probably don’t need it. Pan—Automatically rotates the individual Highlight elements as they move laterally across the screen. If you have objects in your scene that are passing by the camera, they can be automatically rotated based on their position.
Lens Effects Gradients Intensity—Lets you control the intensity or brightness of the highlights. Values range from 0 to 100. This spinner functions only when you are using either the Pixel or User color methods to control the brightness of the highlight effect. This parameter can be animated.
378 Chapter 19: Video Post-Production 2. Click Properties and change any settings you want. Interface Gradient Options Rendering menu > Video Post > Video Post toolbar > Add Image Filter Event > Choose a Lens Effects Filter from the Filter Plug-In list. > Setup > Gradient tab Each gradient in Lens Effects has a set of common options. Right-clicking the gradient bar displays a shortcut menu with the following options.
Types of Gradients Load Bitmap—Displays a 3ds Max file browser so you can select a bitmap to use as your gradient. Unlike UV Map, the Load Bitmap option only reads the first row of pixels for the entire animation. This is a good option when you need to have a complex but static gradient. Flag Mode—Indicates you are using flags to set the colors of your gradient instead of using a bitmap as the source. Flag Mode is selected by default.
380 Chapter 19: Video Post-Production Interface Radial—Radial gradients work from the center point to the outer edge of a Lens Effects feature, changing color or brightness in a straight line from left to right as you scan the gradient bar. The left edge of the gradient is aligned with the center of the effect and the right edge is aligned with the outer edge of the effect. Scheme of a circular gradient Color (Radial and Circular)—Defines the colors used (page 3–381) for an effect.
Gradient Colors with brighter values producing bigger sizes and darker values producing shorter sizes. Gradient Colors Rendering menu > Video Post > Video Post toolbar > Add Image Filter Event > Choose a lens effects filter from the Filter plug-in list. > Setup > Gradient tab Colors in 3ds Max are interpreted in two different ways: RGB and HSV. In RGB (red, green, blue), you can select one of 256 shades of red, green, and blue, giving you a palette of 16.7 million colors (24 Bit).
382 Chapter 19: Video Post-Production rate of the cross fade is determined by the length of the Cross Fade Transition filter’s time range. Pseudo Alpha compositing Cross Fade fades one image into another over time. There are no setup options for this compositor. Procedure To use the Cross Fade Compositor: 1. Add two Scene or Image Input events to the queue. 2. Select both events and assign an Image Layer event consisting of the Cross Fade Compositor.
Simple Additive Compositor Simple Additive Compositor Rendering menu > Video Post > Video Post window > Make sure the two child events are in the order you want the Image Layer event to use them. > Select the two events. > Video Post toolbar > Add Image Layer Event > Choose Simple Additive Compositor from the Layer Plug-in list. Rendering menu > Video Post > Video Post window > Select a Simple Additive Compositor.
384 Chapter 19: Video Post-Production 2. Select both events and assign an Image Layer event consisting of the Simple Wipe Compositor. 3. Select the Image Layer event and click Edit Current Event. 4. Click Setup to display the Simple Wipe Compositor Setup dialog. Interface Direction group Right-pointing arrow—Wipes from left to right. Left-pointing arrow—Wipes from right to left. Mode group Push—Reveals the image. Pop—Erases the image.
Managing Scenes and Projects These topics are concerned with managing scenes, projects, and the files that make them up. Working with AutoCAD, Revit, and AutoCAD Architecture 3ds Max contains many features designed to streamline the design visualization workflow. See Working with Drawing Files (page 3–417). The File Link Manager (page 3–422) allows you to create a live link to a DWG file.
386 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects External References (XRefs) to Objects and Scenes External references (page 3–393) to objects and scenes are a powerful way to manage a project, especially when it involves multiple contributors. Merge (page 3–463) Merge Animation (page 3–466) Replace (page 3–470) Load Animation (page 3–474) Schematic View Save Animation (page 3–476) Schematic View (page 3–640) displays the scene as a graphic schema instead of as geometry.
Reset Procedure To create a new scene: 1. Choose File > New or press Ctrl+N . 2. In the New Scene dialog, specify the types of objects to keep, if any. 3. Click OK. Interface Material Editor, background image, and so on). Resetting restores the startup defaults, saved in the file maxstart.max, and removes any customization you might have done during the current session. Resetting has the same effect as exiting and restarting 3ds Max.
388 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects format, see Character Assembly (page 1–102) and Save Character (page 1–115). A DRF file is a scene file from VIZ Render, a rendering tool included with AutoCAD Architecture (formerly Autodesk Architectural Desktop). The DRF file type is similar to MAX files from previous versions of Autodesk VIZ. If the file you’re loading was created using plug-ins that are not installed, a dialog lists them.
Open from Vault Interface Don’t display this message—When turned on, you will not see the Obsolete File dialog. The dialog is also controlled by the Display Obsolete File Message switch on the Customize > Preferences > Files panel. Note: If you still need to open the scene using an earlier version of 3ds Max, use File > Save As (page 3–391) and save the file using a different name. Then you will be able to open the orginal file with the earlier version.
390 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects • If the file is available for checkout, a dialog opens letting you know that the file is under version control and asking you if you want to check it out before making edits. Click Yes. • If another user has the file checked out, a dialog opens notifying you of this and telling you that you won’t be able to save edits. Click OK to open the file in read-only mode.
Save As at specified time intervals. The options to set up Increment On Save and Backup On Save are on the Files panel (page 3–819) of the Preference Settings dialog. See also Save (page 3–390) Choose Yes to go ahead and overwrite the original file, No to stop the Save. If you choose No, you can use Save As (page 3–391) to save the file under a different name.
392 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Save Copy As File menu > Save Copy As Save Copy As allows you to save a copy of the current scene under a different file name. It does not change the name of the file being worked on. Important: Save Copy As does not update the original file name as Save does, and Save does not update the file you last saved using Saved Copy As. For example, if you make edits to a 3ds Max scene named filename.max, then use Save Copy As with the file name filename01.
Set Project Folder Set Project Folder File menu > Set Project Folder You can set a project folder when setting up a project, to provide a simple way of keeping all of your files organized for a particular project. When you open 3ds Max for the first time, the project folder defaults to the install folder, but you can set the folder to a different location. The project folder contains a series of folders that are created automatically. These include folders such as scenes and renderOutput.
394 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects material (page 2–1616) respectively. By default, when referencing an object, its material and transform controller is also referenced. Alternatively, you can create an XRef controller or an XRef material that allows for referencing a transform controller or a material from an external .max file. These external references can be assigned to any object in the scene, whether or not the object is externally referenced.
XRef Objects scene, you can edit them in the stack. However, changes that you make to the modifier stack in the master file have no effect in the source file. An externally referenced object can be animated in the master file only if its transform controller has been merged. In other words, no animation can be added or blended with an XRef controller. However, an offset can be added, but it then applies to the whole animation, and the offset cannot be animated.
396 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects objects in the master file, in the XRef Merge dialog, enable Display Influences and select the object’s influences. Objects that influence each other must be referenced in the same record to maintain the relationship. Note: Render effects such as glow or flare are not carried in XRefs. To use render effects from the source file, merge them in using the Merge buttons found in the Environment And Effects dialog. Procedures To add an XRef object: 1.
XRef Objects Dialog 1. Select an XRef object. 2. On the Modify panel > Proxy rollout, click the Browse button, and use the File Open dialog to choose the file that contains the proxy. The XRef Merge dialog appears. 3. Pick the object to use as a proxy. When you have picked the proxy object, the Enable toggle should turn on. 4. Turn on Use In Rendering to use the proxy object in renderings. To add objects to an XRef record: 1.
398 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects in the XRef Entities list. You can also adjust the relative height of the two lists in the dialog: Drag the horizontal line that is just above the XRef Entities toolbar (the lower of the two toolbars). XRef Record toolbar Use these tools to create and update XRef records. Create XRef Record from File—Launches an Open File dialog so you can select the source file for your XRef record. When you a select a file, the XRef Merge dialog (page 3–406) appears.
XRef Objects Dialog XRef entity, its name is removed from the XRef Entities list. This works on a XRef record basis, so all entities belonging to the highlighted XRef record are converted. The contents of the source file are not affected by this button. Merging an XRef object loads the full modifier stack of the source object into the master scene (your current scene), while maintaining any additional stack items that were added while the object was an external reference.
400 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects a record is updated (after the first XRef), all new objects will be included in the XRef, but turning if off later will not remove them from the record. If the source scene includes nested external references, using Include All can cause some confusion if you are not careful about your tree of scenes. Consider the following arrangement: file.
XRef Objects Dialog Note: World-space modifers remain at the top of the modifier stack and are not merged with XRef objects. • Merge—Modifiers assigned to the XRef object (in the source file) are merged into the master scene. When you load the external reference file, you will see the changes caused by the modifier and they will appear in the modifier stack in the Modify panel. The modifiers are copies of the original source modifiers.
402 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects “improved” original into a file, which then can be merged back into the original source. Note: It is also possible to merge into the master scene nested XRef entities. Once they are merged, all externally referenced nesting levels are removed and the scene entity from the lowest level source scene is merged into the master scene. In case of XRef objects, modifiers applied in a nested source file are all merged and present in the master scene.
XRef Record List Right-Click Menu You can assign a proxy object using the Proxy Object rollout (page 3–414). Proxy Render—Whether the proxy will be used in the rendering. Displays “–––” when the XRef object will be rendered and “Enabled” when the proxy object will be rendered. Proxy Name—Name of the proxy object that will be used as the XRef object. Proxy File Name—Name of the file that contains the proxy object to use for the XRef object.
404 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects under the same record. This option is available only when you highlight two records that refer to the same file name and path; both records must have identical settings. XRef records must refer to the same file with the same XRef entities. Combine XRef Records only allows you to consolidate all of the entities of one file into one XRef record entry. It does not allow you to combine the contents of different files, even if the files have the same name.
XRef Entities List Right-Click Menu maintains any offset transformation you might have applied to the controller in the master scene. Convert Selected Object(s) to XRefs—Creates a source file for the currently selected objects. This means that you can select objects in the current scene, including their transform controllers and materials, and then save them to a separate scene file. This file is then listed as an XRef record that contains the entities you selected.
406 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects The state of List Objects, List Materials, and List Controllers is the same as the state of the toolbar buttons in the XRef Objects dialog. Changing the state in the menu changes the button state, and vice versa. Merge In Scene—Merges the current selection in the XRef Entities list into the master scene (the current scene). Use this option to change XRef objects or materials into objects that are native to the current scene.
XRef Scene window and Select Influences is on, the object’s influences are also selected in the list window. Procedures To show an object’s influences in the XRef Merge dialog: • Select an object in the list window and enable Display Influences. The influences are shown in blue. To select an object’s influences in the XRef Merge dialog, do either of the following: • Select an object in the list window and click Influences. • Select an object in the list window and enable Select Influences.
408 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects the current file only by using the Bind To Parent function in the XRef Scenes window. You can snap to externally referenced scene entities. You can use Snap, AutoGrid, and Clone and Align to position local objects in context, as well as to pick objects as the target location for the clones. If you need to move, rotate or scale the referenced scene, you can bind it to a local object.
XRef Scene scene so other artists who XRef the scene will not see it. For example, you are working on a building and have XRefed a CAD file that lays out the plumbing of the building, as well as a scene of ground terrain that contains some XRefs to some trees. The XRef scene graph might look like this: The building scene XRefs the terrain and the plumbing data. The terrain scene XRefs the trees. You decide you are the only one who needs to see the CAD plumbing data.
410 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Procedures To add an XRef scene: 1. Choose File > XRef Scene. 2. Click the Add button. An Open File dialog appears that lets you locate the MAX file you wish to reference. A thumbnail display is provided to help you identify your file. 3. Click Open to bring the XRef scene into the current scene. 4. The path and file name of the selected file appears in the XRef Files window. You can add as many files as you like; each one appears in the XRef Files window.
XRef Scenes Dialog This works best if both the parent object and the XRef scene have their pivot points positioned near the scene’s origin (0,0,0). If the XRef scene was created a large distance from the origin, you can run into a problem. As you scale the parent object, the XRef scene will move away from the center. To counteract this problem, you can create a second parent object centered over the XRef scene. Then select and link the original parent object to the centered parent object.
412 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects could not be loaded. Either the file is corrupted, or the path is not pointing to the correct directory or file name. None—Deselects all items in the list. Invert—Inverts the current selection pattern in the list. XRef File path field—Lets you change the path or file pointed to by a selected XRef scene. To use, choose one of the XRef scenes in the list, and then change the information in the field.
XRef Scenes Dialog Automatic—When this check box is turned on, the selected XRef scene is automatically updated when its source scene is saved. Animation—Turn this on to ignore the animation. All animation in the scene is disabled and the scene appears as it would at frame 0 of the source scene. Update Now—Click this to update a selected XRef scene when you’re not using Automatic (or when several XRef scenes are selected and some of them are not set to Automatic).
414 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects XRef Object Rollout Select an XRef object. > Modify panel > XRef Object rollout When you’ve selected an XRef object in a scene, the XRef Object rollout appears along with the Proxy Object rollout (page 3–414) on the Modify panel. The modifier stack for the XRef object simply displays “XRef Object.” Interface object. You can edit this to point to a different path and file. File name display—Displays the file name only, without the path.
Missing XRef Paths Dialog Interface Missing XRef Paths Dialog File menu > Open > Open a file that references other missing files. If you load or render a scene with XRefs, but the originally specified path of the XRef object or scene can’t be found, or if the XRef object name doesn’t match the object name in the source file, an alert appears telling you this. The alert works in the same way as the missing bitmap dialog, and provides you with three options, described below.
416 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects File Link Data synchronization between drawing files created with AutoCAD, AutoCAD Architecture, or Revit and 3ds Max is implemented using the File Link Manager, which keeps drawing data linked to the scenes. It is best understood through a few simple principles: • Changes in AutoCAD, AutoCAD Architecture, or Revit can change the data viewed in 3ds Max, but changes in 3ds Max never change the data in AutoCAD, AutoCAD Architecture or Revit.
Working with Drawing Files • Advanced rendering material effects that simulate the rich visual variety of any imaginable material. You can take advantage of materials that appear on objects created in 3ds Max, and you can create your own material effects using the Material Editor. Materials created with the Material Editor can be assigned to any component in your scene. • Bitmaps for use as environment backgrounds.
418 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects DWG file. Dynamic block instances, even those that have been grip-edited, display certain types of instance behavior such as material propagation. For more detailed information about dynamic block handling in 3ds Max, see Blocks (page 3–457). Reloading, Binding and Detaching Links to Files You can also reload or detach linked files. When you reload a linked file, any changes you’ve made to the linked file are applied to the reloaded geometry in your scene.
File Link Tips File Link Tips Here are some tips for choosing File Linking options and avoiding common pitfalls. Linked Data and Face-Normal Conventions Face normals (page 3–980) can be a source of confusion when linking to AutoCAD, AutoCAD Architecture, or Revit drawing files. In 3ds Max, every face has a front and a back, corresponding to the inside or outside surface of a solid object.
420 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects • by freezing their layers in AutoCAD, AutoCAD Architecture, or Revit before you start 3ds Max and before each subsequent reloading process. rendering properties without having to collapse to an editable spline. • by excluding specific layers during the File Link Attach/Reload process or Import process so you do not have to freeze layers in the drawing. This is the preferred workflow.
Interpreting Layer Data from AutoCAD, AutoCAD Architecture, or Revit when the instanced or referenced object is deleted in the linked file. When you copy actively linked objects, linked through the File Link Manager (page 3–422), the copies are automatically converted to editable mesh or editable spline objects. If your selection contains several objects which instance another object, the resulting copies also instance the same object.
422 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Layer operations are accessed through the tools on the Layers toolbar, and also on an object-by-object basis using the quad menu (page 3–694). is reloaded, but they are added again, upon reload, after their layer is unfrozen in the program where the drawing is created.
File Link Manager Utility through AutoCAD 2005, including the AutoCAD Mechanical/Architecture and Revit applications. You can establish, refresh, and break links to any number of linked files. You can also edit out unnecessary information by using layers and other filters. The File Link Manager defines which geometry is included in the 3ds Max scene from the linked file, how the geometry is organized, and when it’s regenerated.
424 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects where you can change your settings in the Basic and Advanced panels. to link. When a file is selected, its path and name appears in the File list. Note: You cannot change the sorting or layer File list—The file to be attached to your scene. You options when reloading a drawing. can enter the file location, or you can expand the list to display a history of the last ten attached files. 3. Click OK to reload the file.
File Link Manager Utility to which you can choose to rescale the attached file. This is only active when Rescale is on. Select Layers to Include—Displays the Select Layers dialog (page 3–438), which you use to select the layers to import from the linked file. Attach This File—Attaches the selected file to your scene, using the settings selected in the Preset list, if one was selected. To cancel the File Link operation press Esc . You can do this at any time during the process.
426 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Note: This option is available only when the file is highlighted in the Linked Files list. New—Opens the New Settings Preset dialog (page 3–437), creating a new preset with default settings. Bind—Removes the link to the file. The geometry Note: New is only available when no preset is in the scene remains unchanged, but it’s no longer linked back to the original file and, if the original file changes, it can’t be updated using Reload. selected in the list.
File Link Manager Utility Blocks as Node Hierarchy derivation methods, multiple material IDs are read and editable as Multi/Sub-Object materials in the Material Editor. 3ds Max reads each face of a linked ACIS solid to determine if it contains any material IDs that it can read. If more than one material ID is read from a solid, each material ID is translated to a material ID on file link and re-assigned to the object.
428 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects materials. For example, a brick wall in Revit may have mortar lines procedurally drawn on it in red, but if the object is an ACIS solid, the mortar lines, which are procedural hatches, are lost in 3ds Max. When an ACIS object’s materials display as Multi/Sub-Object materials in the Material Editor, each material name appears in the Material/Map Browser, for example, Default wall or Basic Wall: Generic – 12” Masonry.
Basic File Link Settings Basic File Link Settings File Link Manager > Reload a linked file with Show Reload Options turned on. > File Link Settings dialog > Basic panel File Link Manager > Presets panel > Highlight a preset and click Modify. > File Link Settings dialog > Basic panel The Basic panel of the File Link Settings dialog (page 3–428) defines how 3ds Max converts the linked file’s objects into corresponding 3ds Max objects. Interface weld threshold, the vertices are welded together.
430 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Tip: Unless you chose the One-to-One sorting option, you won’t immediately see the Extrude modifier when selecting an object. To see it, look through the modifier stack for the VIZBlock (page 3–1031) sub-objects. In a nested VIZBlock, the Extrude modifiers appear at the bottom of the stack. You can then edit the Extrude modifier parameters.
Advanced File Link Settings UCSs (grids)—Imports user coordinate systems Interface (UCS) from the DWG file and converts them to 3ds Max grid objects. Advanced File Link Settings File menu > File Link Manager > Reload a linked file with Show Reload turned on. > File Link Settings dialog > Advanced panel File menu > File Link Manager > Presets panel > Select an existing preset and click Modify.
432 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Each block is linked separately as a hierarchy, with the block itself as the parent object and its constituent parts as child objects. The child objects of the block are combined by layer. Tip: This is usually the best option for file linking. It preserves all ADT information, and generally maintains the same granularity as you would expect in AutoCAD.
Advanced File Link Settings associated with it, a multi/sub object material is created containing the materials that can be edited in the Materials Editor. If the solid has only one material associated with it, a standard/architectural material is assigned instead. If the object is polymesh geometry, one material per face is supported.
434 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Create One Scene Object for Each ADT Object—AutoCAD Architecture (formerly Architectural Desktop or ADT) objects are linked as a single object instead of being separated into their constituent components. This means that if you link an AutoCAD Architecture door object, the door is represented as one object instead of three. Turning on this switch make linking faster and the scene size is smaller.
Spline Rendering File Link Settings want to speed up the time it takes to reload the geometry. Interface The following options are available: • Selected in Scene—Reloads only the objects currently selected in your scene. • Selected in List—Reloads only the objects that you choose from a named list. This list is defined by clicking Linked Objects. Linked Objects—Allows you to reload only objects that you choose from a named list. The list is created from the objects linked in the file.
436 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects 3ds Max generates the mapping coordinates in the U and V dimensions. The U coordinate wraps once around the spline; the V coordinate is mapped once along its length. Tiling is achieved using the Tiling parameters in the applied material. For more information, see Mapping Coordinates (page 2–1405). Real-World Map Size—Controls the scaling method used for texture mapped materials that are applied to the object.
New Settings Preset Dialog New Settings Preset Dialog Interface File menu > File Link Manager > Presets panel > Copy or New Utilities panel > Utilities rollout > More button > File Link Manager > Presets panel > Copy or New The New Settings Preset dialog creates a new preset in the File Link Manager (page 3–422). The settings of the new preset either use default values (if you clicked New), or they inherit the values of a selected preset (if you clicked Copy).
438 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Preset Editing File menu > File Link Manager > Presets panel > Click a preset > Modify Utilities panel > Utilities rollout > More button > File Link Manager > Presets panel > Click a preset > Modify After you’ve created a preset, you can use this function to adjust its settings. For instance, you might want to make sure Weld is on, or perhaps to include lights or views (cameras).
Resolve External Reference File Dialog Select from list—Lets you select individual active layers to include/exclude. A check mark beside the layer name indicates the layer is selected. All—Includes all layers in the linked file by selecting all of them. You can then deselect just the layers you want to exclude. None—Excludes all layers in the linked file by deselecting all of them. You can then select just the layers you want to include from importing.
440 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Select Linked Objects Dialog File menu > File Link Manager > Files panel > Select file to reload. > Reload button > File Link Settings dialog > Advanced panel > Turn on Selective Reload. > Linked Objects None—Deselects all linked objects in the linked file. You can then select specific linked objects by clicking their rows. Invert—Reverses the current selection of linked objects in the linked file.
AutoCAD Geometry in 3ds Max Architecture, or drawings exported from Revit that allows you to use the linked object data in your 3ds Max scene. You can perform various operations on this linked data in 3ds Max for visualization purposes, but nothing you do in 3ds Max will change the base data you see in the source application. The data link allows you to periodically refresh your 3ds Max scene with revised drawing data.
442 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects structure of xref drawing name:block name:nested block name:entity. basis using the Reset Position function, available on the Modifier panel. Note: Entities that lie on layer 0 of an AutoCAD Note: The Reset Position functionality is only available for linked files. It is not available when you Import a DWG file, or when you have bound a linked file.
Restrictions on Editing AutoCAD Geometry Note: When Reset Position is applied to a linked object that has been animated (in other words, has transform keys for different frames) only the transform for frame 0 is reset. See also File Link (page 3–416) Interface Reset Position—Resets the selected object’s transforms to those of the original AutoCAD object when the drawing was last reloaded.
444 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects See also Using Modifiers (page 1–499) Select Objects Dialog (page 1–78) AutoCAD Architecture Files in 3ds Max DWG files from AutoCAD Architecture (formerly Architectural Desktop or ADT) often contain additional information, such as special objects, material definitions, and styles. 3ds Max is thoroughly compatible with AutoCAD Architecture, and it recognizes all of these specialized objects and definitions during the file link process.
Materials and Linked AutoCAD Architecture Objects 3ds Max, or geometry may move from one object to another. In either case, some scene properties are changed, such as assigned material or scene layer. 3ds Max organizes and names file linked objects to reflect their structure in AutoCAD Architecture, using a parent-child hierarchy.
446 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects object or block is equivalent to assigning the same material to every instance of that component of that object or block throughout your scene. As an example, let’s say you have multiple instances of a block named Telephone in your AutoCAD Architecture drawing, which consists of two nested blocks named Handset and Base.
UVW Mapping in AutoCAD Architecture Objects See also Material Editor, Materials, and Maps (page 2–1395) Drawings Exported from Revit in 3ds Max UVW Mapping in AutoCAD Architecture Objects The Export function in Autodesk Revit lets you export models to DWG or DXF file formats. In Revit 6.1 and 7.0, the exported drawing entities contain additional information, “Revit data,” such as their originating Category, Family, Type, and Material.
448 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects a useful distinction between categories of a Revit elements. It automatically separates names and groups the elements in 3ds Max to make them easier to work with. The new objects created in 3ds Max through file linking are grouped together hierarchically below a special object called a Block/Style Parent (page 3–918), allowing you to deal with individual objects in the hierarchy or with all of them as a group.
Revit Elements in 3ds Max frame/mullion objects separately. If you changed the material assignments in Revit so that the entire frame/mullion component only had one material assignment, then when you reloaded the drawing in 3ds Max there would only be one frame/mullion object present. When working in Revit, you also have the ability to link AutoCAD drawings or other Revit projects to your current project. This is comparable to using exrefs in AutoCAD.
450 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects When the drawing is linked to 3ds Max, that camera and its target appear in the scene named Camera:viewname and Camera:viewname.Target. Suggested Settings and Workflow Light Sources Drawing files, exported from Revit, can contain light sources, however, they do not export with the DWG or DXF files. What does get exported is the 3D mesh geometry representing the light fixture.
Suggested Settings for Revit Projects the Geometry Options group of the AutoCAD DWG/DXF Import Options dialog. When Revit exports model geometry to a DWG file, objects are translated as multiple surface meshes. For example, a single wall is made up of 6 or more AutoCAD entities; each a polyface mesh with vertices that overlap their neighbors. When the meshes get linked to 3ds Max, the File Link Manager or DWG/DXF Importer recombines them back to a single object.
452 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects DWG file, and will overwrite scene materials with the same name, regardless of which objects the material is applied to. In addition, material definitions are always reloaded from the DWG file, so if you make changes to a linked material, then reload, those changes will be lost.
Materials and Linked Revit Objects If you give a new name to the exported DWG, the File Link Manager will not show that the currently linked file has been updated. 7. In 3ds Max, open the File Link Manager and review the Files panel. Select the updated file link and click the Reload button — Turn on Show Reload Options if you want to change link settings. The changed model reloads to 3ds Max and changes made to the model in 3ds Max prior to the reload are retained.
454 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects rotation setting does not translate when the model is linked/imported to 3ds Max. The rotation for the texture map is set to zero in the 3ds Max Material Editor. Map Scaling The scale of material textures is of primary importance. The File Link Manager or DWG/DXF Importer attempts to read and translate the offset and tiling of the materials so the texture maps appear in 3ds Max as they do in Revit.
UVW Mapping on Revit Elements Scene Material Definitions or Use Scene Material Assignments on Reload options. Procedures However, if the texture being used is one of the Procedures, the texture is not translated when the drawing is brought into 3ds Max. In these cases, you will see only the diffuse color. To retain material settings made in 3ds Max during a reload: See also 1.
456 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects materials that were created in Revit could be used on new geometry you’re adding while working on the model in 3ds Max. Reusing a material is often easier than creating a brand new one. For example, let’s say a wall element in the Revit project has a brick material that you’d like to use on an object you added to the model while working in 3ds Max.
Instanced Objects • Architectural Desktop style-based objects are complex objects like Doors and Windows whose components rely on style definitions to control how they appear in the scene. For example, style definitions for a door set the type of door, the door thickness, the materials assigned to the various components, and so forth. Altering the style definitions changes the appearance of the object in the scene. See also model shows a room with three doors.
458 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects components that appear as Linked Geometry on the Modifier panel. Blocks or sub-blocks, that appear as VIZBlocks in the Modify panel, do not have rendering properties because they are not renderable. Note: A change to the drawing in AutoCAD is reflected in 3ds Max when you reload the linked model. Changes made in 3ds Max do not propagate back to AutoCAD.
Blocks 3ds Max, see the Material Editor, Materials, and Maps (page 2–1395) topic. Options menu (page 2–1428). Below is a table showing instance behavior of dynamic blocks. Multi-View Blocks (MVBlocks) Property Behavior Modifiers Modifiers applied to one component are applied to the same component in other instances, but only when those instances have the same grip property values. Materials When material propagation is turned on, materials are applied to all block instances.
460 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects behavior of modifiers during a File Link Reload before and after dynamic block editing. The Block Insert ... ... has unique parameter values before it was edited. ... has unique parameter values after it was edited. ... shows this modifier behavior upon Reload. Yes Yes Modifiers are preserved. Yes No Applied modifiers may be lost, and it may inherit modifiers from the instance(s) it now matches. No Yes Applied modifiers are lost.
Styles 3. Click Select. All blocks that share the specified name are selected. To select blocks by layer: 1. Choose Edit menu > Select By > Layer. 2. Select a block in the scene. All the blocks sharing that layer are selected. To isolate selected objects: 1. Using one of the previous selection methods, select some blocks. 2. Choose Tools menu > Isolate Selected. All objects are hidden except for the selected blocks. A dialog is displayed, indicating that isolation mode is active.
462 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Styles and Materials The primary purpose of linking a model from AutoCAD Architecture to 3ds Max is preparing the scene for presentation to your clients and rendering. AEC Objects are made up of components that have default architectural materials assigned through their styles.
Merge Alternately, you could use the Selection Floater, accessed from the Tools menu. While similar to the Select Objects dialog, the Selection Floater is modeless and can remain on-screen while you’re working. 2. While holding down the Ctrl key, select objects or components with common names. You can also enter the object or component name in the name field at the top of the dialog. 3. Click Select. All objects or components that share the specified name are selected.
464 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Apply to All Duplicates—Treats all subsequent incoming objects with duplicate names the same way you specified for the current object. No further alerts will appear. This option is not available if you renamed the current object. Cancel—Cancels the merge operation.
Merge File Dialog Interface In the standard file selector dialog, select the scene file to merge. Controls in this dialog are similar to those in the Select Objects dialog (page 1–78). Merge File Dialog File menu > Merge > Choose a file to merge. > Choose objects to merge. When you merge an object that’s linked to a parent object in a source scene, and an object of the same name as the original parent exists in the current scene, you can re-create the same hierarchy using this dialog.
466 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects This feature can also be used to reconnect parent objects to children in the scene. Merge Animation Select an object, group, or hierarchy > File menu > Merge Animation Select a character assembly node > Modify panel > Character Assembly Rollout > Animation group > Insert Animation Merge Animation merges (transfers) animation data from one object to another. Animation data can be transferred from one scene to another, or between objects in the same scene.
Merge Animation To insert animation data from one character to another: The Source Objects and Current Objects entry fields allow you to enter wildcard expressions to filter prefixes and suffixes of node names. The filtered text is ignored by the Auto Name Mapping tool, so complex structures of similarly-named nodes can be mapped quickly. This feature is handy for transferring an animation between character structures, providing the source and current nodes have been named with the same conventions. 1.
468 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Interface Paste to Existing Animation—Appends the source file animation data to the existing animation data based on the following time parameters. Match Source File Time—Sets the source time range to match the active time segment in the source file. Start Time—Start Time and End Time set the frame range to merge from the source file. Start Time sets the first frame in the range. The Merge Animation dialog has the following controls.
Merge Animation IK—Merges animation data of IK chains created Object Mapping rollout with IK solvers. Position—Merges Position transform animation data. Rotation—Merges Rotation transform animation data. Scale—Merges Scale transform animation data. Modifiers—Merges animation data of modifiers. In order for animation data of a modifier to be transferred, the current object must already have the same modifier applied to it.
470 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Refresh—Refreshes the display based on wildcard expressions entered in the Current Objects field. Current Nodes—Displays objects in the current scene. Animated objects are listed in red. Display can be limited by wildcard expressions in the Current Objects field. Merge Nodes—Lists the current objects that will receive animation data from the corresponding object under Current Nodes.
Replace 2. Select a file from which to choose replacement items. 3. On the Replace dialog for that file, choose a group or a replacement item. (See the following procedure.) An alert asks if you want to replace the materials along with the objects. • If yes, the materials from the incoming objects replace the current materials. • If no, only the geometry is replaced, while the material assigned to the original object is retained.
472 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects List Types group Procedure Determines which object types are displayed in the list: geometry, shapes, lights, cameras, helpers, space warps, or bone objects. To use the Save Animation and Load Animation commands: All—Turns on all check boxes in the group. None—Turns off all check boxes in the group. Invert—Inverts the current state of the check boxes.
Saving and Loading Animation Alternatively, you can load animation to specific tracks in Track View; see Hierarchy Right-Click Menu (page 2–516). 6. From the File menu, choose Load Animation (page 3–474). 7. Find and highlight the XAF file from which to load animation. 8. Click Load Motion. If the objects you’re loading animation to are the same as those you saved the animation from, the animation loads and is mapped automatically. If mapping is required, you’re given the opportunity to set it up.
474 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects 2. Next, in the Derive Scale Between Chains group, chose comparable IK or FK chains from the Incoming and Current models to obtain a Scale Factor that proportionally retargets the incoming animation onto the current model. 3. Click Set to apply the retargeting. 4. If different portions of the model are differently proportioned, you might need to repeat steps 2 and 3 for different selections of mapped tracks.
Load Animation Position (the layer name is inserted into the controller name). Whether Load Into Active Layer is on or off, when you load animation to an object after changing its Animation Layers status, the software prompts you to create a map file. If Load Into Active Layer is on, when you click Yes to create the map file, the Map Animation dialog opens showing only the active layer’s tracks in the Current list, and the tracks are already mapped correctly in the Mapped list.
476 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Save Animation Select one or more animated objects. > File menu > Save Animation Track View > Hierarchy/Controller window > Highlight one or more tracks > Right-click. > Save Animation Save Animation lets you store animation from your scene to disk in the XML Animation File (XAF) format. The XAF file format lets you save and load animation for any number of objects separately from the actual scene.
Save Animation turn off Keyable for the LookAt track, and then save with Keyable Tracks on. Save—Saves the animation using the current file name. Note: Animated Tracks overrides Keyable Tracks. If a track is keyable but doesn’t contain any animation data, and Animated Tracks is on, the track won’t be saved even if Keyable Tracks is on.
478 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Map Animation Dialog File menu > Load Animation > Open dialog > Edit Mapping File menu > Load Animation > Open dialog > Load Motion > XML Animation dialog > Click Yes. The Map Animation dialog lets you assign incoming animation tracks when using the Load Animation (page 3–474) command. The dialog is resizable and contains three rollouts: for setting up basic parameters, doing the actual mapping, and doing retargeting.
Motion Mapping Parameters Rollout • At Frame—The frame at which the incoming animation is written (Replace) or inserted. Default=0. Relative/Absolute—These options determine how incoming animation affects existing values. Relative starts the loaded motion at the current values of the selected objects in the scene. Absolute sets the values of objects in the scene to those of the incoming motion.
480 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects If any controllers are not mappable (for example, a Bezier controller getting mapped into a script), the status line will report the error and highlight the node that couldn’t map in the incoming list. Type—When on, allows mapping only between controllers of the same type. It prevents mapping between two controllers of different types. For example, a controller such as Noise and its parameters will map only to another Noise controller. Default=off.
Map Track to Track Rollout transforms. The toggles that follow control display of individual transforms: Interface • Position/X/Y/Z—The Position check box lets you toggle display of all Position tracks, while the X/Y/Z check boxes let you toggle display of the track for each axis. • Rotation/X/Y/Z—The Rotation check box lets you toggle display of all Rotation tracks, while the X/Y/Z check boxes let you toggle display of the track for each axis.
482 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects retarget references between the incoming nodes in regards to their scale dependency. Retargeting means to scale the animation so it matches the objects onto which you are mapping the motion. You need to retarget only when the size or proportions of the incoming model differ from the size or proportions of the current model. Because of this, usually retargeting one limb does the trick for both.
Retargeting Rollout If the characters are symmetrical and have the same proportions, you can now choose all the mapped tracks in the Retargetable Nodes list. If the characters are not symmetrical, or their proportions are different, then you need to take further steps. 5. In the Derive Scale Between Chains group, The fields in this list are as follows: • Current Mapped Node—Shows the node-to-node mapping, as in “CurrentObject->IncomingObject.
484 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects • Multiply Derived Scale—(The default.) When chosen, scaling for the selected mappings is based on both the XYZ settings in this group, and calculations from the Derive Scale Between Chains group and the FK Retargeting Extent group (if that is used). • End—Choose the end of the incoming chain. This is a drop-down list that is restricted to children of the incoming Start object.
Import example, the thigh) must be specified. By defining the two chains to compare, 3ds Max can adjust the resulting rotations such that the feet don’t slide. When a character’s limbs are not symmetrical, you can also use these controls to keep rotations proportional. First, highlight the current child (for example, a foot or toe) in the Retargetable Nodes list. Turn on Enabled, and then use the drop-down list to choose the upper parent (for example, the thigh) of the limb you are retargeting.
486 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects 4. For some file types, a second dialog appears, with options specific to that file type. Choose the import options you want. • Motion Analysis Hierarchical Translation-Rotation (HTR) (page 3–578) • Stereolithography (STL) (page 3–588) Export • VRML97 (WRL) (page 3–591) 3. Enter a name in the File Name field. File menu > Export Export converts and exports 3ds Max scenes in various formats.
Asset Tracking 2. Choose File menu > Export Selected. 3. Enter a name in the File Name field. 4. From the Save As Type drop-down list, choose a file format. 5. Click the Save button. Asset Tracking The Asset Tracking feature provides direct access within 3ds Max to asset tracking systems (ATS), also known as providers. You use asset tracking systems to share files such as scene files and bitmaps used in materials with other members of your development team.
488 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects open the scene file, but the materials will still use the original, no-longer-valid path for the bitmap files, and the Asset Tracking dialog will show the files as missing. To resolve the incorrect paths, you can use the tools available from the Paths menu. Asset tracking provides full support for the Autodesk Vault data-management solution, and basic version-control support for other providers, such as Perforce and Microsoft SourceSafe.
Asset Tracking Dialog your local machine or a folder on the network. Typically a system administrator will set up the working folder on the network. For information on setting up working folders (shared working folders) on the network see Managing_Your Data_5_Vault_3dsmax.pdf for information on how to manage data in a Vault setup with 3ds Max. Note: If your system administrator has enforced a network working folder, you may receive a message notifying you of this.
490 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects context menu opens. This lets you perform such functions as cutting or copying the file, or sending it to the desktop as a shortcut for easy access. Server menu Log in—Displays the Vault Log In dialog. Enter your user name, password, server name, and database, and then click OK. After entering a server name, you can click the ellipsis (...) button display all available databases and choose one from the dialog.
Asset Tracking Dialog Checkin—Lets you check in the highlighted assets Properties—Opens a read-only dialog that shows in the Asset Tracking dialog list of assets. This opens a dialog that lets you confirm the checkin, specify whether to keep the assets checked out, and enter a comment. Also, if the assets have been edited but not saved locally, you’re prompted to save first. information about the highlighted asset such as vault and local locations, versions, and check-out status.
492 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects The Custom Dependencies function lets you associate files that aren’t true scene dependencies. A true dependent file is required for rendering, animation, exporting, etc. A custom dependency might be reference art work, a text file with scene documentation or tasks to accomplish, custom scripts, etc. Basically, any collection of files that should “travel along” with the scene.
Asset Tracking Dialog For example, if all maps were originally in various subdirectories within c:\maps\ and the entire subdirectory structure was moved to d:\resources\maps\, you could repath all files simultaneously using Retarget Common Root. The dialog shows the portion of the current path that the highlighted assets and lets you specify a new one, either by editing the Specify Path field contents or by clicking the ellipsis [...] button and browsing to a different path.
494 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects user B and they do not have the same project folder, this will not be a problem. Preferences—Use this submenu to toggle these options: • Convert file paths to UNC—When on, paths shown in the Asset Tracking dialog for any added assets present on a mapped drive use Universal Naming Convention (UNC) format (page 3–1028). When off, each path starts with the mapped drive letter (e.g., w:\).
Asset Tracking Dialog excluding files, see Filtering Files (page 3–496). You can also set output files to Excluded status; see following. Exclude Output Files—Sets output files such as rendered images to Excluded status; you can prevent the dialog from displaying such files by turning off Display Excluded Files (see preceding). Tree View—Displays a simplified, hierarchical listing of the assets in the current scene.
496 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Note: No status icons appear if you don’t have any A example filter file, \plugcfg\ATSProviders_ Example.xml is included with the software, in the program install folder. The file includes comments, so you can load it into a text editor to see how it works and edit it.
Global Settings and Defaults for Bitmap Proxies Dialog top of this topic, the title changes to Per-Bitmap Resolution for Bitmap Proxies, the Enable Proxy System check box changes to Use Global Settings, and you can set only the proxy resolution. Proxy System group Interface Use proxy only if the original map’s largest dimension is greater than ... pixels.—Lets you These settings are available only when you open the dialog using the Setup or Global Settings commands cited at the top of this topic.
498 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Prompts Dialog File menu > Asset Tracking > Asset Tracking dialog > Options menu > Prompts The Prompts dialog lets you specify what happens when you perform a number of different functions via the Asset Tracking dialog (page 3–487). For each message, you can choose an action and toggle the prompt using a right-click menu. If you turn off the prompt, the option you set on the top part of the menu takes place automatically.
Archive Icon Meaning File is checked out by someone else in a setup where the working folder is shared on the network, but the local copy is newer than the latest version. File is checked out by someone else in a setup where the working folder is shared on the network, and the local copy is older than the latest version. Status for the file could not be obtained. This typically means you are not logged into the provider. The file is not under version control. 3.
500 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects The Summary Info dialog includes the following information: Scene Totals—Number of objects in your scene listed by type. Show Used Only—Restricts the view to only those plug-ins that have been used in the scene. File Properties Mesh Totals—Total number of vertices and faces in the scene. Memory Usage—Physical and virtual memory used and available. Rendering—Time spent rendering the last frame, animation, and video post.
File Properties Interface Keywords—Enter keywords that identify your scene here. Comments—Enter personal comments here. Information that you add to the Description field on the Summary Info dialog (page 3–499) will appear in the Comments field and vice-versa. Contents panel When a scene is saved, a summary list of everything contained in the scene is generated and displayed in the Contents tab. If a scene has not been saved, the Contents tab remains empty.
502 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Delete—Removes a selected Custom property from the Properties list. Properties—Displays all Custom properties entered into the scene. To zoom out in the rendered frame window: • Press Ctrl and right-click. To pan the rendered frame window: • Press Shift and drag. View Image File File menu > View Image File To use a wheel mouse to zoom and pan: 1. Roll the wheel to zoom in or out. 2.
Exit here also. The history information is saved in the 3dsmax.ini (page 1–18) file. Look In—Browses drives and directories. File Name—Displays the name of the selected file. Files of type—Selects the type of files to list in the Exit File menu > Exit Exit closes 3ds Max. If you have unsaved work, you’ll be asked if you want to save it. directory window. Devices—Lets you choose the hardware output device, for example, a digital video recorder.
504 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects with missing files. When on, the program does not display this dialog if you render the scene without resolving the missing files. Don’t Display This Message—Appears only at render time. When on, the software does not display the dialog the next time external files cannot be found. File-Handling Utilities Asset Browser Utility Utilities panel > Utilities rollout > Asset Browser button Top: This dialog appears at load time.
Asset Browser Utility (such as when a bitmap is tagged as a button with hypertext links). Important: Downloaded content might be subject to use restrictions or license of site owner. User is responsible for obtaining all content license rights. Drag and Drop You can assign files represented by the thumbnail images by dragging the thumbnails over various parts of the Asset Browser or the 3ds Max user interface.
506 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects 3. As a default, if you drag to a folder within the same partition or device, a move is performed. If you drag beyond the current partition or device (to another drive, for example), a copy is performed. If you hold the Ctrl key down, a copy is performed, regardless of the destination. If you hold the Shift key down, a move is performed. To drag bitmaps onto a map slot in the Material Editor: 1. Open the Material Editor and click the Maps rollout. 2.
Asset Browser Utility At the bottom of the window, there is also a tabbed favorites bar (page 3–509) (by default, it first contains a Startup button) and a status bar. Asset Browser menu bar Contains the menus for the Asset Browser. Important: If a file has been subsequently renamed, deleted, or moved from the directory it was in when its thumbnail was first created, then the thumbnail represents only the thumbnail bitmap itself.
508 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Thumbnails menu Favorites Bar—Turns the Favorites bar on or off. Sorts and sets the size of the displayed thumbnails. The Favorites bar is located at the bottom of the Asset Browser window. Create Thumbnails—Creates thumbnails for bitmap and geometry files. Sort by Name—Sorts by file names. Sort by Type—Sorts by file extensions. Sort by Size—Sorts by file size. Sort by Date—Sorts by file creation date.
Asset Browser Utility Browse menu Allows you to refresh thumbnails and Web pages, to move forward and backward between recently viewed Web pages, to return to your home page, and to stop loading a Web page. Refresh—For a Thumbnail pane, rereads the directory and redraws the thumbnails. For a Web pane, rereads the URL and redisplays the Web page. Forward—For a Web pane, displays a Web page you viewed before clicking the Back button. Back—Returns to the last Web page viewed in the Web pane.
510 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Bitmap/Photometric Path Editor Utility Interface Utilities panel > Utilities rollout > More button > Utilities dialog > Bitmap/Photometric Path Editor The Bitmap/Photometric Path Editor lets you change or remove the paths of bitmaps (page 3–917) and photometric distribution files (IES) used in the scene. It also lets you see which objects use a resource in question. By default, 3ds Max stores a path with the name of the files it references.
MAX File Finder Utility The utility comes in two formats: a standard utility, and a standalone executable. Both work identically. File Finder demonstrates how to read a MAX file’s properties from an external application. These properties include predetermined data such as object and plug-in names, plus information you provide via the File menu > Properties dialog. You can also view this data from outside the software with Windows Explorer or an equivalent program by viewing a file’s properties.
512 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Use the << and >> buttons to step to the previous or the next file in the found list. Output Path—Displays the current output path. While in the property viewer, the search continues in the background. Browse—Click to display a Windows file dialog that lets you choose the output path. This can be changed using the Browse button.
Fix Ambient Utility and Autodesk VIZ. As a result, files might render differently than expected. The Fix Ambient utility looks for standard materials in the current scene whose ambient and diffuse colors are different, presenting you with the option to copy the diffuse color to the ambient color channel. This will ensure that your renderings are consistent with earlier versions of products.
514 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Bitmap Pager Statistics Dialog Customize menu > Customize User Interface > Category: All Commands or Render > Action: Bitmap Pager Statistics Toggle > Assign to hotkey, menu, etc. The Bitmap Pager Statistics dialog provides information to help you resolve issues with scenes that require large amounts of memory for texture maps. It is intended for advanced users to debug scenes and help shorten render times.
Internet Download Dialog erases all thumbnail files from the cache directory you were using previously. remains on-screen depends on the size of the file you’re downloading. Delete Files—Removes all thumbnail files from your cache directory. Interface Maximum Disk Space—Sets the maximum size of the cache directory. When you exit Asset Browser, the program selects the size of the cache directory.
516 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Favorite Location Dialog Utilities panel > Utilities rollout > Asset Browser button > Favorites menu > Add to Favorites added to the Favorites menu. When this box is not selected, the Web site or path-name shortcuts are added only to the Favorites bar. Menu bar > Tools > Asset Browser > Favorites menu > Add to Favorites The Favorite Location dialog allows you to add Web sites and path names to the Asset Browser Favorites menu and Favorites bar.
Resource Information Dialog 5. Enter the correct path in the New Path field, or click the "..." button to browse to the correct path in a Windows file dialog. The Bitmap/Photometric Path Editor updates the selected maps’ path to use the new path. Interface Find Files—Click to search for the maps or photometric files in the current selection. This button displays an alert that shows how many files are findable, how many files are missing.
518 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Interface how different parameter settings affect how each scene looks. Because scene states are saved with the MAX file, they are easily accessible to everyone on a design team. Scene states also allow you to experiment with different scene setups without having to save the entire MAX file each time a change is made. This means you don’t need to open and close files in order to render different conditions of the same model.
Scene States • Environment—Records these Environment and Atmosphere Effects (page 3–271) settings: Background, Ambient, and Tint colors; Global Lighting > Level; Environment Map; Environment Map on/off state; Exposure Control rollout settings. Tips for Managing Scene States • When first becoming familiar with scene states, minimize changes to make it easier to keep track of what each scene state contains. • Saving all scene aspects in a scene state allows you more flexibility when restoring.
520 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects See also Manage Scene States Dialog (page 3–520) 3. Highlight the parts you want restored with the scene state. Only the parts that were originally saved with the scene state are listed. Batch Rendering - Batch Render Dialog (page 3–203) 4. Click Restore. Manage Scene States Dialog To rename a scene state: The scene state is restored in the viewport. 1.
Manage Scene States Dialog Interface Save Scene State The dialog lists all the scene states that are saved in the MAX file. Save—Opens the Save Scene State dialog (page 3–521) where you enter a name for the current scene state. To select a continuous range of parts, drag or Shift +click. To make a noncontinuous selection, use Ctrl +click. Restore—Opens the Restore Scene State dialog (page 3–522) for the selected scene state.
522 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Restore Scene State Rename Scene State Enter a Scene State Name—Enter a new name in the Name field for the highlighted scene state. Click OK to accept the change or Cancel to close the dialog without renaming the scene state. Internet Access Enter a Scene State name—Displays the scene name that was selected in the Manage Scene States dialog. Use the drop-down list to select a different scene state to restore.
i-drop Indicator photos, and any design data in MAX or STL form. In this way, you are assured instant access to the latest design content, free from leading vendors around the world, without leaving your desktop. For Web Content Providers Any Web page that uses standard HTML source code can easily be enhanced so that 3ds Max users can access it for content. Making bitmap textures (.BMP, .JPG, .GIF, .TIF, etc.
524 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects See also Exporting to ASCII (page 3–534) Asset Browser Utility (page 3–504) Exporting AutoCAD DWG Files (page 3–550) Internet Access (page 3–522) Exporting to DXF Files (page 3–552) i-drop Indicator (page 3–523) FBX Files (page 3–558) Compatible File Formats Exporting IGES Files (page 3–562) MAX Files (from Autodesk VIZ) (page 3–525) Exporting JSR-184 Files (page 3–563) VIZ Render (DRF) Files (page 3–527) Exporting Lightscape Files (page 3–572) Exp
Working with MAX Files from Autodesk VIZ Merge objects with current scene—Merges imported data with the current scene. Completely replace current scene—Completely replaces the current scene with the imported data. In general, once you respond to this dialog, a second dialog with geometry-specific options is displayed, as described in the topics that follow. (For some geometry formats, only one dialog appears, and these options are merged with the geometry-specific options.
526 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects or Editable Spline, the LinkTM controller is replaced with a PRS controller. Likewise, if an entire VIZBlock is converted to an Editable Mesh or Spline, the LinkTM controller for the node is replaced with a PRS controller. When using Track View, sub-object components of VIZBlock do not display. Data pertaining to the LinkTM controller is not displayed, however, you can access the PRS subcontroller.
VIZ Render (DRF) Files in Autodesk VIZ. As a result, MAX files from Autodesk VIZ may render differently in 3ds Max. To solve this issue, use the Fix Ambient utility (page 3–512). Missing Maps Many times, when you open a MAX file from Autodesk VIZ, you will be presented with a Missing External Files dialog (page 3–503). To locate the missing files, click Browse and then add the appropriate Autodesk VIZ directories to the Configure External File Paths dialog (page 3–811).
528 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects default settings. For more information on how to do this, see Market-Specific Defaults (page 3–790). Units In VIZ Render, you can only use meters as your system unit. However, 3ds Max lets you define your own system unit, and how units are displayed. For more information on units, see Using Units (page 2–2) and Units Setup Dialog (page 3–848).
Working with DRF Files in 3ds Max User Interface Changes Missing Maps Some of the user interface elements in 3ds Max are not where you would expect them if you are coming from VIZ Render. For example, the viewport controls (page 3–729) are in the bottom-right corner, instead of the top-left. Many times, when you open a DRF file, you will be presented with the Missing External Files dialog (page 3–503).
530 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects linked geometry, the modifier is applied to all instances of that object. Linked Geometry objects are assigned a special LinkTM controller. If a the object is converted to an Editable Mesh, Poly, NURBS or Editable Spline, the LinkTM controller is replaced with a PRS controller. Substituted Objects There is no substitution modifier in 3ds Max.
Importing PRJ Files • Mask bitmaps are imported as 3ds Max mask textures. Completely replace current scene—Completely • When materials with both Texture 1 and Texture 2 are imported, a composite texture is created and added to the Standard material’s Diffuse channel. Convert units—When turned on, the software • Reflection maps, auto-cubics, and mirrors. • Automatic reflection map Nth frame and Map Size settings. • SXP translation for Marble and Noise materials. • 3DS/DOS R4 IK joint parameters.
532 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects • Basic material color/parameters from the Standard material. • Single maps with their amount, offsets, scales, etc. • Auto-cubics and Mirrors. • Target cameras, target spotlights and omni lights. • Most "static" parameters for cameras and lights, and animation tracks for Roll, Falloff, Hotspot, and FOV. When importing PRJ files, the software converts polygons to shape objects.
Importing SHP Files Interface dialog you see when you import a 3DS file. When you have set the options and clicked OK in the 3DS Import dialog, you then see a Shape Import dialog. When you choose 3DS as the export file format, enter a file name, and click Save, an Export Scene To .3DS File dialog is displayed. This dialog has a single option: Preserve MAX’s Texture Coordinates—When on, preserves mapping coordinates. When off, mapping information is discarded. Default=on.
534 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Interface ASCII (ASC, ASE) Files File menu > Export > ASCII Scene Export (*.ASE) When importing AI88 files, the software converts polygons to shape objects. You choose an option in the Shape Import dialog to set how the shape objects are created: When you choose ASCII Scene Export (*.ase) as the Save As type, the exported file is an ASCII representation of your scene. A dialog lets you specify which scene components are included, and how they’re output.
Exporting to ASCII Animated Mesh—Exports a complete mesh definition of every n frames. The frequency is specified by the Controller Output spinner, described below. Each block contains the same information specified in the Mesh Options group box, described below. Turning this on can result in a huge file, even for small scenes. Animated Camera/Light Settings—Exports the animation data for cameras and lights, such as color, intensity, falloff, map bias, etc.
536 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects AutoCAD (DWG) Files Importing AutoCAD Drawing Files objects that are unique to the product. In order to view them in 3ds Max, you need the appropriate Object Enabler (OE). Object Enablers let you access, display, and manipulate these objects in AutoCAD, as well as the other vertical applications, including 3ds Max. For a list of downloadable OEs, see the Autodesk Web site File menu > Import > AutoCAD Drawing (*.DWG, *.
Importing AutoCAD Drawing Files bounding box in tools like AutoCAD, the 3ds Max viewports and transform tools do not respond properly. When you use them, the cursor does not move smoothly. For example, if you have a file that is a mile wide, but your system units are millimeters, you have a scene width of 1.6 million units, which is too great a value. If you change your system unit to feet, this is less taxing on the system.
538 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects two different files, such as Basic Wall: Generic – 12” Masonry. If a naming conflict arises when two scenes are merged, the program applies the last loaded material used in the Multi/Sub object material. For example, if you import two files, file1.dwg and file2.dwg, and they both contain a material named Brick; the Brick material used is the one from the second file (file2.dwg). Or, if file1.
DWG/DXF Import: Geometry Panel DWG/DXF Import: Geometry Panel Interface File menu > Import > AutoCAD Drawing (*.DWG, *.DXF) > Geometry panel The Geometry panel of the Import Options dialog controls how the software derives AutoCAD primitives and whether 3ds Max uses the scene material definitions when linking to or reloading the AutoCAD drawing. It also presents options for geometry translation and for toggling inclusion of certain elements in the DWG or DXF file.
540 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects automatically has Rescale on and the Incoming File Units set to millimeters. When there is a scale disparity, It’s generally advisable to rescale an incoming drawing to more realistic units to account for the precision limitations of 3ds Max compared to AutoCAD. For instance, if you import an airport designed in millimeters in AutoCAD, set Incoming File Units to Feet or Meters. For further information, see A Note on Large-Scale Drawings (page 3–536).
DWG/DXF Import: Geometry Panel Note: Multiple material support for ACIS solids applies to DWG files imported or file linked from Revit Architecture 2008 or AutoCAD Architecture (formerly Architectural Desktop or ADT) 2007 and later. Note: Multiple material support for ACIS solids applies on the DWG files imported or file linked from Revit Architecture 2008 or AutoCAD Architecture (formerly Architectural Desktop or ADT) 2007 and later.
542 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects in the scene. Material assignments are lost but material IDs are preserved. Warning: This option has the potential to create an enormous number of objects in your scene. Note: When working with drawings exported from Revit, it is recommended that you do not use this setting. • One Object—All imported objects are combined into a single VIZBlock. Material assignments are lost but material IDs are preserved.
DWG/DXF Import: Geometry Panel Orient normals of adjacent faces consistently—Analyzes the face normals of for UVW coordinate generation on the Spline Rendering panel. each object and flips normals to make their directions consistent. If the imported geometry is not properly welded, or if the software can’t determine the object’s center, normals might be oriented in the wrong direction. Use the Edit Mesh or Normal modifiers to flip normals.
544 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Lights—Imports lights from the drawing file. Hatches—Imports hatches from the drawing file. Warning: This stores each line or dot in the hatch pattern as a separate component of the VIZBlock that defines the hatch; this can create a very large number of objects in your scene. Views and Cameras—Imports named views and cameras from the drawing file, and converts named views to 3ds Max cameras. Points—Imports points from the drawing file.
DWG/DXF Import: Spline Rendering Panel DWG/DXF Import: Spline Rendering Panel File menu > Import > AutoCAD Drawing (*.DWG, *.DXF) > Spline Rendering panel The Spline Rendering panel of the Import Options dialog lets you determine how spline objects imported from DWG and DXF files are displayed in the viewports and how they’re treated by the 3ds Max renderer. Interface Spline Rendering panel Skip all Frozen Layers—Excludes the import of objects on frozen layers.
546 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects For more information, see Mapping Coordinates (page 2–1405). Real-World Map Size—Controls the scaling method used for texture mapped materials that are applied to the object. The scaling values are controlled by the Use Real-World Scale settings found in the applied material’s Coordinates rollout (page 2–1625). Default=on.
Legacy AutoCAD Import Legacy AutoCAD Import File menu > Import > Legacy AutoCAD (*.DWG) Splines rendered at thickness of 1.0 and 5.0, respectively Sides—Sets the number of sides (or facets) for the spline mesh n the viewport or renderer. For example, a value of 4 results in a square cross section. Angle—Adjusts the rotational position of the cross-section in the viewport or renderer. For example, if the spline mesh has a square cross section you can use Angle to position a "flat" side down.
548 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects • Ability to skip frozen layers, or to select specific layers to import (or exclude) from a list. • Ability to set shape rendering parameters before importing to 3ds Max. • Ability to maintain layer assignments from the drawing file. Features Unique to the Legacy DWG Import System • AutoCAD primitives are translated into 3ds Max primitives. • Support for Text (though not MText). • Imported blocks are represented as groups. Interface from that layer.
Legacy AutoCAD Import becomes an instance of [CHAIR.01] named [CHAIR.02]. When Convert Blocks To Groups is turned off, block definitions are ignored and block insertions are treated as separate objects, similar to exploding blocks in AutoCAD. Skip Off and Frozen Layers—Excludes the import of objects on layers that are hidden or frozen. Skip Hatches and Points—Excludes the import of hatch patterns and point objects. Hatch patterns are made of many short line segments and points.
550 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Exporting AutoCAD DWG Files File menu > Export > AutoCAD (*.DWG) When you export an AutoCAD drawing file, you convert your 3ds Max objects into AutoCAD objects. Because AutoCAD doesn’t support animation, the exporter produces objects in a static state defined by the current frame set by the time slider. If you used layers, instances, or colors to organize objects in the scene, that structure is maintained when the model is exported.
Importing DXF Files Interface Skip Hidden Objects—Toggles export of hidden objects. When on, hidden objects are not exported. Ignore Extrude Capping—When on, exports shapes with Extrude modifiers as 2D AutoCAD objects with a thickness property, and ignores the state of the Cap Start and Cap End parameters. When off, shapes with Extrude modifiers that also have Cap Start or Cap End on are exported as polyface 3D meshes.
552 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Exporting to DXF Files File menu > Export > Select File To Export dialog > Save As Type > AutoCAD (*.DXF) DXF files are used to import and export objects to and from AutoCAD (and other programs that support this file format). Note: The DXF Exporter can export only mesh data. Therefore, all shapes and splines (page 3–1011) are exported as mesh objects.
Importing Autodesk Inventor Files The components of models that you import into 3ds Max retain their object naming as assigned in Autodesk Inventor and appear as editable meshes (page 1–996). Once imported, you can edit the model just as you would any other type of object that you construct. You can apply modifiers, alter materials, add lighting and cameras, create animations, etc.
554 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Interface Material Options group Import Inventor Materials—When turned on, all Inventor materials and texture maps are translated and imported into the scene. If turned off, no materials are imported with the model. Assign Material IDs—Lets you control whether material IDs are assigned to objects that are imported from Inventor. You can assign different materials to different surfaces of the same object while working in Inventor.
Exporting 3D DWF Files Left: Mesh Resolution=–7. Left: Vertical axis set to X. Center: Mesh Resolution=0. Center: Vertical axis set to Y. Right: Mesh Resolution=+7. Right: Vertical axis set to Z. Note: The option to adjust mesh resolution is available only for models imported from Autodesk Inventor 10 or later. Inventor File Vertical Direction group This option determines the model’s orientation upon import. You can choose which axis of the Inventor model is vertical.
556 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects is installed with 3ds Max. For more information about using the viewer, see the Autodesk DWF Viewer help system. • Two-sided materials are not supported. However, you can get around this by turning on Force Two Sided on the Render Scene dialog. Note: Turning on Force Two-Sided affects the entire scene. This can slow down the performance of the DWF Viewer because it has to process the two-sided display of everything in scene.
Exporting 3D DWF Files Note: You can also isolate objects in the viewer you want to hide or make transparent. Grouping Options group Tip: If you have a camera in the scene and want listed in the Model tree pane in the Autodesk DWF Viewer by their object name or group name. that view exported, make sure the Camera viewport is active when you publish the DWF file. 2. Choose File menu > Export.
558 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Turn this on if the scene contains large texture files in order to reduce the DWF file size. Note: This setting has no effect when Publish Materials is turned off. Maximum Resolution (pixels)— Sets the maximum length, in pixels, of the longest edge of all the bitmap images that are used as textures. Note: All bitmap images exported to the DWF file are compressed to JPG (page 3–620) format in order to create small DWF files.
Overview of IGES in 3ds Max industries. Using the IGES import/export feature, you can read in and write out native NURBS (page 3–980) data between 3ds Max and programs such as Mechanical Desktop release 3.0, Maya™, Pro/ENGINEER®, SOFTIMAGE®, CATIA®, and others. For complete details on the IGES standard, see The Initial Graphics Exchange Specification (IGES) Version 5.3.
560 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects See also Importing IGES Files (page 3–560) 3ds Max to IGES Export Table (page 3–563) Exporting IGES Files (page 3–562) IGES Log Files (page 3–560) IGES to 3ds Max Import Table (page 3–561) Importing IGES Files (page 3–560) IGES Log Files During the translation process, the software creates log files containing detailed information about the processing of the model. This information includes error messages and entity-mapping statistics.
IGES to 3ds Max Import Table IGES Log Files (page 3–560) IGES to 3ds Max Import Table (page 3–561) Importing IGES Files (page 3–560) Procedure IGES to 3ds Max Import Table The following table lists IGES entities and the 3ds Max objects they translate to when you import them. Any IGES entities not listed here do not import. To import an IGES file: 1. Choose File menu > Import.
562 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects IGES entity number IGES entity name 3ds Max 144 Trimmed Parametric Surface NURBS Surface 143 Bounded Surface NURBS Surface 186 Solid NURBS Surface 308 Subfigure Definition Instance 402 Group NURBS Object In some cases, when you export 3ds Max objects to an IGES file, the translation doesn’t produce exact replicas. To understand what happens to each object when it’s translated, review the IGES export table (page 3–563).
3ds Max to IGES Export Table Interface 3ds Max object IGES entity name IGES entity number Point Point 116 Group Group 402:7 Instance Subfigure Definition 308 Instance(s) Subfigure Definition(s) 408 Notes When 3ds Max exports IGES, it supports name and color mappings to IGES names and colors.
564 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Procedure To export an M3G file: 1. Choose File menu > Export. 2. Choose JSR–184 (*.M3G) in the Files Of Type list. 3. Specify a file name to export, and then click Save. This opens the JSR-184 dialog, displaying the scene hierarchy for your 3ds Max scene. By default, all of the elements in your scene are also listed for export in the JSR-184 scene.
JSR-184 Texture Tool Interface Remove Object—Removes the selected object from the JSR-184 scene. Export Settings: Authoring Message—This message is required by the JSR-184 file format standard and is usually reserved for entering copyright notice information. This message is stored in the header portion of the M3G file. Project Root—Sets the location of the root of the project.
566 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects • Grayscale 8 bit (256 grayscales )—Changes the color model to grayscale. • Approx.Object Size: Shows the object size with sub-objects. • Optimized Palette (256 colors adaptive palette)—Changes the color model to a limited 256-color palette. • User-defined ID: Displays the user ID for the object. The Optimized Palette option is available only when the Save To External File option is on. This palette does not support an alpha channel.
JSR-184 Object Parameters • User-defined ID: Displays the user ID for the object. • Approx.Object Size: Shows the object size with sub-objects. • Enable Rendering: Sets the picking enable flag of this node. The effective rendering enable status for this node is the logical AND of the enable flags on this node and all of its ancestors. This means that the World node is disabled if any of its ancestors are disabled. The status of the World node has an effect only if all its ancestors are enabled.
568 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects projection from 3D to 2D. A Camera object is assigned the same name as its counterpart in the original 3ds Max scene. • Approx.Object Size: Shows the object size with sub-objects. • User-defined ID: Displays the user ID for the object. • Scope: Allows scene graph nodes to form conceptual groups independent of the scene graph hierarchy. The default scope is -1, implying that all nodes are in the same scope.
JSR-184 Log Files • Projection Type: Sets the projection mode for the Camera. Options are Parallel and Perspective. • Object Name—Contains the name of the corresponding 3ds Max object. • Object Type—Indicates the type of saved object. Morphing Mesh Morphing mesh is a scene graph node that represents a vertex-morphing polygon mesh. A morphing mesh object is assigned the same name as its counterpart in the original 3ds Max scene. Morphing mesh parameters are the same as mesh object parameters.
570 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects JSR-184 Standalone Player Start menu > Programs > Autodesk > Autodesk 3ds Max 9 > JSR184 Player Once you have exported your 3ds Max scene to JSR-184 format, you can preview how the animation is displayed on various mobile screens. Player controls The player is controlled by the following buttons on the toolbar: • Opens the Choose Objects for Rendering dialog.
Importing LandXML/DEM Models LandXML (XML, DEM) Files Importing LandXML/DEM Models LandXML/DEM Model Import lets you import land development data into 3ds Max. Civil engineering data, from XML, DEM (digital elevation model), or DDF files, is used to create a 3ds Max model. • The DDF file type is an SDTS (spatial data transfer standard) format grid surface. DDF files are very similar to DEM files; however, DDF information is shared across multiple files.
572 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects or entire groups with their corresponding check boxes. Three types of civil engineering data stored in LandXML files are supported: • Surfaces—3D TIN ground and finished surface model. Terrain surface data is imported to 3ds Max as an editable mesh. • Alignments—2D road centerlines. Alignment data is imported to 3ds Max as a Shape object. Note: This option is only available for terrain surface objects.
Importing Lightscape Files Lightscape file formats save selected portions of the information in the LP file. These are the additional Lightscape file formats: • View file (*.vw): Exports the active view, or selected camera views. • Block file (*.blk): Exports materials, lights, and geometry. Blocks in a block file can be selectively loaded into Lightscape. • Material file (*.atr): Exports materials. • Layer file (*.lay): Exports layers. • Parameter file (*.df): Exports processing parameters. 2.
574 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects • Accessing the import dialog. • Choosing to replace the current scene. • Choosing how to group the imported objects. • (LS files.) Specifying a prefix for imported Lightscape objects. • (LS files.) Choosing which Lightscape objects to import. • (LS files.) Choosing the conditions for importing Lightscape lights. • (LS files.) Choosing the radiosity mapping settings.
Lightscape Materials Utility Interface You set the new Lightscape material’s values in the Radiosity Mapping group, described below. Add to Selected—Clicking to add a Lightscape material to all materials used by the current selection. An object’s previous material, if any, becomes the Lightscape material’s base material. If a material is already using a Lightscape material, it remains unchanged. You set the new Lightscape material’s values in the Radiosity Mapping group, described below.
576 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects 1.0, the full 3ds Max ambient light is added into the radiosity calculations. Default=0.0. • file version Daylight—Determines whether you want natural daylight to be used in the calculation. Default=on. • number of frames Exterior Scene—Used for exterior daylight • Euler rotation order simulations. Default=off.
Importing TRC Files Note: This does not change the skeleton’s scale. Set Frame Rate—When on, the frame rate (page 3–944) from the HTR file overwrites the current one in the Time Configuration dialog (page 3–725). End Effectors—Toggle this option to import end Scale group effectors (page 3–933) from the incoming data, if they exist. Only available if Create is active. Global—Sets the size of the resulting skeleton. the motion capture data. Only available if Create is active.
578 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Interface Time Options group All/Range—Choose between using the entire animation range from the motion capture file, or a defined portion. To/From—These values represent the start and end frames of the defined range. Only available if Range is active. Offset—Sets the number of inserted empty frames before the imported animation starts.
Exporting HTR/HTR2 Files Note: All section titles are displayed between square brackets ([]). Interface Note: Comments within the HTR file are denoted by a hash mark (#). The header section contains global parameter information: • file type • data type • file version • number of segments • number of frames • data frame rate Base Position group • calibration units Saved Pose—Choose this option to use the skeleton’s pose at frame 0 as base position data. Default=on.
580 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Scale group Exporting Bones Global—Sets the bone length scale factor in the The exporter supports character animation using bones and the Skin modifier, or a character studio® biped with the Physique® modifier. Bones are exported not as geometry, but as Shockwave 3D bones. export file. Ok—Proceeds with HTR/HTR2 export, using the current settings. Cancel—Cancels HTR/HTR2 export.
Shockwave 3D Scene Export Options Dialog Shockwave 3D Scene Export Options Dialog File menu > Export > Select File To Export dialog > Save As Type > Shockwave 3D Scene Export (*.W3D) This dialog appears when you choose the Shockwave 3D format as the export format for your scene. Interface • Information about any cameras, lights, and groups in the scene. Shockwave 3D treats cameras, lights, and groups as less important resources, and stores information about them only in the scenegraph.
582 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Note: 3ds Max supports direct animation of cameras and lights. If you animate a camera or light, that animation will be exported, but an extra geometry node will be inserted into the scene during the export process. This geometry node has the animation of the camera or light applied to it, and the camera or light is made a child of this extra node. The exporter does this because the Shockwave 3D runtime engine supports keyframes only on geometric nodes.
Shockwave 3D Scene Export Options Dialog Enable Toon and SDS—When turned off, this option prevents the writing of geometry data used by some of the more advanced Shockwave 3D technologies, and thus reduces the overall file size. If turned off, Toon and Subdivision Surfaces (SDS) data is not included in the export file, which means that the Toon and Subdivision Surfaces modifiers cannot be applied to the model in Director.
584 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects The reduced size of the texture maps will usually look fine on the model, because the model’s UVW texture coordinates will have already taken into account the non-square dimensions of the image. Use the smaller settings if, after tuning the compression settings and simplifying the scene in 3ds Max, the W3D file is still too large.
Shockwave 3D Export Preview Shockwave 3D Export Preview File menu > Export > Select File To Export dialog > Save As Type > Shockwave 3D Scene Export (*.W3D) > Preview This window displays the scene as it has been captured by the Shockwave 3D Exporter. This view lets you quickly identify scene elements that are not supported by the Shockwave 3D Exporter. orthographic camera forward, because the lack of perspective effects does not hide models as the camera passes them.
586 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Interface • Unknown—includes, for example, streaming priorities, names, and block sizes. File Organization—Graphic display of the size of Pie Chart—Graphic display of the proportion of the file used by all of the W3D file data types.
Importing STL Files model. Other STL machines use metal powder to create a model in steel. Still other machines use a special wax. You can import and export STL files. See Exporting to STL (page 3–588). Interface Weld Threshold—Determines the size of the area which vertices must occupy to be welded. Vertices with distances equal to or less than this value are welded into a single vertex. Weld—Turns on the Weld Vertices function.
588 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects use the Normal modifier to flip them. For best results, leave this box turned on. Interface Exporting to STL File menu > Export > StereoLitho (*.STL) An STL file saves object data in a format used for stereolithography. STL files have a file-name extension of .stl. There is an ASCII STL format as well as a binary STL format. You can choose which to create when you export a 3ds Max scene. STL files are generally used for purposes of rapid prototyping.
Exporting Wavefront Object (OBJ) Files Exporting Wavefront Object (OBJ) Files Interface File menu > Export > Wavefront Object (*.OBJ) The ASCII-based OBJ format makes it possible to exchange graphical data between many applications. Both polygons and freeform geometries such as curves are supported with these format. You can export 3ds Max files to this format. Feature Support with OBJ Export Mesh Geometry • When exporting mesh geometry, you can export triangles, polygons, or quadrilaterals.
590 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Geometry group Rotate model—Exports the geometry to match its orientation in 3ds Max. Faces—Choose whether the mesh faces are stored as triangles, quadrangles, or polygons. Texture coordinates—When on, the texture coordinates are stored with the exported file. When you import the file in another application you will be able to use this information if it is supported. Normals—When on, the normal information (page 3–980) for the mesh is stored.
Importing VRML Files Compress numbers—When on, trailing zeroes are eliminated from decimal fractions. This makes the exported file smaller without sacrificing any precision, but can cause compatibility issues when importing with certain programs. If you’re unable to import a MTL file, make sure this option is off and export again. • The VRML 1.0 WWW Inline works only if the URL refers to a local file residing in the same folder as the .WRL file. Internet URLs are not supported.
592 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Procedure 2. Choose VRML97 (WRL) as the file format. Normals—Generates real normals for objects. Some browsers need normals to do smoothing properly. Check this box if you are exporting geometry that uses smoothing groups in 3ds Max, to see the correct shading. Default=off. 3. Enter a file name, and click Save. Coordinate Interpolators—Exports animation 4.
Exporting to VRML97 is described by its radius). To see how many polygons are in the scene, turn off this box to export 3ds Max primitives, which have an indexed face set for each object. Default=on. Flip-Book—Exports the scene to multiple files. The sample rate is set in the in the Flip-Book section of the Sample Rates dialog. The file name you specify becomes the base for the sequence of files. For example, if you specify the file name test.
594 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Use Max’s—Exports the current vertex color of the object defined in the scene. Calculate on Export—Calculates the diffuse color at the vertices during export, based on the current lighting and the objects’ materials. Bitmap URL Prefix group Lets you specify a URL prefix for bitmaps assigned to objects in the scene. You must keep all your texture bitmaps in either the same directory as the WRL file or in one other location, which you specify here.
VRML97 Tips 5. Open the VRML97 file in the browser and test it. Interface The VRML97 exporter supports the following: Lights—All VRML97 light types: direct, omni, and spot. Cameras—Free and targeted cameras. Primitives—Sphere, cone, box, and cylinder primitive objects. These objects export as VRML97 primitive objects. This helps reduce the size of VRML97 files. Animation—All position, rotation, and scale animation on objects, as well as animated hierarchies, inverse kinematics, and all controller types.
596 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Animation Beware of large file sizes when you use transform animation and coordinate-interpolated animation. The VRML97 plug-in exports transform animation (move, rotate, and scale), and coordinate-interpolated animation. For example, you can animate modifiers such as Taper and Bend and you can animate changing parameters, such as increasing or decreasing the radius of a sphere.
VRML97 Specification Helper Objects TouchSensor VRML97 Helper (page 3–603) Insert VRML helper objects into your scene in the top viewport. You can insert VRML helper objects in any view, but if you insert them in the top viewport, they appear properly oriented in the front viewport.
598 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Interface world (a .wrl file) you can append "#CameraName" to the end of the URL to have the browser use the viewpoint named "CameraName" as the initial view. Bookmarks—Lets you select a URL location from a list of bookmarks. Click Import List to import the list of bookmarks defined in your browser, or manually enter new URLs into the list. Parameter—Lets you specify additional browser parameters for the hyperlink jump.
NavInfo VRML97 Helper Interface NavInfo VRML97 Helper Create panel > Helpers > VRML97 > Object Type rollout > NavInfo The NavInfo helper lets you create a VRML97 NavigationInfo node. This tells the browser how to navigate around the VRML97 world. Procedures To create a NavInfo helper: 1. Add a NavInfo helper by clicking the NavInfo button and then click-dragging in the Top viewport to create its icon. 2. Use the controls to adjust the behavior of the helper.
600 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Headlight—Places a directional light at the viewpoint. The light always points in the direction the user is looking. Tip: Don’t use this option if you have lights in the scene. Visibility Limit—Sets the far clipping plane. Any geometry beyond this point is invisible. The smaller this value is, the closer the clipping plane is to the camera. The larger this value is, the more of your scene is visible to the camera.
Sound VRML97 Helper Visibility Range—Specifies the distance from the viewer at which objects are totally obscured by the fog. The smaller this value is, the closer the fog is to the camera, and the less your scene is visible. The larger this value is, the more of your scene is visible to the camera. A value of 0 turns off the effect, making everything in the scene visible. A value of 0 means that there is no fog effect. Procedures Icon Size—Adjusts the size of the helper object in 3.
602 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Spatialize—Makes the sound 3D. A spatial sound has a particular source location in the scene. If this box is turned off, the sound is ambient. Min Back/Front, Max Back/Front—Displays red and blue ellipsoids that allow you to set the area of the sound effect. Inside the blue ellipsoid, the sound is at full volume. Outside the red ellipsoid, the sound is inaudible. Between the blue and red ellipsoids is a falloff area in which the volume varies in intensity.
TouchSensor VRML97 Helper Interface TouchSensor VRML97 Helper Create panel > Helpers > VRML97 > Object Type rollout > TouchSensor The TouchSensor helper lets you set up an object so that selecting it in a VRML97 browser starts a set of objects animating. Procedure To set up an object as a TouchSensor trigger: 1. Add a Touch Sensor object by clicking the Touch Sensor button and then click-dragging in the Top viewport to create its icon. 2. Select the geometry to control.
604 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Pick Trigger Object—Specifies the geometry that Interface will be the trigger for this TouchSensor. Click this button, then select the geometry. Enable—Activates the Touch Sensor. When this box is turned off, the sensor has no effect, even if objects have been selected. Pick Action Objects—Specifies the objects in the scene to control with this helper. Delete—Deletes an object from the list of picked objects.
Background VRML97 Helper Delete—Deletes an object from the list of picked Interface objects. Sky Colors rollout Icon Size—Adjusts the size of the helper object in the viewports. Background VRML97 Helper Create panel > Helpers > VRML97 > Object Type rollout > Background The Background button displays the Sky Color, Ground Color, and Images rollouts. Use these rollouts to specify colors and images for the sky and ground in your VRML97 world. Procedure To create a Background helper object: 1.
606 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Ground Colors rollout Lets you provide a colored background to the world’s ground plane using a gradient of up to three colors. The ground appears inside the sky sphere and below the objects of the scene. Number of Colors—Specifies whether the ground is one solid color or a gradient of two or three colors.
Billboard VRML97 Helper 2. Enter the location of the sound file (.wav or .mid) you want to use in the URL text box. Interface Billboard VRML97 Helper Create panel > Helpers > VRML97 > Object Type rollout > Billboard The Billboard helper lets you create geometry that is camera-aligned in the VRML97 browser. The objects always align to the viewpoint in the VRML97 browser. Any geometry linked to the Billboard helper will rotate about the local Z axis of the helper object to face the viewer.
608 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Icon Size—Determines the size of the Billboard helper in the scene. The VRML Inline rollout contains the following options: Insert URL—Specifies the URL of the .wrl files to Inline VRML97 Helper Create panel > Helpers > VRML97 > Object Type rollout > Inline The Inline helper lets you reference another VRML97 file that is included in your world when you load it into your VRML97 browser.
AVI Files use as a bitmap, then the image changes over time when you render the 3ds Max scene. Note: Bitmaps are reloaded automatically after they have been changed and resaved by a graphic editing program. See the Reload Textures On Change toggle in File Preferences (page 3–819). When you render a scene, you can render a still image or an animation. You can render to most of the formats listed below. Some of the formats support various options.
610 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects BMP Files BMP files are still-image bitmap files in the Windows bitmap (.bmp) format. Interface When BMP is chosen as the output format, clicking Render or Setup on the Render Output File dialog (page 3–9) displays the BMP Compression dialog. Compressor—Use the drop-down list to choose the codec (page 3–921) (compressor/decompressor) you want to use to compress the file. You can use any codec that’s installed on your system.
CWS (Combustion Workspace) Files DDS Files The DirectDraw® Surface (DDS) file format is used to store textures and cubic environment maps, both with and without mipmap levels. This format can store uncompressed and compressed pixel formats, and is the preferred file format for storing DXTn compressed data. Microsoft® is the developer of this file format. You can use DDS files as texture maps.
612 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects • A8 R8 G8 B8—32 bits per pixel: 8 bits each for the RGB and alpha channels. • A1 R5 G5 B5—16 bits per pixel: 5 bits each for the RGB channels, and one bit for the alpha channel. • A4 R4 G4 B4—16 bits per pixel: 4 bits each for the RGB and alpha channels. • R8 G8 B8—24 bits per pixel: 8 bits each for the RGB channels; no alpha. • R5 G6 B5—16 bits per pixel: 5 bits each for the R and B channels, 6 bits for the G channel; no alpha.
GIF Files HDRI Files HDRI is a file format used for high-dynamic-range images. Most cameras don’t have the capability to capture the dynamic range (the gamut of luminances between dark and bright regions) that is present in the real world. However, the range can be recovered by taking a series of pictures of the same subject with different exposure settings, and combining them into one image file. This type of image is called a high dynamic range image (HDRI) or radiance map. HDRI files have an .
614 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects the majority of the graph, and the preview image is satisfactory. Tip: For the Internal Storage option, use the default choice of 16 bit/chan Linear (48bpp) unless you have a specific reason for doing otherwise. 6. When you have finished adjusting values, note the Linear White Point value, and click OK to accept the settings. 7. In the Material Editor, expand the Output rollout.
HDRI Files clamped to black. When this option is turned off, the lowest possible value is used as the Black Point. Measured Min/Max—Displays the actual minimum and maximum luminance values in the image, expressed as both the logarithmic and linear values. Using these values for the Black Point and White Point will result in the image’s full luminance range being used. However, the histogram might show that the majority of the luminance levels fall into a much smaller range.
616 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects • Compositing: Using 16–bit images in a compositing pipeline can quickly become a problem as colors are manipulated. For example, banding may appear. • HDR images are not bound to a specific range (e.g., 0-255 or 0-65535); they have a dynamic range. As such, high-contrast and physically accurate values can be stored in 32-bit floating-point pixels.
IFL Files 5. In the Image File List Control dialog, choose the options you want, and then click OK. Tip: Use the Browse button to set the Target Path The IFL file listed above specifies sand.tga to be used for the first 20 frames, pebble.tga to be used for the next 40 frames, stone.tif to be used for 20 frames, and boulder.tif to be used for 20 frames. Tip: Specify only the file names in your IFL files. The file paths can be derived from the map paths established in your preferences.
618 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Tip: The viewport background does not render. To render the IFL file’s animation, assign the IFL file as a rendering environment. (See the following procedure.) To render the frames in an IFL file as a movie (AVI or MOV format): 1. Choose Rendering > Environment. 2. On the Environment dialog, click Environment Map. 3. On the Material/Map Browser, choose Bitmap, and then click OK. 4.
IFL Manager Utility Nth Frame—Skips frames in the image file list. Use this to match the length of the sequence to the length of the animation. Multiplier—Increases the frames in the image file list. Each frame in the file list can be repeated by this value to stretch out the length of the sequence. Include Image Path—Includes the path in the image file list. 5. Set the End spinner to specify the last numbered file in the sequence.
620 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Spinners group Start—Displays the number of the first image file • The range of frames (Nonsequential frame sequences, such as 1, 7, 12–19, are not supported.) in the selected sequence. Increase to specify a different starting image for the IFL file. • The frame rate End—Displays the number of the last image file in • The pixel aspect ratio the selected sequence. Decrease to specify a lower ending image for the IFL file.
MOV (QuickTime Movie) Files Note: The plug-in does not allow for the direct import of audio from a QuickTime file. Interface When you create a new QuickTime file or choose Setup for an existing one, you see a dialog that is typically titled Compression Settings. This dialog is provided by the QuickTime codec (page 3–921) installed with your system, and can change depending on the version of QuickTime you’ve installed.
622 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects first movies to employ OpenEXR were Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Men in Black II, Gangs of New York, and Signs. Since then, OpenEXR has become ILM’s main image file format. OpenEXR’s features include: • Higher dynamic range and color precision than existing 8- and 10-bit image file formats. • Support for 16-bit floating-point, 32-bit floating-point, and 32-bit integer pixels.
Saving OpenEXR Files Saving OpenEXR Files Render Scene dialog > Common panel > Common Parameters rollout > Render Output group > Click Files. > Enter file name and set type to OpenEXR Image File > Click Save. > OpenEXR Configuration dialog Rendered Frame Window > Click Save Bitmap. > Enter file name and set type to OpenEXR Image File > Click Save. > OpenEXR Configuration dialog Use the OpenEXR Configuration dialog dialog to set output parameters for OpenEXR files.
624 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects R/G/B/Alpha—Let you specify the channels to save: red, green, blue, and alpha. Use RealPixel RGB Data—When on, compresses the essential data of floating-point color into 32 bits. For technical information, see Structure RealPixel. Note: Image motion blur is not applied to the RealPixel RGBA data by the renderer. If you are using Image motion blur, you will not be able to save RealPixel unclamped color data.
Saving OpenEXR Files Attributes are data that is stored per frame, not per pixel, and they are embedded in the file’s header. Channels are data that is stored per pixel. In order to maximize flexibility with other software, this plug-in lets you edit the file tags. You should only do this if you know the tag required by some other software; otherwise it is best to leave the file tags at their default values. • Channels that create multiple “slices” in the EXR file require multiple file tags.
626 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Opening OpenEXR Files Any command that opens an image file, such as View Image File > Specify an EXR file. > Click Open. > OpenEXR Configuration dialog This version of the OpenEXR Configuration dialog appears whenever you open an EXR file. It lets you specify various color transformations to be applied to the loaded image, designate the internal storage format to use, and preview the loaded image with the color transforms applied.
Opening OpenEXR Files • You can set the display itself to linear or logarithmic mode. Logarithmic display remaps all values greater than 1.0 to a logarithmic curve. The dotted spacing indicators are supplemented by heavier dotted lines that indicate when the scale has changed by a factor of 10. This is useful for most HDR images, as the HDR data is usually spread out over a wide range. • Setting X-Axis Scale to Auto mode causes the histogram to encompass the entire spectrum of the image.
628 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects the file. See Extra Channels and Attributes (page 3–624). Image File format in input and output file browsers in 3ds Max. For further information, see HDRI Files (page 3–613). See also Radiosity Workflows (page 3–57) PNG Files PNG (Portable Network Graphics) is a still-image file format developed for use with the Internet and World Wide Web. Interface Clicking Render or Setup in the Render Output File dialog (page 3–9) displays the PNG Configuration dialog.
PSD Files Grayscale 16 bit (65,536)—Choose to render a grayscale image with 65,536 shades. Alpha Channel—Turn on to save the alpha channel with the file. Interlaced—Turn on to make the file interlaced for faster display in Web browsers. PSD Files PSD is the file-name extension for graphics files native to Adobe Photoshop. This image format supports multiple layers of images superimposed to get the final image. Each layer can have any number of channels (R, G, B, Mask, and so on).
630 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects • CMYK Color • Lab Color • Multichannel Non-Image Layers—Layers other than image layers (for example, text layers) are not supported. In Photoshop, you can “rasterize” a non-image layer to make it an image. Compositing Options—Compositing options between image layers, which require processing by Photoshop, are not supported. RLA Files bitmap. When off, uses only that portion of the layer occupied by image data. Default=on.
RPF Files Standard Channels group The standard channels are RGB color and the alpha (transparency) channel. Bits per Channel—Choose 8, 16, or 32 Floating Point as the number of bits per channel. Default=8. Store Alpha Channel—Choose whether to save the alpha channel. Default=on. Premultiply Alpha—When on, premultiplies the alpha channel. Default=on. Premultiplying saves computation time if you later use this image in compositing. For more information, see Premultiplied Alpha (page 3–997).
632 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects post-production or effects work. Many channels available in RPF files are exclusive to this format. Tip: When you create a scene you plan to render as an RPF file for use with the Autodesk Combustion™ product, turn on Render Occluded Objects (on the Object Properties dialog (page 1–117) ) for objects in the scene. This is important if you want to use the Combustion G-Buffer Extract feature.
RGB (SGI Image) Files Coverage—Saves the coverage of the surface fragment from which other G-buffer values (Z Depth, Normal, and so on) are obtained. Z-Coverage values range from 0 to 255. To see Z Coverage, render to an RLA file after first checking Z Coverage in the Setup subdialog, then choose Z-Coverage in the rendered frame window’s Viewing Channel drop-down list. The Z-Coverage feature is provided primarily for developers, and should aid in the antialiasing of Z-buffers.
634 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Targa files are widely used to render still images and to render sequences of still images to video tape. Some Targa files created by other applications have different file-name extensions. 3ds Max can render the .vda, .icb, and .vst variants as well as .tga. Interface Clicking Render or Setup in the Render Output File dialog (page 3–9) displays the Targa Image Control dialog.
YUV Files There are several classes of TIFF files, each varying in the color depth and color palette that they support. • 16-bit SGI LogL—Creates a color image that includes a logarithmic encoding of the luminance channel. You can render TIFF files with alpha, luminance (page 3–964), and UV color coordinate information, which describes illuminance (page 3–955). You also have the option to render a compressed image.
636 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects The RAM Player has a channel A and a channel B. Two different sequences can be loaded into the channels to play back together, giving you the ability to compare them. Save Channel—Displays a Save File dialog that lets you save the animation or image from the respective channel. You can save the animation as a .avi file or a numbered sequence of images.
RAM Player Configuration Dialog Playback Forward—Plays the frames in the animation in rendered order. The flyout contains an option to play the animation once and then stop. Next Frame—Advances the RAM Player to the next frame in the animation. Last Frame—Automatically places the RAM Player at the last frame of the animation.
638 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects ratio, regardless of the Width and Height values you enter. If you change the Width of the file, the Height adjusts according to the file’s original aspect ratio. Adjusting the Height does the same to the Width value. Filter Input—When turned on, Filter Input filters the image or animation so that it best maintains the quality of the original file. When turned off, filtering does not occur, and the image or animation could be distorted.
Schematic View within the scene. You can control the display of instances or see a list of object occurrences. • Schematic View offers extensive MAXScript exposure. Schematic View also allows for background image or grid, and automatic arrangement of nodes based on physical scene placement. This makes arranging nodes for character rigs easier. • Performance has been substantially improved. Choose between a variety of arrangement selections so you can auto-arrange, or work in a free mode.
640 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Delete Schematic View (page 3–652) Up Arrow—Collapses the entity it springs from and all child entities thereof up into the parent entity Down Arrow—Expands the next child entity down from the entity that the arrow springs from. Overlap—Schematic View will prevent newly visible nodes from overlapping with existing nodes.
Using Schematic View 3. In the Schematic View window, select the To add a background image: transform of the object you want to assign a controller to. 1. On the Schematic View Options menu, choose 4. Right-click the transform, from on the Tools 2. In the Background Image group, click the File: quad, choose Assign Controller. 5. Choose the controller you want to apply from the list, then click OK. Preferences. button to launch the File Browser. 3.
642 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects menu choices to display a list of objects based on a certain relationship. 5. On the Options menu choose Pan to Selected. Now click through the nodes in the list. The Schematic View window updates to display each node as you click. This method makes navigation of very complex scenes much more convenient. Also when working with lists such as relationships or instances you have the additional ability to detach the relationship or make the instance unique.
Schematic View Menus are selected. This launches the standard Wire Parameters dialog. • Left—Aligns selected entities to the left edge of the selection, leaving vertical positioning intact. Object Properties—Displays the Object Properties • Right—Aligns selected entities to the right edge of the selection, leaving vertical positioning intact. dialog (page 1–117) for the selected nodes. Has no effect when no node is selected.
644 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Toggle Shrink—When on, shrinking entities works normally. When off, shrunk entities are fully visible, but not unshrunk. Default=on. Options Menu Always Arrange—Causes Schematic View always to arrange all entities based on the chosen arrangement preference. Displays a pop-up warning before doing so. Choosing this activates the toolbar button. Hierarchy Mode—Sets Schematic View to display entities as a hierarchy instead of reference graph.
Schematic View List Views Refresh View—Redraws the contents of the Schematic View window with all changes made to it or with changes made in the scene. Schematic View List Views Menu bar > Graph Editors > New Schematic View > Menu bar Menu bar > Graph Editors > Saved Schematic Views > Choose a saved schematic view. > Menu bar Selected Instances—Opens or redraws List View with all instances of currently selected Schematic View entities.
646 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Schematic View Preferences Dialog Schematic View (page 3–638) > toolbar > Preferences button Schematic View (page 3–638) > Options menu > Preferences The Schematic View Preferences dialog controls what is shown and what is hidden based on categories. You can filter the objects appearing in the Schematic View window, so you see only what you need to. You can add a grid or background image into your Schematic View window.
Schematic View Preferences Dialog View display. Turn this off to prevent the window from filling up with everything seen in Track View. • Cameras—Hides or displays cameras and their children. Master Point Controller— When this is on, • Helpers—Hides or displays helper objects and their children. sub-object animation controllers are included in the Schematic View display. This button prevents the window from filling up with too many controllers in cases in which sub–object animation is present.
648 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Show Grid—Displays a grid in the background of the Schematic View window. Snap to Grid—When this is on, all moved entities and children of those entities will snap their upper left corners to the nearest grid point. Entities not snapped to a grid point when snap is enabled will not snap until they are subsequently moved. Grid Spacing:—Sets the spacing units of the Schematic View grid.
Schematic View Toolbars Preferences group Double Buffer—Allows for double buffer display to control viewport performance. Zoom About Mouse Pointer—When this is turned on you can zoom into wherever you place your cursor. You can also zoom with the zoom wheel, or hold Ctrl and press the middle mouse button. Pan to Added Nodes—When this is turned on the Schematic View window will alter itself to accommodate new objects or nodes as they are added to the scene. When this is turned off the view is unchanged.
650 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Hierarchy Mode—Shows the parent/child relationships in a cascading display. The parents are to the left and up, the children are indented toward the right and down. References Mode—Shows relationships based on instances and references rather than hierarchy. Use this to view materials and modifiers. Always Arrange—Sets Schematic View to always arrange all entities based on arrangement preference (alignment options). Displays a pop-up warning before doing so.
Schematic View Display Floater Prompt Area—Provides a one-line instruction to tell you how to use the highlighted tool or button or provides you with details such as how many objects are currently selected. Pan—Lets you move horizontally or vertically in the window. You can also achieve the same effect by using the scroll bars at the right and bottom of the Schematic View window, or by using the middle mouse button. Zoom—Lets you move closer to or further from the Schematic display.
652 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Sync Selection is on and the Modifier stack is open, clicking on a base object will activate that level of the object’s stack. Modifier Stack—When active, all modifiers in the object’s stack will display as children, beginning with the Modified Object base entity. Modifiers can be copied, instanced or moved between objects by using the Connect tool.
Saved Schematic Views Saved Schematic Views Graph Editors menu > Saved Schematic Views > Schematic views by name Saved Schematic Views displays a list of schematic views by name that were previously created by New Schematic View (page 3–652). Schematic View Selection Right-Click Menu Schematic View (page 3–638) > Select any node. > Right-click. The Schematic View right-click menu contains controls for selecting, displaying, and manipulating selections of nodes.
654 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects what you don’t need to see. Or make individual selections and hide upstream or downstream to unclutter the display. entities visible. Unshrink Selected—Makes all selected shrunken Hide Selected—Hides the selection in the keeps arrangement and relationships visible. Shrink Selected— Hides all selected entities’ boxes, Schematic View window. Expand Selected—Reveals the display of all child entities of selected entity.
Using Layers to Organize a Scene warning before doing so. Choosing this activates the toolbar button. can use the Render column in the Layer Manager to quickly turn lights on or off in your scene. Layers Layers are like transparent overlays on which you organize and group different kinds of scene information. The objects you create have common properties including color, renderability, and display. An object can assume these properties from the layer on which you create it.
656 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects If you haven’t created any layers, 3ds Max places objects you create on layer 0 by default. After you create objects, you can reassign them to different layers, including those residing on layer 0. Display Properties In the Layer Properties dialog (page 3–662), you can specify layer visibility individually for each viewport. If you don’t want to display a certain layer, you can hide that layer.
Layer Manager dialog for one or more highlighted objects or layers directly from the Layer Manager by clicking the corresponding icons. To make a layer current: 1. On the main toolbar, click Layer Manager. 2. In the Layer Properties dialog, click the second column next to the layer name. Note: You can change the property settings for each layer or object by clicking the corresponding icon in the dialog.
658 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects To delete a layer: 1. On the main toolbar, click Layer Manager. to freeze. You can delete an empty layer at any time during a 3ds Max session. However, you can’t delete the current layer, Layer 0, or a layer that contains objects. In the Freeze column, click Off to turn Freeze on for the highlighted layer(s). 1. On the main toolbar, click Layer Manager. 2. In the Layer Manager, select one or more layers, and then click Delete Empty Layer. 2.
Layer Manager Interface Add Selected Objects to Highlighted Layer—Moves currently selected objects into the highlighted layer. Note: This button is not available if nothing is selected or if more than one layer is highlighted. Select Highlighted Objects and Layers—Selects all of highlighted objects, as well as all objects contained in any highlighted layers. Note: This button is not available if nothing is highlighted.
660 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects right-click and choose Highlight All. To open the Object/Layer Properties dialog, click on the icon next to the layer or object. Each property has a unique icon to indicate that it is turned on, while all properties share the same ) states. icon for the off ( ) and By Layer ( Note: By Layer is available only at the object level, in the Render, Color, and Radiosity columns. Tip: You can sort the layers by any of their properties by clicking the column name.
Layer Manager Layer Manager Right-Click Menu Cut is only available when objects are highlighted; if there are no objects highlighted or if a layer is part of a multiple selection, it is not available. Note: Objects are not actually cut from their assigned layer until they are pasted to another one. Tip: If you cut a layer, 3ds Max cuts all objects in the layer. Paste—Moves cut objects into the highlighted layer.
662 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Highlight All Layers—Highlights all of the layers in Interface your scene. Note: This command does not highlight any objects. Layer Properties—Opens the Layer Properties dialog (page 3–662) for the currently highlighted layers. Object Properties—Opens the Object Properties dialog (page 1–117) for the currently highlighted objects. Layer Properties Dialog Main toolbar > Layer Manager > Select one or more layers. > Click Layer icon.
Layer Properties Dialog Viewport—Displays the objects on the selected layer using the current settings under Views on the viewport right-click menu (page 3–731). Bounding Box—Displays the objects on the selected layer as a bounding box (page 3–919). Wireframe—Displays the objects on the selected layer in wireframe mode (page 3–1034). Shaded—Displays the objects on the selected layer in Smooth+Highlight mode (page 3–731). General panel shapes as bounding boxes (page 3–919).
664 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects vertex colors to shade the mesh. When off, colors are unshaded. Rendering Control group Controls rendering settings for objects on the selected layer. Visibility—Controls the rendered visibility of the object. At 1.0, the object is fully visible. At 0.0, the object is completely invisible when rendered. Default=1.0.
Layer Properties Dialog Adv. Lighting panel Object Subdivision Properties group Use Global Subdivision Settings—When on, the object’s meshing settings correspond to the global subdivision settings on the Radiosity Control Panel. When off, you can change the meshing settings for each object. Default=on. • Subdivide—When on, a radiosity mesh is created for the objects regardless of the global meshing state. The subdivision that is performed is determined by the Use Adaptive Subdivision switch.
666 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects Default=12” for imperial units and 30cm for metric units. Layer List 3. On the Layers toolbar, click Add Selected Objects to Current Layer. To change a layer’s properties: 1. Click Layers toolbar > Layer List to display the Layers toolbar > Layer List The Layer List, available from the Layers toolbar (page 3–688), displays layer names and their properties. You can control the properties of layers by clicking the property icons.
Create New Layer Create New Layer Layers toolbar > Create New Layer Layers toolbar > Layer Manager > Create New Layer Create New Layer creates a new layer the layer containing the currently selected objects. The new layer’s name is automatically generated (“Layer01”, “Layer02”, etc.) but may be changed in the Layer Manager (page 3–656). Add Selection to Current Layer Layers toolbar > Add Selection to Current Layer Add Selection to Current Layer moves the current object selection to the current layer.
668 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects
User Interface The 3ds Max user interface provides multiple ways to achieve the same goals. You can hide, float (page 3–930) or dock (page 3–930), resize and rearrange the user interface elements into your own personal design. For more information, see Customizing the User Interface (page 3–785). See the topics referenced below for detailed information on the major elements of the user interface.
670 Chapter 21: User Interface Set Key Clear Set Key Mode Buffer Default key: None While in Set Key mode, if you transform an object but haven’t yet clicked Set Key, this shortcut undoes the transformation and restores the viewport to show the animation that existed before the change. Another way to accomplish this is to move the time slider or to turn on Play. Transforms Create Position Lock Key and Create Rotation Lock Key Default keys: None A lock key is a key with Linear interpolation.
Starting 3ds Max from the Command Line • Parameter Collector Switch Effect • Parameter Editor -d Causes Track View to use a double-buffered display, which is smoother than the single-buffered display but uses more system resources. -g Makes background white (instead of gray) in the following dialogs: Track View, RAM Player, Video Post, Loft, and Falloff Curve. Useful for screen captures when using a display mode less than 24 bits deep, for avoiding background patterns.
672 Chapter 21: User Interface 3dsmax c MaxCustom Menu Bar See also Startup Files and Defaults (page 1–17) Saving and Loading Custom User Interfaces (page 3–804) Graphics Driver Setup Dialog (page 3–838) Running Scripts from the Command Line (page 3–783) Using the -V Option You use the -V option to load a different display driver at startup. This option overrides the setting in 3dsmax.ini. Follow the -V with one of these letters for the driver you want to use: s: Loads the software driver.
File Menu that character key invokes the command. While navigating menus with the keyboard, you can also use the arrow keys to move the highlighting and the Enter key to activate a command or open a submenu. An ellipsis (…) after a command name indicates a dialog will appear. A right-pointing triangle after a command name indicates that a submenu will appear. If a command has a keyboard shortcut, the menu displays it to the right of the command name.
674 Chapter 21: User Interface Transform Type-In (page 1–431) Place Highlight (page 1–467) Select All (page 1–87) Isolate Selection (page 1–73) Select None (page 1–88) Rename Objects (page 1–128) Select Invert (page 1–88) Assign Vertex Colors (page 2–1734) Select By (page 1–88) Color Clipboard (page 1–165) Region (page 1–92) Camera Match (page 2–1387) Edit Named Selection Sets (page 1–86) Grab Viewport (page 1–35) Object Properties (page 1–117) Measure Distance (page 2–15) Channel Info (pag
Views Menu Views Menu Menu bar > Views Note: The following commands, also influencing viewport behavior, are accessed from a different menu: Viewport Configuration (page 3–853) This menu contains commands for setting up and controlling viewports. Some of the commands found on this menu can also be accessed when you right-click a viewport label.
676 Chapter 21: User Interface Chamfer Box (page 1–191) Compound Chamfer Cylinder (page 1–192) Morph (page 1–314) Oil Tank (page 1–194) Scatter (page 1–318) Capsule (page 1–195) Conform (page 1–324) Spindle (page 1–196) Connect (page 1–328) L-Extrusion (page 1–198) BlobMesh (page 1–331) Gengon (page 1–199) ShapeMerge (page 1–336) C-Extrusion (page 1–200) Boolean (page 1–338) RingWave (page 1–202) Terrain (page 1–347) Hose (page 1–206) Loft (page 1–352) Prism (page 1–205) Mesher (page
Create Menu Point Curve (page 1–1106) Dynamics Omni (page 2–1295) Skylight (page 2–1296) Damper (page 1–396) mr Area Spot (page 2–1299) Spring (page 1–400) mr Area Omni (page 2–1298) Photometric Lights > Shapes Line (page 1–270) Rectangle (page 1–272) Circle (page 1–273) Ellipse (page 1–274) Arc (page 1–274) Donut (page 1–276) NGon (page 1–277) Star (page 1–277) Target Point (page 2–1303) Free Point (page 2–1304) Target Linear (page 2–1305) Free Linear (page 2–1307) Free Area (page 2–1309) Target Ar
678 Chapter 21: User Interface Box Gizmo (page 3–304) UDeflector (page 2–89) Cylinder Gizmo (page 3–306) Deflector (page 2–90) Sphere Gizmo (page 3–307) Geometric/Deformable > Manipulators > FFD (Box) (page 2–91) Slider (page 2–31) FFD (Cyl) (page 2–95) Plane Angle (page 2–29) Wave (page 2–100) Cone Angle (page 2–27) Ripple (page 2–102) Particle Flow > Displace (page 2–76) Speed by Icon (page 2–162) Conform (page 2–103) Find Target (page 2–218) Bomb (page 2–105) Space Warps Modifier-B
Modifiers Menu this menu depends on the current selection. If a modifier doesn’t apply to currently selected objects, it is unavailable in the menu.
680 Chapter 21: User Interface PathDeform (WSM) (page 1–552) Twist (page 1–876) SurfDeform (page 1–848) Noise (page 1–743) SurfDeform (WSM) (page 1–557) Stretch (page 1–836) SplineIK Control (page 1–830) Squeeze (page 1–833) UV Coordinates Push (page 1–779) UVW Map (page 1–922) Relax (page 1–779) UVW Mapping Add (page 1–933) Ripple (page 1–783) UVW Mapping Clear (page 1–933) Wave (page 1–957) UVW XForm (page 1–934) Skew (page 1–790) Map Scaler (WSM) (page 1–551) Slice (page 1–825) Unwr
reactor Menu Subdivide (page 1–839) Link Constraint (page 2–403) Cameras LookAt Constraint (page 2–406) Camera Correction (page 2–1392) Orientation Constraint (page 2–409) Transform Controllers reactor Menu Menu bar > Reactor The reactor menu provides a set of commands related to the reactor dynamics software, which is build into 3ds Max. For more info on reactor, see reactor (page 2–703).
682 Chapter 21: User Interface Quaternion (TCB) (page 2–377) Reaction (page 2–358) Make Preview (page 3–168) Script (page 2–372) View Preview (page 3–170) Smooth (page 2–374) Rename Preview (page 3–170) LookAt Constraint (page 2–406) Toggle Limits—Toggles all Limit controllers (page Orientation Constraint (page 2–409) Scale Controllers Audio (page 2–309) Bezier (page 2–310) 2–335) in the current scene.
Rendering Menu Rendering Menu Menu bar > Rendering The Rendering menu contains commands for rendering scenes, setting up environmental and render effects, compositing scenes with Video Post, and accessing the RAM Player. Render (page 3–2) Environment (page 3–271) Effects (page 3–219) Advanced Lighting > Customize Menu Menu bar > Customize The Customize menu contains commands for customizing the 3ds Max user interface (UI).
684 Chapter 21: User Interface settings, and many important default settings, are also on the Customize menu. Tip: You can access many of these commands with keyboard shortcuts or right-click options. For example, you can display the Grid and Snap Settings dialog by right-clicking the Snaps buttons on the main toolbar; you can display the Viewport Configuration dialog by right-clicking the viewport label, and then choosing Configure.
Toolbars might have changed if you’ve edited plug-in path settings. See 3rd Party Plug-Ins Path Configuration (page 3–814). 3ds Max on the Web—Displays a submenu whose options display a Web page with additional information. • Online Support—Displays the Autodesk 3ds Max Support site. • Updates—Displays the 3ds Max Downloads section of the Support And Services site. • Resources—Displays the Autodesk 3ds Max Resources page. • Partners—Displays the Autodesk 3ds Max Partners page.
686 Chapter 21: User Interface Main Toolbar Select By Name (page 1–77) The main toolbar in its “floating” form. The main toolbar provides quick access to tools and dialogs for many of the most common tasks in 3ds Max. Note: Right-clicking the move, rotate, or scale buttons opens the Transform Type-In dialog (page 1–431).
Axis Constraints Toolbar Layer Manager (page 3–656) Keyboard Shortcut Override Toggle (page 3–872) Curve Editor (Open) (page 2–507) Schematic View (Open) (page 3–638) 2D Snap, 2.
688 Chapter 21: User Interface Restrict to Z Layer List (page 3–666) Restrict to Plane flyout Restrict to XY Plane Create New Layer (page 3–667) Add Selection to Current Layer (page 3–667) Restrict to YZ Plane Select Objects in Current Layer (page 3–667) Restrict to ZX Plane Set Current Layer to Selection’s Layer (page 3–667) Snaps Use Axis Constraints Toggle (page See also 2–49) Using Layers to Organize a Scene (page 3–655) Layers Toolbar reactor Toolbar Right-click any toolbar > Layers The La
Render Shortcuts Toolbar The Extras toolbar contains several miscellaneous tools for working with your 3ds Max scene. Note: The default UI does not display this toolbar; to open it, right-click an empty portion of any toolbar, and choose Extras from the menu. 3ds Max assigns the presets to the file that corresponds to the button: a.rps, b.rps, or c.rps. To use a saved preset: 1. Click one of the buttons you defined. The button’s name appears in the field above the drop-down list: “a,” “b,” or “c.
690 Chapter 21: User Interface Snaps Toolbar Right-click unused area of any toolbar. > Snaps The Snaps toolbar provides access to the most common Snaps settings. Brush Presets Toolbar Right-click unused area of any toolbar.
Brush Presets Toolbar Brush Preset Manager—Opens the Brush Preset Manager (page 3–692) dialog, which lets you add, duplicate, rename, delete, save, and load brush presets. Add New Preset—Adds a new preset with the current brush settings to the toolbar, first prompting you for a name for the brush. If you attempt to exceed the maximum number of brush presets (50), a dialog alerts you. [brush presets]—Each preset is available on a This opens the Brush Presets toolbar. 3.
692 Chapter 21: User Interface This opens the Brush Presets toolbar. Brush Preset Manager Brush Presets toolbar (page 3–690) > Activate a brush tool. > Brush Preset Manager The Brush Preset Manager lists all brush presets, showing the context-specific settings and lets you change contexts. It also lets you rename, add, copy, and delete presets, and set the range for the depiction of brush sizes on the toolbar.
Right-Click Menu for Scripted Toolbar Buttons Note: If 50 presets already exist, you won’t be able to add any new ones. • General (all contexts): Duplicate—Adds a copy of the highlighted preset • Size (with range) to the list. When you click Duplicate, you’re prompted to enter a name for the new preset. Edit the name and then click OK to create the new, duplicate preset. The preset appears highlighted at the end of the list and the toolbar.
694 Chapter 21: User Interface Edit Button Appearance—Displays the Edit Macro Button dialog, which lets you change the button’s appearance and its tooltip. This is documented in the MAXScript Reference: see Customizing MacroScript Buttons. Delete Button—Deletes the button from the toolbar. Note: There is no Undo for Delete Button, although Customize > Revert To Startup Layout will restore the toolbar to its original appearance.
Quad Menu Ctrl , or Alt while right-clicking in any standard viewport. For more information, see Additional Quad Menus (page 3–696). Transform quadrant Interface Move—Lets you move objects. This is the same as clicking Select And Move (page 1–439) on the main toolbar. The following are the default commands for the right-click menu. You can add, edit, or remove any of these commands in the Quads panel (page 3–795) of the Customize User Interface dialog.
696 Chapter 21: User Interface Wire Parameters—Starts a wire parameter (page 2–411) from the selected object. This command is available only if an object is selected when you open the quad menu. Convert To—This submenu lets you convert the selected object to an editable mesh (page 1–996), an editable patch (page 1–968), an editable spline (page 1–289), a NURBS surface (page 1–1101), or an editable poly (page 1–1022). This command is available only if an object is selected when you open the quad menu.
Animation Quad Menu You can create or edit any of these menus from the quad set list in the Quads panel (page 3–795), on the Customize User Interface dialog; however, they cannot be deleted. These are the additional quad menus and their default settings: Biped—Appears when you right-click any selected biped (page 2–843) part. The two left-hand quadrants, Tools 1 and Tools 2, provide quick access to many commonly used biped tools, including Track Selection rollout commands and Layers rollout commands.
698 Chapter 21: User Interface Set quadrant Keyframe—Sets a key at the current frame. Set Key or Auto Key do not need to be on. Show Trajectories Toggle—Toggles the display of trajectories (page 2–301). Reaction Manager—Opens the Reaction Manager dialog (page 2–361). Delete Selected Animation—Deletes any existing animation keys for all selected objects, as well as any sub-object animation. Each object remains in its state at the frame in which you use this command.
Prompt Line Show Curves —Click to display a version of the Track View Curve Editor (page 2–507) in place of the time slider and track bar. When curves are displayed, you can click the Close button at upper left to return to a view of the time slider and track bar.
700 Chapter 21: User Interface Procedures Example: To create a sphere using the Mini Listener: 1. Click the tag bar at the left end of the status bar, and drag it to the right to expand the Mini Listener. 2. In the Scripter (white, lower) line, type sphere 5. Left-click in the MacroRecorder line. The MacroRecorder line goes blank because the cursor goes to the last line. 6. Press the upper-arrow key on the keyboard to move up the list of recorded command scripts. 7. Click and highlight the macros.
Status Line Status Line Status bar > Status line The status line displays the number and type of object or objects selected. The status line is located at the bottom of the screen, just above the prompt line (page 3–699). If multiple objects are selected and all are of the same type, the number and type of the objects are displayed: "2 cameras, 3 lights" for example. If multiple objects of different types are selected, the status line displays the number plus the word "objects": "6 objects" for example.
702 Chapter 21: User Interface To move ahead or back many frames at a time: • Click in the empty track to either side of the time slider. The time slider will jump to your cursor position. This is a faster way of moving in time than dragging the time slider. To move to the first or last frame of the active time segment: • Use the time control buttons Go To Start or Go To End.
Track Bar Key Mode can jump to all the keys or only the transform keys, depending on the Key steps setting in the Time Configuration dialog. Tip: Right-click the slider bar to open the Create Key dialog. This lets you create Position, Rotation, or Scale keys without using the Auto Key button. It also lets you copy keys easily from one frame to another. Track Bar The track bar is located below the viewports, between the time slider and the status bar.
704 Chapter 21: User Interface between the menu bar and the toolbars (do this in an empty toolbar area). To move a single key from a frame with multiple keys: If, for example, a frame has both a transform key and a material key for the selected object, and only the transform key must move, display the Transform Properties dialog and use the Time parameter to move the transform key. 1. Right-click a key on the track bar and choose a key on the pop-up window key list.
Track Bar • Hold Ctrl+Alt and drag on the track bar: • With the left mouse button to change the active time segment’s start frame. • Hold Ctrl+Alt and drag the track bar to change the active time segment, that is, the animation range displayed on the track bar. Dragging with the left mouse button will change the start of the range, dragging with the right mouse button will change the end of the range, and dragging with the middle mouse button will change both the start and the end of the range.
706 Chapter 21: User Interface Keys do not need to be selected on the track bar in order to use Delete Key. Keys are deleted from the track bar key over which you right-clicked. Delete selected keys—Deletes the keys selected on the track bar. If no keys are selected, this option is unavailable. Filter Filter—Displays a Filter submenu. Choose a List—Displays the object name and key type for all filter to filter the track bar display; showing only transformation keys, for example.
Selection Lock Toggle Keyable Tracks Only—Controls the display of keyable tracks on the track bar. Parameter Collector Keys—Filters keys related to the Parameter Collector (page 1–138). List Controller – Active Only—This filter lets you see only the keys on the active control in a List Controller. Otherwise, you see all the keys on all the controls. List Controller – Hide Weights—This filter hides the weight parameter keys of a List Controller from the track bar.
708 Chapter 21: User Interface Procedures To transform an object without touching it: 1. Use the Selection Floater from the Tools menu, the Select By Name button on the main toolbar or press the H key to select the object by name. 2. Click the transform button (move, rotate, or scale) from the main toolbar. 3. On the status bar, turn on the Selection Lock toggle or press the Spacebar to lock the selection set. 4. Press and drag anywhere in the viewport.
Grid Setting Display Procedures To display the position of the mouse in feet or metric units: 1. Choose Customize > Units Setup. 2. Turn on one of the main categories (Metric, US Standard, Custom, or Generic Units) and choose from the drop-down list. The coordinate display is now in labeled units. Example: To move the position of an object to the center of the world: 1. Select an object in the viewport. 2. Right-click and choose Move from the quad menu 3.
710 Chapter 21: User Interface Procedure Edit Tag—Displays the Edit Time Tag dialog (page To change the size of one grid square: 3–711) that lets you rename, delete, or edit any defined tag. • Right-click the Snap Toggle on the main toolbar to display the Grid and Snap Settings dialog. Alternately, you can choose Customize menu > Grid and Snap Settings. • On the Home Grid tab, in the Grid Dimensions group, change the Grid Spacing value. The new value is displayed in the grid setting display.
Edit Time Tag Dialog Interface Edit Time Tag Dialog Status bar > Click in the Time Tag box > Edit Tag Use the Edit Time Tag dialog to alter the properties of any of the defined time tags (page 3–710). Procedure To edit a time tag: 1. Click in the Time Tag box and choose Edit Tag Tag Time—Displays the current frame, to which the tag will be assigned. Tag Name—Enter the name of the tag. You can create a long tag name in this field, but the tag slot will display only 15 characters.
712 Chapter 21: User Interface Tag Name—Use this field to rename the selected tag. You can create a long tag name in this field, but the tag slot will display only 15 characters. Time—Lets you change the time where the tag is assigned. Lock Time—Locks the tag to the current frame, regardless of subsequent scaling of time. For example, with Lock Time off, if you have a tag named Forty at frame 40, and you scale time up 200 percent, the Forty tag will be at frame 80.
Using Communication Center Using Communication Center Status bar > Communication Center Communication Center provides the following types of announcements regarding 3ds Max. information can be returned. All information is sent anonymously to maintain your privacy. The following information is sent to Autodesk: • Product Name—The name of the product in which you are using Communication Center • Product Release Number—The version of the product.
714 Chapter 21: User Interface the latest updates and announcements are downloaded, you’re returned to the Welcome dialog. 5. Click the last link to open the Channels panel of the Configuration Settings dialog where you can specify which information channels you wish to view. Once the channels are set, click OK. The Communication Center dialog now shows the channels you’ve selected. Communication Center Welcome Wizard Procedure To configure Communication Center the first time: 1.
Refreshing the Content Interface - Settings panel Interface - Channels panel Country group Channels panel Please Select Country—Lets you specify your country so that Communication Center can provide information that is designed specifically for your location. Channels—Choose the type of information that you want downloaded to Communication Center.
716 Chapter 21: User Interface Click the link on the bubble message to open the Communication Center dialog or if you’ve closed the bubble message, you can click the Communication Center button. If you prefer not to be notified by the Communication Center icon, you can turn off Enable Bubble Notification on the Configuration Settings dialog. To check for new content: 1. Click the Communication Center button located on the status bar.
Auto Key Animation Mode Next Frame/Key (page 3–724) Go To End (page 3–724) Current Frame (Go To Frame) (page 3–724) Time Controls Key Mode (page 3–724) Time Configuration (page 3–725) Within an existing animation, you can create keyframes for transforms without the use of the Auto Key button by right-clicking the time slider and then setting the source and destination time.
718 Chapter 21: User Interface 4. Turn off the Auto Key button when you are done. Example: To animate an object between three points using Auto Key: 1. 2. In the New Scene dialog, turn on Keep Objects And Hierarchy and click OK. All the objects remain in the scene but all keyframes have been removed. 3. To remove the animation from just certain objects, delete their keys in Track View. Turn on the Auto Key button. 2. Drag the time slider (to frame 25, for example). 3.
Set Key Animation Mode animation, Set Key mode gives you control over what you key and when. It allows you to pose a character (or transform any object) and then if you like it, use that pose to create keys. If you move to another point in time without keying, your pose is discarded. It also works with object parameters. You can try out different values and then when you have what you like use it to create keys.
720 Chapter 21: User Interface 4. Move the time slider to the frame where you wish to set keys Click the Set Keys button. 5. Keys will be added to all keyable parameters. Selection List—Gives quick access to named selection sets (page 1–83) and track sets (page 2–590) while working with Set Key. Lets you easily swap among different selection sets and track sets. Note: Choosing a selection set from the list does not select objects in the viewports.
Default In/Out Tangents For New Keys • Custom Attributes— allows custom attributes to be keyframed. • Modifiers— allows modifiers to be keyframed. Note that you should turn on Object parameters when you turn on modifiers, so you can keyframe gizmos. • Materials— allows material properties to be keyframed. • Other—allows for other parameters that don’t fall in the above categories to be keyframed using the Set Key technique.
722 Chapter 21: User Interface The position curve going from Flat to Linear tangents 6. Go to frame 30 and move the sphere again. The position curve with Flat tangent. 4. Choose the Linear tangent type (second icon The curve interpolation from frame 20 to 30 is straight because both keys have tangents set to Linear. from the top) from the Default In/Out Tangents For New Keys flyout.
Previous Frame/Key Procedures Previous Frame/Key Status bar > Time controls > Previous Frame To play the animation in the viewport: 1. Activate the viewport where you want to play the animation. Keyboard > , (comma) 2. Previous Frame moves the time slider (page 3–701) back one frame. If Key Mode (page 3–724) is on, the time slider moves to the previous keyframe (page 3–960). Keyframe options are set in the Key Steps group of the Time Configuration dialog (page 3–725).
724 Chapter 21: User Interface Interface The Play/Stop flyout contains two buttons. Both buttons become a Stop button when in use. Play—Plays the animation in the currently active viewport. Play Selected—Plays the animation for selected objects only in the currently active viewport. Stop Animation—Replaces the Play button when an animation is playing. Click to stop the playback. Stop Animation (Selected)—Replaces the Play Selected button when an animation is playing. Click to stop the playback.
Time Configuration If you turn on Use TrackBar and turn Key Mode on, then clicking Next Key advances to the next key for the selected object. This will respect every type of key that appears in the track bar. If you turn Use TrackBar off, only transform keys are used by key mode. track bar below the time slider. Other options are available on the Time Configuration dialog (page 3–725) in the Key Steps group.
726 Chapter 21: User Interface You can change the active time segment without affecting the keys you’ve created. For example, if you have keys scattered over a range of 1000 frames, you can narrow your active time segment to work on only frames 150 to 300. You can only work on the 150 frames in the active segment, but the remainder of the animation stays intact. Returning the active segment from 0 to 1000 restores access and playback of all the keys.
Time Configuration 3. Play the animation in the viewport using the Play button or the / key. The animation will play once and stop. To play your animation in multiple viewports: 1. In the Time Configuration > Playback group, turn off Active Viewport Only. Click OK. 2. Play your animation. The animation now plays in all four viewports. To use sub-frame animation: 1. In the Time Configuration > Time Display group, turn on FRAME:TICKS or MM:SS:TICKS. Click OK. 2.
728 Chapter 21: User Interface For example, if the time slider is at frame 35, and the Frame Rate is set to 30 fps, the time slider would display the following numbers for the different Time Display settings: rendering to any image output file. These options are available only when Real Time is off. These settings can be recalled by saving to a maxstart.max file.
Viewport Controls you use Key Steps mode. If you turn this off, the transforms of all (unhidden) objects in the scene are considered. Default=on. Configure. Click the Layout tab of the Viewport Configuration dialog to see and choose the alternative layouts. Use Current Transform—Disables Position, Rotation, and Scale and uses the current transform in Key Mode. For example, if the Rotate button is selected in the toolbar, you stop at each rotation key.
730 Chapter 21: User Interface Viewport Labels Viewports are labeled in the upper-left corner. You can control many aspects of a viewport by right-clicking the viewport label to display the viewport right-click menu (page 3–731). Tooltips (page 3–815) are on by default. To turn off this feature, see To turn off object name tooltips (page 3–731), below. See also Viewport Navigation (page 3–735) Dynamic Resizing of Viewports You can resize the four viewports so they are of unequal proportions.
Viewport Right-Click Menu To change the number of viewports and their arrangement: Some of the options are also available on the Configuration dialog (page 3–853). 1. Right-click any viewport label. Choose You can do the following from this menu: Configure from the right-click menu. 2. On the Viewport Configuration dialog, click the Layout tab. 3. Choose a layout from the choices at the top of the dialog. 4.
732 Chapter 21: User Interface file, then reload the original CUI file again. The right-click viewport menu will become available after either the new or original UI scheme is loaded. Procedures To toggle display of the home grid in the active viewport, do one of the following: • Choose Views menu > Grids, and click Show Home Grid. • Right-click a viewport label (this activates the viewport and opens a menu), and then click Show Grid. 2. Choose Views > Shape from the menu. To use viewport clipping: 1.
Viewport Right-Click Menu To turn on safe frame display, do one of the following: Interface • Right-click a viewport label, and then choose Show Safe Frame. • Press Shift+F . • Choose Customize menu > Viewport Configuration > Safe Frames panel, and turn on Show Safe Frames In Active View. See Safe Frames (page 3–857). To fix texture display problems in a viewport: • Right-click a viewport label, and then choose Texture Correction.
734 Chapter 21: User Interface • Track: Choose an existing Track view (page 2–501), if any, from the submenu, or choose New to create a new one. To change a viewport when it contains a Track view, right-click the menu bar and choose a different view. • Schematic: Choose an existing Schematic view (page 3–638), if any, from the submenu, or choose New to create a new one. To change a viewport when it contains a Schematic view, right-click the menu bar and choose a different view.
Viewport Navigation surfaces. This is helpful for when you want to edit meshes in a shaded display. Edges are displayed using the object wireframe color, while surfaces use material colors (if assigned). This lets you create contrasting colors between the shaded surfaces and the wireframe edges. You can switch these assignments in the Display Color rollout (page 1–52).
736 Chapter 21: User Interface Zoom Viewport (page 3–739) Zoom All (page 3–740) Some of the buttons change for camera and light viewports. The Field Of View button changes for Perspective viewports. The state of the navigation-button flyouts for all viewport types is saved in the [Performance] section of the 3dsmax.ini (page 1–18) file. Viewport Navigation Controls The navigation controls depend on the active viewport. Perspective, orthographic, camera, and light viewports all have specialized controls.
Zoom Extents All, Zoom Extents All Selected when you want to see every object in a scene in every available viewport. Light Viewport Controls • Light Viewport Controls (page 3–750) Dolly Light, Target, or Both (page Zoom Extents All Selected centers a selected object, or set of objects, in all viewports. This control is useful when you want to navigate to small objects lost in a complex scene. 3–751) Procedures Light Hotspot (page 3–752) Roll Light (page 3–753) To zoom all objects in a scene: 1.
738 Chapter 21: User Interface Maximize Viewport Toggle This flyout doesn’t appear for orthographic viewports or spotlight viewports. These viewports don’t provide walkthrough navigation. Activate any viewport. > Viewport navigation controls> Maximize Viewport Toggle Keyboard > Alt+W Maximize Viewport Toggle switches any active viewport between its normal size and full-screen size. Tip: The keyboard shortcut Alt+W is especially useful for quick toggles.
Zoom Viewport Zoom All (page 3–740) Zoom Extents / Zoom Extents Selected (page 3–740) (available in all viewports) Field-of-View Button (page 3–741) Zoom Region (page 3–742) Pan View (page 3–743) Arc Rotate, Arc Rotate Selected, Arc Rotate Sub-Object (page 3–744) Maximize Viewport Toggle (page 3–738) (available in all viewports) Procedure To undo changes to a perspective or orthographic viewport, do one of the following: • Right-click the viewport label and choose Undo.
740 Chapter 21: User Interface To zoom from the keyboard: • On the keyboard, press [ (left bracket) to zoom in, and ] (right bracket) to zoom out. Zoom Extents / Zoom Extents Selected Activate a Perspective or orthographic viewport. > Viewport Navigation controls > Zoom Extents flyout Zoom All Activate a Perspective or orthographic viewport. > Viewport Navigation controls > Zoom All Zoom All lets you adjust view magnification in all Perspective and orthographic viewports at the same time.
Field of View Flyout The viewport displays the selected object. To exclude an object from Zoom Extents: Use this procedure, for example, to ignore lights that are far away from the other objects in the scene. 1. Click an object to select it. 2. Right-click the object and choose Properties. 3. In the Display Properties group, make sure • Zoom Region (page 3–742): Magnifies a rectangular area you drag within a viewport. Field-of-View Button Activate a Camera viewport.
742 Chapter 21: User Interface at your viewpoint and the ends at the sides of the view. 3. Open the Modify panel to view the camera’s In a Camera viewport, Field-of-View controls the width of the area a camera views, and represents the arc of the camera’s horizon in degrees. For a selected camera, you can adjust its FOV and Lens parameters (page 2–1373) directly to fine-tune the FOV you set in the viewport. See “To use FOV with Camera parameters” in the following procedures. 4.
Pan View When you zoom a region in a perspective viewport, select Zoom Region from the Field of View flyout. 3. Drag a rectangular region in any viewport displaying a non-camera view. Procedures To pan a viewport: 1. Activate a Perspective or orthographic viewport, and then click Pan View. When you release, the region is magnified to fill the viewport. 2. Drag in the viewport in the direction you want Note: When using the Zoom Region in 3. To turn off the button, press Esc or right-click.
744 Chapter 21: User Interface Arc Rotate Flyout Activate a Perspective or orthographic viewport. > Viewport Navigation controls > Arc Rotate flyout Keyboard > Alt +middle mouse button The Arc Rotate flyout displays the Arc Rotate button, the Arc Rotate Selected button, and the Arc Rotate Sub-Object button. Use these to rotate your viewpoint around the view. For more information on these tools, see Arc Rotate, Arc Rotate Selected, Arc Rotate Sub-Object (page 3–744).
Camera Viewport Controls rotation occurs. When the cursor crosses back outside the trackball, spinning rotation is again in effect. Camera Viewport Controls 4. To end Arc Rotate, press Esc or right-click. Right-click any viewport label. > Views > Choose a camera. To constrain rotation to a single axis: Keyboard > C • Hold down the Shift key as you rotate. The rotation is constrained to the first axis you use. A Camera viewport shows the view from a camera, looking in the direction it’s aimed.
746 Chapter 21: User Interface Procedure To undo changes to a Camera viewport, do one of the following: • Click Undo on the main toolbar. • Press Ctrl+Z . Note: The three buttons of the Dolly Camera flyout are available when a target camera viewport is active. When a free camera viewport is active, the button appears as a flyout, but only Dolly Camera is available for this type of camera. If you activate a target camera viewport, the three buttons are again available.
Perspective However, changing the relative position of the target to the camera affects other adjustments, such as Orbit Camera, which uses the target as its rotational pivot. This option is available only if the viewport’s camera is a target camera. Dolly Camera + Target—Moves both the target and the camera to and from the camera. This option is available only if the viewport’s camera is a target camera. A target camera can pass through its target object while you are using Perspective.
748 Chapter 21: User Interface Rolling a camera Note: This button replaces the Zoom Extents button when a Camera viewport is active. Procedure To roll a camera: 1. Activate a Camera viewport. 2. Click Roll Camera. The button highlights when it is on. 3. Drag horizontally to roll the view. 4. Press Esc or right-click to turn off the button. Trucking a camera For a target camera, dragging the mouse moves both the camera and its target parallel to the Camera view.
Orbit/Pan Camera To accelerate panning, hold down the Ctrl key before you pan. Orbit/Pan Camera Activate a Camera viewport. > Viewport navigation controls > Orbit Camera Procedures To pan a camera: 1. Activate a Camera viewport. Orbit Camera rotates a camera about the target. Pan Camera rotates the target about the camera. 2. Click Pan Camera. The button highlights when it is on. 3. Drag to rotate the view about the camera. • Dragging rotates the view freely using the world X and Y axes.
750 Chapter 21: User Interface Interface Orbit Camera—Rotates a target camera about its target. Free cameras use the invisible target, set to the target distance specified in the camera Parameters rollout. Pan Camera—Rotates the target about a target camera. For a free camera, rotates the camera about its local axes. At the beam angle, the light is 50 per cent of the maximum intensity. Targeted photometric lights can be used as views only when the light’s distribution is set to spotlight.
Dolly Light, Target, or Both See also Dolly Light, Target, or Both Activate a Light viewport. > Viewport navigation controls > Dolly Light Dolly Camera, Target, or Both (page 3–746) Procedure To dolly a light: Dolly Light, on the Dolly Light flyout (see below) moves the light or its target or both along the light’s main axis, toward or away from what the light is pointing at. A free light moves along its depth axis in the direction its lens is pointing.
752 Chapter 21: User Interface Dolly Light + Target—Moves both the target and the light to and from the light. This option is available only if the viewport’s light is a target light. Light Hotspot Activate a Light viewport. > Viewport navigation controls > Light Hotspot Light Hotspot lets you adjust the angle of a light’s hotspot (page 3–954). This button replaces the Zoom All button when a light viewport is active.
Roll Light The blue hotspot cone expands and contracts as you drag. • Drag down to widen (increase) the hotspot angle and illuminate more of the scene. The hotspot grows inside the falloff as its angle increases. By default, the hotspot can be no larger than the falloff cone. • Hold down Shift as you drag to override the default. This lets the falloff cone increase in size as you increase the size of the hotspot cone. • Drag up to narrow (decrease) the hotspot angle and illuminate less of the scene.
754 Chapter 21: User Interface To override the separation of the hotspot and falloff parameters and cause the parameters to affect each other, hold down the Shift key. For more information on the hotspot and falloff parameters, see Spotlight Parameters (page 2–1338) and Directional Parameters (page 2–1348). Procedure To change a light’s falloff: 1. Set up a Perspective viewport so you can see the light in 3D space. The light has a narrow hotspot but a wide falloff area. 2. Activate a Light viewport. 3.
Truck Light 4. Press Esc or right-click to turn off the button. Truck Light Activate a light viewport. > Viewport navigation controls > Truck Light Truck Light moves a target light and its target parallel to the light view, and moves a free light along its XY axis. To constrain trucking to a single axis: • Hold down the Shift key. The truck is constrained to the first axis you use. Orbit/Pan Light Activate a light viewport.
756 Chapter 21: User Interface To pan a light: 1. Activate a Camera or Light viewport. Click Pan Light. 2. The button highlights when it is on. 3. Drag to rotate the view about the camera or light. • Dragging rotates the view freely using the world X and Y axes. Panning a light To constrain panning or orbiting to a single axis, hold down the Shift key. The pan or orbit is constrained to the axis you first move while the Shift key is down.
Object Name and Wireframe Color utilities. Only one panel is visible at a time. To display a different panel, you click its tab at the top of the command panel. These are the six panels: • Create panel (page 3–757) Contains controls for creating objects: geometry, cameras, lights, and so on. • Modify panel (page 3–758) Contains controls for applying modifiers (page 3–974) to objects and editing editable objects such as meshes and patches.
758 Chapter 21: User Interface be several different subcategories of objects. A drop-down list lets you choose among object subcategories, and each kind of object has its own button, which you click to begin creation. • Space warps produce various kinds of distortions in the space surrounding other objects. Some space warps are meant especially for use with particle systems.
Modify Panel • Change the parameters of modifiers and select their components. 3. You can now do any of the following: • Change the parameters for the object. As you change these parameters, the object updates in the viewports. • Delete modifiers. • Convert a parametric object to an editable object; see Modifier Stack Controls (page 3–760). • Apply a modifier to the object. Note: Some space warps can be created as • Change the parameters for a modifier.
760 Chapter 21: User Interface Modifier Stack Controls Make selection. > Modify panel The modifier stack controls appear near the top of the Modify panel, just below the name and color fields. The modifier stack ("stack" for short) contains the accumulated history of an object, including its creation parameters and the modifiers applied to it. At the bottom of the stack is the original object. Above the object are the modifiers, in order from bottom to top.
Modifier Stack Controls Note: You can also create instances of a reference. In this case, the modifier above the reference bar apply to the reference and to its instances. • A modifier above the reference object bar can itself be an instance and appear in other pipelines, in which case its name would be italic (either plain or boldface). general, you can see results more quickly as you move among modifiers on the stack. To conserve memory use, the list of most-recently-used modifiers has a fixed length.
762 Chapter 21: User Interface In many cases, multiple modifiers’ names start with the same letter. You can go directly to a particular modifier if you type the first few letters (enough for a unique combination) in the desired modifier’s name quickly. For example, say you want to assign the Mirror modifier to an object. Pressing M goes to Mesh Select, which isn’t anywhere near Mirror in the Modifier list, but typing MI goes directly to Mirror. Modifier From The Stack.
Modifier Stack Controls Note: The original object is always at the bottom of the stack, and world-space modifiers are always at the top. To use the modifier buttons: • Click Configure Modifier Sets, and choose Show Buttons. This menu item is a toggle. It is either on or off. When you turn on Show Buttons, the current button set appears between the drop-down modifier list and the stack display. 2. Choose the component you want to adjust, such as the Gizmo. The component highlights to show it is active.
764 Chapter 21: User Interface Interface Z axis, trees at the end of the line deform more than those at the center where the pivot is located. Note: You must turn on Use Pivot Points before you apply the modifier to multiple objects. You can’t change the setting afterward, although you can delete the modifier and start over without deselecting the selection set. Modifier Buttons Between the modifier list and the stack display, you can display up to 32 buttons.
Modifier Stack Controls Stack Display The modifier stack is organized as follows: plus/minus icon. Click this icon to open or close the hierarchy. • At the bottom of the stack, the first entry always lists the object type. Click this entry to display the object’s creation parameters so you can adjust them.
766 Chapter 21: User Interface Show End Result—Shows the selected object as it will appear after all modifications in the stack have taken place, regardless of your current position in the stack. When this toggle is turned off, the object appears as modified up to the current modifier in the stack. Make Unique—Converts an instanced modifier to a copy that’s unique to the current object. See Make Unique (page 3–770). Remove Modifier—Deletes the current modifier or unbinds the current space warp.
Modifier Stack Right-Click Menu • Controlling whether modifiers are on or off, off in viewports, or off in renderings Collapsing the Stack Collapsing the stack removes modifiers from the object. Collapsing a stack typically converts an object into an editable version of the original object (unless the object was editable to begin with, such as a NURBS model). Collapse To is unavailable unless you select one or more modifiers in the stack.
768 Chapter 21: User Interface object. Choose Paste Instanced to make the pasted modifiers instances of those you copied. Interface modifier, in which case it is pasted at the top of the stack. You can paste a modifier from one object into the stack of a different object. Paste is unavailable when more than one modifier is selected in the stack. Paste Instanced—Pastes an instance of the modifier into the stack.
Modifier Stack Right-Click Menu The resulting stack list shows a single entry: Editable Mesh, unless any modifiers on the stack output a different type of geometry. For example, if the topmost such modifier is Edit Poly, the resultant object is Editable Poly. Note: World-space modifiers (page 1–512) don’t collapse along with the rest of the stack. Convert To—This menu item appears if no modifiers are applied to the object.
770 Chapter 21: User Interface Make Unique Modify panel > Tool buttons > Make Unique 4. 5. Choose Yes in the resulting dialog. At this point, the two selected cylinders each have unique Bend modifiers, while the remaining two cylinders share the original Bend. You can see this by selecting each cylinder and changing the Bend Angle setting. Modify panel > Right-click an instanced modifier in the stack display. > Make Unique Right–click an instanced object.
Modifier Sets Menu When you change the Bend Angle setting or cylinder base parameters for one of the objects, the other doesn’t change. the selected objects, but become unique from other objects not in the selection. Note: When you instance an object/modifier combination, all duplicates are instances of a single master node containing the original object and modifier. In such cases, you cannot selectively make the object or its modifier unique.
772 Chapter 21: User Interface Interface Configure Modifier Sets Dialog Modify panel > Configure Modifier Sets button > Configure Modifier Sets This dialog lets you create custom modifier and button sets for the Modify panel. Procedures To choose a modifier and button set to edit: • Choose a button set from the Sets drop-down list. To create a new modifier and button set: 1. Create a custom button set in the Modifiers group box.
Hierarchy Panel save a new set under a new name, you can use it later. Interface Modifiers group Previews how the button set will appear on the Modify panel. Because the box shows only 16 buttons at a time, a scroll bar on the right lets you see any remaining buttons. To change a button, drag the name of a modifier from the Modifiers list to a button in this group box, or click the button (its border highlights) and then double-click the modifier name.
774 Chapter 21: User Interface • Providing the basis for inverse kinematics. • Setting rotational and sliding parameters for Bones. The Hierarchy panel is divided into three areas: Pivot (page 2–487) IK (page 2–491) Link Info (page 2–499) Note: For important background information on hierarchies and kinematics, see Animating with Forward Kinematics (page 2–426) and Inverse Kinematics (IK) (page 2–435).
Display Panel Procedure Example: To assign a TCB Rotation controller: 1. Select an object. Display Panel Command panels > Display panel 2. On the Motion panel, click Parameters, and open the Assign Controller rollout. 3. Highlight the Rotation track in the Assign Controller list. 4. Click the Assign Controller button, choose TCB Rotation from the Assign Rotation Controller dialog, and then click OK to close the dialog and accept the change.
776 Chapter 21: User Interface Hide/Freeze panel function. This mode is automatically turned off if you hide all objects in the scene. Unhide group All—Unhides all hidden objects. The unhide buttons are only available when you have specifically hidden one or more objects. They won’t unhide objects hidden by category. By Name—Displays a dialog in which you can unhide objects you select from a list. Note: You cannot unhide objects on a hidden layer.
Display Floater Note: You cannot unfreeze objects on a frozen layer. If you select an object on a frozen layer, you will be prompted to unfreeze the object’s layer. Hide Frozen Objects—Toggles display of frozen objects on and off. You don’t have to unfreeze objects to hide them; you can use Hide Frozen Objects instead to hide or unhide frozen objects in a single step. Object Level panel the All, None, and Invert buttons to change the settings of the check boxes.
778 Chapter 21: User Interface lets you see what’s behind or inside an object in a crowded scene, and especially to adjust the position of objects behind or inside the see-through object. Use this when you need to see inside an object, such as a character with bones inside. Default=off. This option is also available from the Display panel (page 3–775) and the Object Properties dialog (page 1–117). Note: Documentation for MAXScript and Visual MAXScript is provided in a separate help system.
Utilities Dialog Sets—Displays a list of button sets to choose from. By default, there is only one button set, called MAX Default. You can create custom button sets by clicking Configure Button Sets. Interface Configure Button Sets—Displays the Configure Button Sets dialog (page 3–779), where you can create custom button sets of up to 32 buttons. Named utility buttons—These buttons show a selection of utilities. Click one of these buttons to run a utility.
780 Chapter 21: User Interface 3. Clear buttons by dragging them to the Utilities list on the left. 4. Click OK. 3ds Max updates the Utilities rollout. You can customize the button set without saving it, but if you save a new button set under a new name, you will be able to use it later. Tip: Don’t alter the Default button set. Create a new one instead. Channel Info, NURBS, Radiosity, Skin Tools, Strokes, MAXScript Tools, Internet Extensions, Realviz Products, and reactor.
New Script Run Script (page 3–781) MAXScript Listener (page 3–781) Macro Recorder (page 3–782) Visual MAXScript Editor (page 3–783) MAXScript Debugger Dialog (page 3–783) In addition, the status bar (page 3–698) contains a MAXScript Mini Listener (page 3–699), and MAXScript functionality is also available from the Utilities panel (page 3–778). For detailed information about MAXScript, open the MAXScript Reference, available from Help menu > MAXScript Reference.
782 Chapter 21: User Interface Macro Recorder is enabled, everything recorded is displayed in the Macro Recorder pane. The output of results from scripts are displayed in the output pane. The output of code executed in the Macro Recorder pane is always directed to the output pane so as not to clutter the recordings. Both panes allow you to cut-and-paste, drag-and-drop, edit, select, and execute code. You can resize the panes by dragging the split bar between them.
Visual MAXScript Utility (See MAXScript Reference) pane onto a toolbar to make a button that does the sequence of events just recorded. For detailed information about the MAXScript utility, consult the MAXScript Reference, available from Help menu > MAXScript Reference.
784 Chapter 21: User Interface launch script. It is also possible to install scripts into individual scene files that run automatically when that scene is open or closed or at certain other events. Note: Command line -U MAXScript startup scripts are run after 3ds Max has completely booted and the standard scripts and startup scripts have been run. MAXScript Command-Line Switches The following switches work specifically with MAXScript files and functions.
Customizing the User Interface You can rearrange the components of the 3ds Max user interface, including the menu bar, toolbars, and command panel. You can also dynamically resize the viewport windows. You can specify which toolbars should appear and which should be hidden, and create your own keyboard shortcuts, custom toolbars, and quad menus. You can also customize the colors used in the User Interface.
786 Chapter 22: Customizing the User Interface To reset the viewport windows to the default layout: To resize the docked command panel horizontally: 1. Right-click the splitter bar between the • Move the cursor over the edge of the docked command panel that is nearest the viewports. The cursor changes to a double arrow. Drag the cursor to increase or decrease the width of the command panel. viewports. The Reset Layout button is displayed. 2.
Customize Display Right-Click Menu increase or decrease the height of the command panel as you do for other windows on the desktop. display of toolbars, and dock or float items such as the command panel. Interface To dock a floating UI element, do one of the following: • Drag the panel by its title bar to the top, bottom, left, or right edge of the program window. The mouse cursor and the panel outline change shape at a docking location. Release the mouse.
788 Chapter 22: Customizing the User Interface Note: This is available only for docked items. Show UI Customize menu > Show UI The Show UI submenu lets you add or remove UI (user interface) elements from the workspace, so that you can customize your screen as you work. You can turn these elements on and off as you need by selecting them from the menu, maximizing the efficiency of your workspace. The settings are stored in the maxstart.
Custom UI and Defaults Switcher See also 3rd Party Plug-Ins Path Configuration (page 3–814) Description—Shows directory description from plugin.ini file. Load Path—The path of the plug-in directory. Interface Right-Click Menu The right-click menu for the Plug-in Manager works in the list of plug-ins, and in the blank area beneath the list. It does not work in the list of plug-in directories.
790 Chapter 22: Customizing the User Interface while the UI Schemes control how the 3ds Max interface will look. The dialog displays a detailed explanation for each of the four default sets and two UI Schemes that ship with 3ds Max. If you create your own defaults or UI Scheme, they will also appear in the list, however you cannot edit the general description of custom default sets or UI schemes.
Market-Specific Defaults For example, a typical animation scene has a small number of lights; shadow maps (page 3–1010) provide a fast, accurate solution to generating shadows. On the other hand, a typical design visualization scene can contain hundreds of lights, in which case shadow maps will cause memory issues. For this type of scene, ray-traced shadows (page 3–1000) are much more appropriate.
792 Chapter 22: Customizing the User Interface COM/DCOM Server Control Utility 3DSMAX -UnregisterMAXRenderer Utilities panel > Utilities rollout > More button > COM/DCOM Server Control The COM/DCOM Server Control utility supports plug-ins and third-party programs that use the COM (Component Object Model). The idea behind the COM is to expose the core of 3ds Max so applications can invoke 3ds Max to generate images. The COM facility is intended for application developers.
Keyboard Panel Keyboard Panel Interface Customize menu > Customize User Interface > Keyboard tab The Keyboard panel lets you create your own keyboard shortcuts. You can assign shortcuts to most commands available in the software. The same shortcuts can be assigned to multiple commands, as long as they occur in different contexts. For example, in Video Post, Ctrl+S is assigned to Add Scene Event; however, in the Main UI, it is assigned to Save File.
794 Chapter 22: Customizing the User Interface Assigned To—Displays the action a shortcut is assigned to if the shortcut you’ve entered is already assigned. Assign—Activates when you enter a keyboard shortcut in the Hotkey field. When you click Assign, it transfers the shortcut information to the Action list on the left side of the dialog. Remove—Removes all shortcuts for the selected action in the Action list on the left side of the dialog. Write Keyboard Chart—Displays the Save File As dialog.
Quads Panel 3. Perform the actions you want to record. 4. Select the lines in the script that you want. Drag those lines directly onto the toolbar. Note that your macro might require some minor editing to remove extraneous steps or to refine the procedure. You can edit the appearance of the text or icons on your toolbars with the Edit Button Appearance (page 3–803) command, which is available when you right click the toolbar button. Interface New—Displays the New Toolbar dialog.
796 Chapter 22: Customizing the User Interface quad menu sets, or you can edit existing sets. In the Quads panel, you can customize menu labels, functionality, layout, and shortcuts. The advanced quad menu options (page 3–801) let you modify the color and behavior of the quad menu system. You can also save and load custom menu sets. To delete a quad set: Note: You cannot delete any of the default quad sets. 1. Choose Customize menu > Customize User Interface > Quads tab. 2.
Quads Panel Group—Displays a drop-down list that lets you select the context you want to customize, such as Main UI, Track View, Material Editor, and so on. Quad Shortcut—Allows you to define a keyboard Category—Displays a drop-down list of the available categories of user interface actions for the selected context. Show All Quads—When on, a viewport right-click shows all four quad menus. When off, a viewport right-click shows only one quad at a time.
798 Chapter 22: Customizing the User Interface Load—Displays the Load Menu File dialog. Allows you to load custom menu files into your scene. Save—Displays the Save Menu File As dialog. Allows you to save any changes you’ve made to the quad menus to a MNU file. Reset—Resets any changes you’ve made to the quad menus to the default setup (defaultui.mnu). Use the same procedure to add menus and separators to your menu. To delete a menu: 1. Choose Customize menu > Customize User Interface > Menus tab 2.
Colors Panel Group—Displays a drop-down list that lets you select the context you want to customize, such as: Main UI, Track View, Material Editor, and so on. Category—Displays a drop-down list of the available categories of user interface actions for the selected context. Action Window—Displays all the available actions for the selected group and category. To add an action to a specific menu, select it and drag it to the menu window on the right side of this dialog.
800 Chapter 22: Customizing the User Interface use the Advanced Quad Menu Options dialog (page 3–801). Procedure To change an interface element color: 1. From the Elements drop-down list, choose the category of the interface element whose color you intend to change. 2. In the list below the Elements field, highlight the element whose color you intend to change. The Color swatch shows the element’s current color. 3. Click the Color swatch and then use the Color Selector dialog to choose a new color.
Advanced Quad Menu Options the color. See Red, Green, Blue / Hue, Saturation, Value (page 3–1001). Interface Save group This control is available only when Icons: Enabled or Icons: Disabled is highlighted in the UI Appearance list. Transparency—Sets the transparency value scale of Load—Lets you load a quad options (.qop) file. enabled or disabled icons in the UI. The higher the value, the more opaque the icon will be. Save—Saves your settings to a .qop file.
802 Chapter 22: Customizing the User Interface when you change the color in one quadrant, it will change all of the quadrants’ colors. You can customize each quadrant separately by turning off the lock button for the selected quad menu element. Reposition Quad When Off Screen—Automatically repositions the quad menu when you open it with part of the menu off the edge of the screen. The menu is moved so that the entire menu is displayed on the screen.
Edit Button Appearance Dialog Type—Sets the animation type for the quad menu from the following options: • None—Quad menus display immediately upon right-clicking. • Stretch—Quad menus open by expanding one quadrant at a time, in a clockwise manner. They close similarly; contracting one quadrant at a time, in a counterclockwise manner. • Fade—Quad menus open by fading in from transparent to opaque, and close by fading out from opaque to transparent.
804 Chapter 22: Customizing the User Interface Image Button—Lets you assign an image (icon) to the button. You can use any predefined icon that you want by selecting it from the display on the right. once with the Load Custom UI Scheme dialog (page 3–805), and you can save the current UI scheme as a complete set with the Save Custom UI Scheme dialog (page 3–806). Group—Displays a list of button categories. The groups of icons change with each category selection.
Load Custom UI Scheme 1. Choose Customize > Load Custom UI Scheme. To save a single UI scheme file: 2. From the Load UI File dialog that displays, 1. Choose Customize menu > Customize User choose defaultui.cui, and click Open. All the default UI files begin with the base file name defaultui. When you choose defaultui.cui, all default UI scheme files will load. To start the software with a custom user interface: 1. Arrange the user interface as you would like it to appear when you start 3ds Max. 2.
806 Chapter 22: Customizing the User Interface Interface Tip: You can resize the dialog by dragging an edge or a corner. Use the Look In field to navigate to other directories. Click the folder to choose it. The files display in the window. Display or hide the details using List or Details buttons. If Details is turned on, you can sort by clicking the column labels in the window. Use the Files of type drop-down menu to search for other types of customization files. The default is .
Revert to Startup Layout For more information on saving and loading custom user interfaces, see Saving and Loading Custom User Interfaces (page 3–804). Interface After you enter a file name and click Save, the Custom Scheme dialog opens, letting you define which parts of the UI scheme will be saved. Note: The icon scheme you choose will be saved as part of the file set, regardless of whether the chosen icon scheme matches the current scheme displayed on your screen.
808 Chapter 22: Customizing the User Interface See also Configure Paths Configure System Paths (page 3–810) Customize menu > Configure User Paths Procedures Customize menu > Configure System Paths In general, these procedures are common to all panels on the Configure User Paths dialog. When you change a setting, it’s written to the 3dsmax.ini (page 1–18) file, and is effective immediately.
Configure User Paths Note: Using Load eliminates the existing path configuration; using Merge overwrites only paths that exist in both the current configuration and the new one. To share files with team members using relative paths: 1. Ensure the Convert local file paths to Relative preference is enabled. 2. As you work, all files are saved relative to your project folder. 3. Give your scene to another user. 4.
810 Chapter 22: Customizing the User Interface For example, if your File I/O panel > Scenes path is set to .\scenes (relative path) and you merge a path configuration file in which the Scenes path is set to the UNC path \\scene_server\max\scenes, the former path is replaced by the latter one. OK—Exits the dialog and saves any changes. Cancel—Exits the dialog without saving changes.
External Path Configuration Interface Previews—Path for preview renders. RenderAssets—Path for mental ray and other rendering asset files, including shadow maps, photon maps, final gather maps, MI files, and render passes. RenderOutput—Path for rendered output. RenderPresets—Path for Render Preset files. Scenes—Path for MAX scene files. Sounds—Loads sound files. VideoPost—Loads and saves Video Post queues. Animations—Path for animation (ANM) files. Archives—Path for archive files.
812 Chapter 22: Customizing the User Interface only if your scene includes two different maps with the same name. In this case, only the first map encountered will appear in the scene. 4. Every subdirectory under the directory of the current scene. 3. If you want to include subdirectories in this path, turn on Add Subpaths. 4. Click Use Path. The new path takes effect immediately. To delete a file’s path: 1. On the External Files panel, choose a path entry. 2. Click Delete.
System Paths 3ds Max stores the path of any external reference file you load. When the external reference file is re-loaded, the search order is as follows: 1. The path saved with the external reference file. 2. The directory of the current scene. 3. The paths listed in the Configure User Paths dialog > XRefs panel, starting at the top of the list. Note: By default, this path is relative to the project folder. For descriptions of the general dialog controls, see Configure User Paths (page 3–808).
814 Chapter 22: Customizing the User Interface 3rd Party Plug-Ins Path Configuration Customize menu > Configure System Paths > Configure System Paths dialog > 3rd Party Plug-Ins panel • Enter a path in the Path field. • Navigate to locate a path. 3. Type a description in the Label field. 4. If you want to include subdirectories in this path, turn on Add Subpaths.
Preferences Note: You can give any title to the directory (myremote or anotherdir, in this case) and the directory can be any local or remote directory. In addition, the INI file can have any name. 4. Save plugin.ini and exit the text editor. The next time you start the software, it will load plug-ins from the directories defined in plugin.ini, as well as those in any remote INI file that has been included in plugin.ini.
816 Chapter 22: Customizing the User Interface Interface (page 3–816) Interface Procedures To set and toggle spinner snap: 1. Do one of the following: • Choose Customize menu > Preferences > Preference Settings dialog > General tab. • Right-click the Spinner Snap button on the main toolbar. Either method brings up the General tab. The two controls for spinner snap are in the Spinners area of this panel. 2. Enter a value in the Spinner Snap field. 3. Turn on Use Spinner Snap.
General Preferences Display Cross Hair Cursor—Displays the mouse cursor as full-viewport cross hairs, vertical and horizontal lines extending the full extent of the active viewport. Each movement of the mouse is redrawn, so the cross hairs are relatively slow. If you want to create a keyboard shortcut, find Cross Hair Cursor toggle in Customize menu > Customize User Interface > Keyboard panel and specify the keys to use for the shortcut.
818 Chapter 22: Customizing the User Interface See also Drag and Drop Sub-Object Material Assignment (page 2–1424). Scene Selection group Auto Window/Crossing by Direction—When this is enabled, the direction that you drag a selection area determines whether it is a window or crossing selection (page 1–93). This works for any selection area (rectangle, circle, fence, or lasso). You can select which direction causes a window selection and which causes a crossing selection in the Scene Selection group.
File Preferences improves the way geometry displays in viewports and in rendered output. To use the method from older versions of the software, for compatibility, turn on this check box. Interface Texture Coordinates group Use Real-World Texture Coordinates—Controls whether real-world texture coordinates are active or if the legacy method of applying texture coordinates is in use.
820 Chapter 22: Customizing the User Interface directory before the save occurs. You can edit the automatic backup settings in the Auto Backup group (page 3–820). Default=on. There is a matching "Do not display this message" check box in the alert itself, and you can also turn off the alert from there. Increment on Save—Creates a new copy of the Reload textures on change—When on, reloads file in the same directory whenever you save the file. The name of the new file is incremented by 1 (filename01.
Viewport Preferences backups are created. Also, if you save the scene file manually, Auto Backup resets the Backup Interval timer. Auto Backup File Name—Lets you enter an alternative name for the auto backup file. Auto backup files with a different name still have the filename extension .max. Default=AutoBackup. Log File Maintenance group The following controls affect the max.log file. Never Delete Log—Determines how long the log file is maintained. When you choose Never Delete, the max.
822 Chapter 22: Customizing the User Interface Interface Draw Links as Lines—Displays the hierarchical links (page 3–951) between parent and child objects as plain lines, rather than shapes when Display panel > Link Display rollout > Display Link is turned on.Show Links is enabled in the Object Properties dialog. Backface Cull on Object Creation—Determines whether to display faces with normals (page 3–980) pointing away from view. When turned on, you see through the wireframe to the backfaces.
Viewport Preferences rotoscoped (page 3–1003) background, even if your animation plays at 1 frame per second. When turned on, an IFL file (page 3–616), AVI file (page 3–609), or MOV file (page 3–621) updates on each frame when you click the Play button. Turn off the real-time (page 3–1001) switch in the Time Configuration dialog (page 3–725) to use this feature. In 3ds Max, the viewport updates not only when you click Play, but also when you drag the time slider.
824 Chapter 22: Customizing the User Interface Ghost Before and After—Displays ghosts both before and after the current frame. Ghost in Wireframe—Displays ghosts in black wireframe in shaded viewports. When turned off, the ghosts appear as shaded objects, using the same colors as the wireframe ghosts. Show Frame Numbers—Displays a frame number in the upper-left corner of each frame. Right Click Menu Over Selected Only—Limits the right-click menu display over a selected object. Default=off.
Gamma and LUT Preferences controls and flavors of lookup tables. This feature integrates the View LUTs only, such as that found in Combustion, where only the displayed images are modified. Interface Display group You use display gamma or lookup tables for the Material Editor spheres, the color selector, color swatches, and the rendered frame window (page 3–5) (Scanline Renderer). Take note of the default value before you start making adjustments in case you need to restore it.
826 Chapter 22: Customizing the User Interface Affect Color Selectors—When on, the Gamma setting affects the display of colors on the standard 3ds Max Color Selector dialog. This has no impact on the Object Color dialog, however. Interface Affect Material Editor—When on, the Gamma setting affects the display of colors on the Material Editor dialog.
Rendering Preferences Output Dithering group Sets output dithering (page 3–930) for all file types. True Color—Turns dithering on or off for any true color output device. For 24-bit work, you should turn True Color on. For paletted work, you can turn it off. Paletted—Turns dithering on or off for any 8-bit paletted device. Field Order group Odd/Even—Selects the field order of rendered images when the Render to Fields option is turned on in the render dialog.
828 Chapter 22: Customizing the User Interface Play Sound—Plays a sound file when the rendering has finished. Choose Sound—Opens the Open Sound browser dialog, select a sound file using the browser. You can test sound files with the Play button in the Open Sound dialog. Press ESC to turn off the sound. GBuffer Layers group Maximum Number—Limits the number of layers that are stored in the G-buffer during rendering. Default=10; Range=1 to 999.
Animation Preferences To set the key bracket display: 1. Choose Customize menu > Preferences > Preference Settings dialog > Animation tab. 2. Use the controls in the Key Bracket Display group to specify how you want key brackets displayed in wireframe viewports. To specify default controller settings: 1. Choose Customize menu > Preferences > Preference Settings dialog > Animation tab. 2. Click Set Defaults in the Controller Defaults 4. Make changes to the controller settings.
830 Chapter 22: Customizing the User Interface If no transform button is active, a bracket appears when you’re on a frame containing any of the three transforms. Spring Quick Edit—Toggle to increase the accuracy Position/Rotation/Scale—Specifies which type of Note: This option is saved in the 3dsmax.ini file as transform displays a bracket. If only Rotation is turned on, brackets appear only on those frames containing Rotation keys.
Inverse Kinematics Preferences Procedure To prevent transforming unlinked objects while working in IK mode: 1. Choose Customize menu > Preferences > Preference Settings dialog > Inverse Kinematics tab. 2. On the Inverse Kinematics panel, turn off the option labeled Always Transform Children Of The World. Single, unlinked objects are hierarchies of one object.
832 Chapter 22: Customizing the User Interface Gizmos Preferences Customize menu > Preferences > Preference Settings dialog > Gizmos tab You set the display and behavior of the Transform gizmos (page 1–426) on the Gizmos panel of the Preference Settings dialog. Interface When turned on and when Use Pivot Point Center in the Use Center flyout is active, each object in a selection set will have its own transform gizmo. Size—Sets the size of the Transform gizmo as a percentage of the viewport size.
Gizmos Preferences Note: When this is turned off, you can only rotate an object along an axis, or parallel to the screen (if Screen Handle is on). Show Tripod—Toggles display of an axis tripod at the pivot point. This tripod also highlights the selected axis while rotating. Screen Handle—Toggles display of the screen orbit, which lets you rotate an object parallel to a viewport. Show Pie Slice—When on, a shaded pie slice acts as a visual indicator of the direction and amount of rotation.
834 Chapter 22: Customizing the User Interface the default .5 degrees. The lower this value, the more mouse movement is needed to rotate objects. Interface Viewport Arc Rotate Snap Angle—Sets the amount of rotation in degrees. Turn on Angle Snap on the main toolbar, and then use Arc Rotate (page 3–744) to rotate a viewport. The viewport rotation snaps by the value set here. The Arc Rotate cursor displays a small magnet in the upper left to indicate that Angle Snap is turned on.
MAXScript Preferences MAXScript supports a limited form of variables. You declare that a particular global is persistent and the value it contains is always saved to and restored from scene files as they are opened and closed. In this way you can, for example, keep direct references to objects in the scene in variables. Those references will move across scene save and reload. MAXScript Windows group Font—Choose a font for the MAXScript editor Font size—Choose a font size for the MAXScript editor.
836 Chapter 22: Customizing the User Interface Selection-relative Sub-object Sets—Uses selection relative sub-object sets in the code. Default=on. transmittance values (page 2–1430) are displayed in the Material Editor. Absolute Transform Assignments—Uses absolute Note: In order to make this change effective, you transforms in the code. need to close and restart the Material Editor. Relative Transform Operations—Uses selection Interactive Display group relative transform operations in the code.
mental ray Preferences Note: Having this on decreases file load time, but increases the file size. mental ray Preferences Rendering group Show Brackets on Current Buckets—Displays white selection brackets at the corners of the bucket currently being rendered. Default=on. Show Visual Final Gather Progress—When on, Customize menu > Preferences > mental ray panel Interface the rendered frame window (page 3–5) displays a coarse image of the final gather points as those points are being calculated.
838 Chapter 22: Customizing the User Interface Messages Window is displayed and the error message appears in it. Default=on. Show/Log Information Messages—When on, displays informational messages in the Messages Window. Default=off. Show/Log Progress Messages—When on, displays progress messages in the Messages Window. Default=off. Log Debug Messages (to file)—When on, writes debug messages to the log file, if one has been specified. Default=off.
Graphics Driver Setup Dialog On the Display Driver Setup dialog, some options are unavailable if the corresponding driver is not installed in the system. The currently installed driver is listed in the Display Driver group. Note: The first time you launch 3ds Max Direct3D is selected be default. Software Display Driver Choose this if you’re using software rather than hardware acceleration. This choice is always available. OpenGL Choose this option if you’re using any form of hardware acceleration.
840 Chapter 22: Customizing the User Interface (depending on the specific display card), and performs perspective correction. continues to use the previous resolution until you use the Material Editor to reload the texture. The driver works with high-color displays, which provide a good trade-off between display quality and memory overhead. Incremental display update works efficiently. The options in the driver configuration dialog vary, depending on which driver is in use.
Configure OpenGL Dialog Interface Match Bitmap Size as Closely as Possible—To allow the viewport to show actual texture resolutions, bitmaps are individually resized in the display. This means that small bitmaps don’t get overexpanded and large bitmaps retain their resolution (but potentially use a lot more video RAM). Note: Bitmaps can be no larger than 4000 x 4000 pixels (or they will be scaled down to this size) and no smaller than 32 x 32 (or they will be scaled up to this size). Default=off.
842 Chapter 22: Customizing the User Interface Implementation-Specific Settings group Redraw Scene On Window Expose—Redraws the whole scene when a dialog over the viewports is moved, resulting in smoother dragging of dialogs such as the Material Editor or Track View. However, redrawing takes some time. Default=on.
Direct3D Driver Setup Dialog code, but has an effect only when the driver has hardware-specific custom code. Default=on. Use Wireframe Faces—When on, makes wireframe display accessible to hardware acceleration. Default=on. This option is intended to allow display-card manufacturers to accelerate 3ds Max wireframe displays in a way that is specific to the underlying display hardware.
844 Chapter 22: Customizing the User Interface configuration options are available from the Configure Direct3D dialog (page 3–844). the debug version of DirectX is installed in your system. To switch to a different display driver when Direct3D is the active driver, click the Choose Driver button on the Viewports tab of the Preference Settings dialog, click Revert From Direct3D, and then choose the new driver from the Graphics Driver Setup dialog. Direct3D Use Flags—The default option is Release.
Configure Direct3D Dialog Interface smoothly shaded objects. Typically this is much faster than using standard Direct3D code, but has an effect only when the driver has hardware-specific custom code. Default=on. Use Wireframe Faces—When on, makes wireframe display accessible to hardware acceleration. Default=on. This option is intended to allow display-card manufacturers to accelerate 3ds Max wireframe displays in a way that is specific to the underlying display hardware.
846 Chapter 22: Customizing the User Interface refreshing the screen. Turn on one or the other, as appropriate. • Redraw In Maximized Viewport—If, after updating the screen, the display card destroys the back buffer only when there’s a single viewport, turn on this sub-option. The Direct3D driver redraws the scene when a single viewport is visible, but doesn’t have to redraw when multiple viewports are visible. Default=off.
MIDI Time Slider Control Setup Dialog Texel Lookup—Specifies whether to use the nearest pixel (page 3–995), to linearly interpolate the pixel value from the four closest texels (page 3–1021), or to use anisotropic filtering. Using the nearest pixel is faster, but using texels produces a higher-quality display. The Anisotropic filter compensates for the distortion caused by the difference in angle between the texture polygon and the plane of the screen. Default=Nearest.
848 Chapter 22: Customizing the User Interface Procedure To use a MIDI device to control the animation time slider: End Frame—Goes to the end frame (the Fast-Forward button in the Media Control Station). 1. Choose Customize menu > Preferences > Step Forward—Moves one frame forward (the Preference Settings dialog > Animation tab. 2. In the MIDI Time Slider Control group, choose On. 3. Click Setup. 4. Set the MIDI device options and click OK.
Units Setup Dialog file. Do not change the system unit in an existing scene. You can also set the lighting units using this dialog. System vs. Display Units It is important to note the distinction between System and Display units. Display units only affect how geometry is displayed in the viewports. System units determine the actual scale of geometry.
850 Chapter 22: Customizing the User Interface Display Unit Scale group Choose a unit scale option (Metric, US Standard, Custom, or Generic Units) to activate its settings. Metric—Choose this option and then choose a metric unit: Millimeters, Centimeters, Meters, or Kilometers US Standard—Choose this option and then choose a US Standard unit. If you choose a fractional unit, the adjoining list activates to let you select the fractional component. The decimal units require no additional specification.
System Unit Setup Dialog Interface of millimeters if you plan on modeling an island that’s many miles across. When you use the slider or the text field to enter a distance from the origin, the Resulting Accuracy changes to show what the round-off error will be at that distance. These controls don’t change the unit settings in 3ds Max. They don’t reflect the extents of the current scene, either. Origin Slider—Move the slider for interactive feedback of distance and accuracy.
852 Chapter 22: Customizing the User Interface File Load: Units Mismatch Dialog Interface Change the system unit scale. > Open, Merge, XRef, or drag geometry from a file with a different unit scale. This dialog appears when you open or merge a file that has been saved with system unit settings that are different from those of your current 3ds Max session. The default system unit setting is Inches. If you open a file with the system unit set to meters, for example, you will see this dialog.
Viewport Configuration this option. If this occurs, choose the Rescale option rather than the Adopt option. Rendering Method Customize menu > Viewport Configuration > Viewport Configuration dialog > Rendering Method tab Viewport Configuration Customize menu > Viewport Configuration Right-click any viewport label. > Configure Right-click a viewport label.
854 Chapter 22: Customizing the User Interface 2. Right-click the viewport label and choose Configure to display the Viewport Configuration dialog > Rendering Method tab. 3. Enter an angle in the Field Of View field. Interface good way to check the results of bitmaps created with Render to Texture (page 3–144). Hidden Line—A wireframe mode that hides faces and vertices with normals (page 3–980) pointing away from the viewpoint, as well as any parts of objects that are obscured by closer objects.
Rendering Method Simple—Objects with transparency assigned are displayed with a “screen door” transparency effect. Best—Objects with transparency assigned are displayed with a two-pass transparency effect. This option is smoother and closer to rendered transparency effects. Apply To group Applies the current settings to the active viewport only, to all viewports, or to all the viewports except the active one. Note: This applies to the currently active viewport only; it is not a dynamic function.
856 Chapter 22: Customizing the User Interface Display Selected with Edged Faces—Toggles the display of highlighted edges for selected objects when the viewport is in a shaded mode, such as Smooth, Smooth+Highlights, Facets+Highlights, or Facets. When on in these modes, the wireframe edges of selected objects appear along with the shaded surfaces. This is helpful when selecting multiple objects or small objects.
Safe Frames The layout is saved with the .max file, so you can store different layouts in separate scene files. Load the file you want, then merge in the contents of other files to maintain the layout. Tip: Through MAXScript, there are commands to set the current layout to any of the 14 available setups. You can also activate any viewport and set the view type. This enables you to create macros and custom user interface buttons to set any layout you choose.
858 Chapter 22: Customizing the User Interface When Safe Frames are displayed in the viewport and a bitmap image is assigned as a viewport background (page 1–38) using either the Match Viewport or Match Rendering Output options, the image is confined to the Live area of the safe frames and matches the rendered background. This assumes that the same bitmap is assigned to the Environment background using Environment/Screen coordinates.
Adaptive Degradation Options Application group Degrade Parameters group Show Safe Frames in Active View—Toggles the frame displays on or off for the current viewport. This option is duplicated by the Show Safe Frame item in the viewport right-click menu. Maintain FPS—Lets you set the frame rate (page 3–944) in frames per second that adaptive display will attempt to maintain. Ungrouped Default Settings—Resets all values to the default values.
860 Chapter 22: Customizing the User Interface Regions Procedure To use the virtual viewport: Customize menu > Viewport Configuration > Viewport Configuration dialog > Regions tab 1. Make sure you’re using an OpenGL driver (page Right-click a viewport label. > Configure > Viewport Configuration dialog > Regions tab 2.
Statistics Interface fly, right-click the viewport label (for example, Perspective) and choose Show Statistics. Interface The Regions panel contains spinners for setting the four corners of the region (in pixels), and the following options. Virtual Viewport Use Virtual Viewport—Enables the virtual viewport. A reduced image of the viewport appears in the dialog, along with a white zoom rectangle representing the virtual viewport.
862 Chapter 22: Customizing the User Interface Entering Commands by Using Mouse Strokes Customize menu > Preferences > Preference Settings dialog > Viewports tab > Mouse Control group > Stroke Strokes are a way to assign command shortcuts to mouse or tablet drag patterns. For many operations, strokes are more convenient than keyboard shortcuts because they can select an object and apply a command to it. For example, you can assign Arc Rotate to a downward stroke.
Defining Strokes click Define to define the stroke. If the stroke has already been defined, the corresponding function is executed. See Defining Strokes (page 3–863) for information on defining and editing strokes. Example: To assign Object Properties to a stroke: 1. Use one of the first two procedures to activate strokes. 2. Hold down CTRL, and drag from top to bottom and then back up to the starting point. 3. The Define Stroke dialog appears, and the name of the stroke is "HKKH.
864 Chapter 22: Customizing the User Interface Utilities panel > Utilities rollout > More button > Utilities dialog > Strokes (page 3–868) > Draw Strokes, then draw the strokes. In the Define Stroke dialog, you can see how the strokes are analyzed by examining the grid under Stroke to Define. When you complete the drawing of a stroke, a nine-square grid is centered around the stroke and fit to its extents. The inner segments of the grid are assigned unique letters.
Reviewing and Editing Strokes segments in the grid, a letter is added to the name of the stroke. Multiple Objects Based On The Stroke Boundary group Command to Execute group Choosing one of the options in this group lets you use the stroke itself to select multiple objects and then apply the command. Lists all commands to which you can assign a stroke. Select a command and click OK to assign the stroke displayed in the grid to the selected command.
866 Chapter 22: Customizing the User Interface • Click the Review button in the Define Strokes dialog (page 3–863) to view strokes, but not change or delete them. becomes active in the viewport in which you draw the stroke. • Draw the Review Strokes stroke (by default, a horizontal line from left to right) to view, change, and delete strokes. You can redefine the Review Strokes stroke in the Review Strokes dialog. over one or more lights.
Stroke Preferences Dialog Stroke Name—Displays the assigned strokes by their stroke name (for example, HK). Procedure Change—Assigns a different stroke to the 1. Set up strokes for your left or middle command, or vice versa, depending on whether commands or strokes are displayed in the list. Note: This command is only available when the To access the Strokes Preferences dialog: mouse button. See Strokes (page 3–862) for information how to do this. 2.
868 Chapter 22: Customizing the User Interface • To create a new set, enter a new name in the field and click Save. • To choose a different set, choose it from the list and click OK. Save—Saves the set displayed in the list. Delete—Deletes the set displayed in the list. Review Strokes Default Show As Order group Specifies whether commands or strokes are initially listed in the Review Strokes dialog.
Strokes Utility Example: To turn on Arc Rotate using the Strokes utility: 1. Turn on Draw Strokes in the modeless dialog. 2. In any viewport, hold down the left mouse button and drag the mouse straight down from top to bottom. The length of the stroke doesn’t matter, but the direction does. As you drag the mouse, small X’s appear, displaying your stroke. When you release the mouse, a 3x3 grid appears briefly, and then the program switches to Arc Rotate mode.
870 Chapter 22: Customizing the User Interface
Keyboard Shortcuts Keyboard shortcuts are keyboard alternatives you can use to initiate actions (commands or tools) normally accessed with the mouse. For example, to open the Select Objects dialog, you can press the H key, or you can change the active viewport to a view from the bottom by pressing B . Keyboard shortcuts let you work faster and more efficiently. Many keyboard shortcuts are already set for most commonly used actions.
872 Chapter 23: Keyboard Shortcuts Unwrap UVW Shortcuts (page 1–900) Keyboard Shortcut Override Toggle Main toolbar > Keyboard Shortcut Override Toggle The Keyboard Shortcut Override Toggle lets you toggle between using only the "Main User Interface" shortcut keys and using both the main shortcuts and shortcut keys for groups such as Edit/Editable Mesh, Track View, NURBS, and so on. When the Override toggle is off, only the Main User Interface shortcuts are recognized.
appendix a Using the Online Reference The 3ds Max User Reference (this document) gives you information about every aspect of the software. Each topic contains an overview discussion, typically preceded by a path annotation showing how to access the feature in the program, and followed by a "Procedures" section with steps for using a command or feature, and an “Interface” section detailing controls and parameters for the user interface.
874 Appendix A: Using the Online Reference Finding Information Fast Use the Navigation pane in the Help Window to get to information quickly. It contains tabs that let you use Contents, Index, or Search techniques to get to topics you need. Contents Tab The Contents tab displays the main sections of this online system as book icons. When you click a book, it expands to show the list of topics contained within it, like chapters in hardcopy books.
Using the HTML Help Viewer • If you use a particular help topic often, you can add it to your favorites list (page 3–878). • Right-click the Contents or Favorites tab or the Topic pane for shortcut menu commands. Comments Each topic in the online version of this document ends with a Comments link. When you click Comments, the Help Viewer displays a dialog you can use to send us comments or requests about that topic. We’ll use that information when we revise the documentation set for a future release.
876 Appendix A: Using the Online Reference To see where the current topic fits in the information hierarchy (contents): • Press Alt+C . The Contents pane displays, with the current topic highlighted. you to search for one or more characters using a question mark or asterisk. The table below describes the results of these different kinds of searches. Search for Example Results A single word select Topics that contain the word "select.
Searching for Help Topics printing" is equivalent to "spacing AND border AND printing." • You cannot nest expressions more than five levels deep. Search for Procedures Example Results Both terms in dib AND the same topic. palette Topics containing both the words "dib" and "palette." Either term in a raster OR vector topic. Topics containing either the word "raster" or the word "vector" or both. The first term without the second term.
878 Appendix A: Using the Online Reference to go to the Contents tab, and then click the highlighted topic entry. If you want to search through all of the files in a help system, this check box must be off. If you are viewing a long topic, only the first 500 instances of a search word or phrase will be highlighted. If you previously used this feature, the Search tab opens with this check box turned on. To repeat an earlier search: To search for words in the titles of HTML files: 1.
HTML Help Viewer Right-Click Menus here do not affect the online reference or tutorials, but do affect your IE browser settings. We do not recommend you use this option. Hide/Show—Click this toggle to hide the Print—Same as the Print button, described above. Navigation pane when it is displaying, or show it when it’s hidden. Search Highlight On/Off—Toggles highlighting of Back/Forward—Click to move to the previously each instance of a word or phrase found with a search.
880 Appendix A: Using the Online Reference Help Viewer To To Press Close the Help Viewer. Alt+F4 Switch between the Help Viewer and other open windows. Alt+Tab Display the Options menu. Alt+O Hide or show the Navigation pane. Alt+O , and then press T Choose a topic. Down Arrow and Up Arrow Display the selected topic. Enter Index Tab To Display the Index tab. Type a keyword to search for. Print a topic. Alt+O , and then press P , or right-click in the Topic pane and choose Print.
Keyboard Shortcuts in the Help Viewer To Press Choose a topic in the Favorites list. Alt+P , and then Up Arrow and Down Arrow Display the selected topic. Alt+D Remove the selected topic from the list. Alt+R Notes • There are also shortcut menu commands (page 3–879) that can be accessed through the keyboard. • The Match Similar Words check box, on the Search tab, will be turned on if you used it for your last search.
882 Appendix A: Using the Online Reference
appendix b Troubleshooting 3ds Max This section describes a collection of problematic situations and what you can do to diagnose and fix them. These include many common problems that are reported to Autodesk Product Support, and the things you can try in order to resolve the problems yourself. When starting to diagnose a problem, by yourself or with the intent of contacting Product Support, you should take stock of the situation by answering the following questions.
884 Appendix B: Troubleshooting 3ds Max example, Autodesk Product Support once received a file that returned an Assertion Failed error referencing a tab.h file. The scene recently had an AutoCAD component imported that 3ds Max couldn’t understand. However, after the support technician clicked the Retry button 88 times, the scene finally opened. After resaving the scene, it opened without incident.
Fixing Boolean Problems 6. After everything is merged, save the scene and rebuild the object that was corrupt. Granted, this can be a long process, but it’s well worth it if you can salvage most of your previous work. Remember Backup Files By default, the 3ds Max automatic backup (page 3–820) feature is active, and writes a backup file every five minutes while you’re editing the scene for a total of three files. The files are stored in the \autoback folder. By default, this folder is stored in \My Documen
886 Appendix B: Troubleshooting 3ds Max 3ds Max tessellates the surface of the box so there are additional faces for the subtraction. Unfortunately, the faces are usually generated as long, slivered faces that sometimes overlap and form creases or ridges in the resulting scene, when rendered. a flat box, Operand A, and ten cylinders, Operand B, passing through it. Before attempting the Boolean operation, try these steps. 1. Select the object that has the lower face count.
Fixing Boolean Problems You only have to perform Boolean operations once instead of several times. This method is far more efficient and less prone to errors. It is also very useful for cutting rough openings for doors and windows into a wall if you’re already working with 3D geometry. Next, you’ll find an example for working with 2D spline objects. Splines and Boolean Operations All the cylinders are a single object. 5.
888 Appendix B: Troubleshooting 3ds Max want to subtract the two outer rectangles from the central rectangle. You also forgot to turn off Start New Shape. 4. Turn off Attach and scroll up to the Selection rollout. 5. Turn on the sub-object Spline mode, and select the central rectangle. 6. Scroll down the Geometry rollout and click the Boolean button. Also click the Subtraction button to the right. 1. Start by selecting the central rectangle. 2.
Performance Issues While Running 3ds Max One way to check the validity of objects that you intend to use as operands is by applying the STL-Check modifier. This modifier is primarily used to verify that an object is a complete and closed surface in preparation for exporting to STL files. Because Boolean operations work best with objects that meet the same criteria, use STL-Check on your operands. After applying the STL-Check to an object, turn on Check. The Status group tells you if errors are present.
890 Appendix B: Troubleshooting 3ds Max what was previously available. If you haven’t upgraded your video card in the last year, or at least updated video drivers, there is a very good chance 3ds Max will not start as quickly as in previous versions. You can also try a different 3ds Max video configuration. • If you have not defragmented your system recently, 3ds Max could exhibit a slower start time.
Problems Caused by Unit Settings Editor or graph window, like Track View. After you click, you notice an appreciable time lag until the dialog or window opens. If you then attempt to drag it to a new location, the dialog or window does not smoothly follow your cursor. The usual cause for this is a video driver conflict or display configuration issue because opening or dragging a dialog causes your graphic card to refresh the screen. Try these steps to diagnose the problem. 1. Start 3ds Max. 2.
892 Appendix B: Troubleshooting 3ds Max Problems and Resolutions 1. Open the problematic scene and select everything. Objects Disappear When the Camera Gets Close This situation can happen when you model things on a very tiny scale and then have to get very close to them in a Camera or Perspective viewport. Architectural walkthrough animations are notorious for this kind of behavior.
User Interface Problems and Recovery As a rule of thumb, keep the scale such that the smallest detail is not less than one generic unit. If this makes the scene too big to work with comfortably and efficiently, you can create separate scenes for models that include cameras for "close" and "far" shots. To remedy these problems, set your system font back to small fonts. 1. Exit 3ds Max. 2. Go to Start > Settings > Control Panel, and click Display.
894 Appendix B: Troubleshooting 3ds Max upper-left corner of the dialog is -425 pixels from the left edge of the screen and 152 pixels from the top. The second pair of digits describe the horizontal and vertical size of the dialog, so this dialog is 379 pixels wide and 866 pixels tall. Since this example assumes a single monitor, configured for 1280x1024 resolution, this dialog is off-screen to the left. If the first number were greater than 1280, the dialog would be off-screen to the right. 5.
User Interface Problems and Recovery 4. Restart 3ds Max. A new 3dsmax.ini file is automatically created using default settings. You need to be careful when using this method, because you don’t necessarily know what custom settings are saved in the 3dsmax.ini file. Perhaps you have 3ds Max set to display the command panel on the left and you’ve changed the viewport background color. Furthermore, if you have third-party plug-ins installed, they sometimes write information to the 3dsmax.ini file.
896 Appendix B: Troubleshooting 3ds Max Video Driver and Display Problems Because 3ds Max heavily relies upon the graphics card in your system, many problems that you may encounter while using the program can be attributed to the video. Such problems could be slow performance, refresh delays, user interface discrepancies, and so forth. Problems and Resolutions Basic Troubleshooting Start Point Multiple or Missing Buttons on the Toolbars This is another tricky situation.
Video Driver and Display Problems 2. Open the Viewport panel and check your currently installed driver. If it’s not the Software driver, proceed. Otherwise, you can cancel and begin the diagnostics elsewhere. 3. If set to OpenGL, Direct3D, or a custom driver, click the Choose Driver button. The Graphics Driver Setup dialog is displayed. 4. Choose Software and click OK. You’ll see a message that the changes will take effect the next time you start 3ds Max. 5. Exit 3ds Max and restart the program. 6.
898 Appendix B: Troubleshooting 3ds Max have the 3ds Max interface maximized or stretched to cover most of the display. Your quickest options for bypassing this warning are as follows: • Shut down some of the other programs that are concurrently running with 3ds Max. • Reduce the size of the 3ds Max interface. • Reconfigure 3ds Max to use a different display driver. Dual-Monitor Configuration Many board manufacturers are building graphic cards that support multi-monitor configurations.
Video Driver and Display Problems PCI slots in your system, you could theoretically drive four monitors. However, in order for these cards to operate at the best resolutions, each card needs to have the same amount of video RAM (vRAM) installed. So, if your had two cards and one had 32 MB of vRAM and the other only had 8 MB, you can only configure to the highest resolution supported by the 8 MB card.
900 Appendix B: Troubleshooting 3ds Max
glossary Glossary This section of the Help system contains explanations of concepts and terms used in the reference, arranged alphabetically. There are two ways to render both sides of a face. Either turn on the Force Two Sided option in the Render dialog, or apply a two-sided material to the geometry. 2-Sided (Double Sided) Usually, you want two sided rendering turned off since it slows rendering time.
902 Glossary 3D Map A pattern generated procedurally in three dimensions. A 3D map does not require mapping coordinates in order to render. However, a 3D map will appear in viewports only if the object to which it is applied has mapping coordinates. See 3D Maps (page 2–1662) 3DS and PRJ Files 3DS is the 3D Studio R4 mesh-file format and PRJ is the 3D Studio R4 (for DOS) project-file format. You can import both these types of files into the software, as well as DXF and SHP files.
Action • Single maps with their amount, offsets, scales, etc. • Composite and procedural maps don’t export. • Auto-cubics and Mirrors export. Action Operators (page 3–985) and tests (page 3–1021) in Particle Flow are known collectively as actions. • UV mapping coordinates can be exported. UV mapping coordinates are exported if the toggle Preserve MAX’s Texture Coordinates is turned on in the Export Scene to .3DS File dialog. See Exporting to 3DS (page 3–532).
904 Glossary Active Time Segment The active time segment is the total range of frames that you can access using the time slider (page 3–701). By default, the active time segment runs from frames 0 to 100, but you can set it to any range from the Time Configuration dialog (page 3–725). In addition, the active time segment can include negative frame numbers, so you can create keys before frame 0 and work in negative time.
Adapt Locks During the update pass, progress is indicated by a row of pixels (white by default) that descends the right edge of the ActiveShade window. become a kind of "gizmo" for manipulating the keyframes of your character’s animation. In most cases, edits you make to footsteps will act upon your keys in an intuitive fashion. See Footstep Animation (page 2–856). Adapt Locks By default, character studio automatically adapts biped keys when you edit footsteps in a footstep animation (page 2–856).
906 Glossary Additive Opacity An additive process adds two values together, such as two colors. When you add colors in 3ds Max, the result is brighter than either of the two original colors. To revert to the default method of rendering additive opacity, in the 3dsmax.ini file, change the value of AlphaOutOnAdditive back to 0 (zero), and then restart 3ds Max.
Aliasing/Antialiasing Aliasing/Antialiasing Alpha Channel Pyramid is aliased on left, antialiased on right. Alpha channel shown in black, on the right Aliasing is the staircase effect at the edge of a line or area of color when it’s displayed by an array of discrete pixels. Antialiasing smoothes the staircase effect that occurs when diagonal or curved lines or borders are drawn on raster displays consisting of square or rectangular pixels. Antialiasing can be either on or off.
908 Glossary is 32-bit, with the extra 8 bits of alpha providing 256 levels of transparency. Ambient Light 3ds Max creates the alpha channel automatically when you render. Any background pixels in the rendered image are fully transparent, and the alpha channel also accounts for any other transparency that you create via materials, etc.
Animation Animated textures can also be materials with keyframed parameters. In addition, in the context of particle systems, a material that uses the Particle Age map (page 2–1675) or the Particle MBlur map (page 2–1676) is considered to be animated. In general, when applying an animated texture to particles in Particle Flow, be sure incorporate it in a Material Dynamic operator (page 2–191). Animation Animation is based on a principle of human vision.
910 Glossary and choose Controller Types from the list). The controller names appear beside the tracks to which they’re assigned. You can assign different controllers to the tracks, affecting the way they respond. The Bezier Controller, assigned by default to all the Position tracks, lets you move objects using the Select and Move transform tool, and converts those movements into Bezier splines. You can adjust the splines in Function Curve editing mode. See Animating with Applied IK (page 2–481).
Area Shadows Area Shadows Scene rendered with a 3D (omni) area light The light uses the default radius of 20.0. Note: To render soft-edged shadows, shadows The shape of the shadow-casting region changes the shape of area shadows. must be ray-traced, not shadow-mapped. See the Render Scene Dialog > Renderer panel > Shadows & Displacement rollout (page 3–114). Area shadows simulate shadows generated by a light with area or volume.
912 Glossary ratio of width to height, regardless of the image’s resolution (page 3–1003). Attenuation Aspect ratio is usually expressed either as a ratio of width over height (for example, 4:3) or as a real value relative to 1 (for example, 1.333). For example, pre-1950s movies and 35 mm slides have an aspect ratio of 4:3. Aspect ratios are used anywhere a bitmap is created or used.
AutoGrid • You can reduce rendering time, since attenuated lights don’t have to be calculated for surfaces that are beyond the attenuation range. method), Repel, and Vector Field. See Obstacle Avoidance (page 2–1164). For standard lights, you can explicitly set where attenuation begins and ends. This is partly so you don’t have to worry about setting up strictly realistic distances between light objects and the objects they illuminate.
914 Glossary the control vertices (CVs) of a B-spline affect only their local region of the curve or surface. B-splines also compute faster than Bezier curves. with no feet on the ground) such as a jumping or running pattern.
Behaviors Behaviors Bezier Curve In crowd animation (page 2–1154), behaviors simulate a range of activities. Seek, avoid, path follow, surface follow, repel, orientation, scripted, space warp, surface arrive, wall repel, wall seek, and wander are all behaviors available in a crowd simulation. Behaviors let you assign procedural activity types to delegates and objects linked to delegates.
916 Glossary BIP Files BIP files contain skeletal size and limb rotation data for bipeds. This is the native character studio motion file format. you use the Display Preferences dialog to exclude them). This playback mode usually gives real-time playback, which you might not get if you use the 3ds Max viewport animation Play button. In Biped Playback mode, the biped is displayed as bones only, with no other scene objects visible.
Bitmap Bitmap A bitmap is a still image produced by a fixed matrix of colored pixels (page 3–995), like a mosaic. You can use bitmaps as textures for materials, as backgrounds to viewports, and as rendered environments. You can use an animation or video file as a bitmap, in which case the material or background changes over time. tga (page 3–633) tif (page 3–634) yuv (page 3–635) Note: 3ds Max can also render to some of these formats, but not to all of them.
918 Glossary Block/Style Parent A Block/Style Parent is closely related to a VIZBlock (page 3–1031) in that it is a compound object similar to a nested AutoCAD block. Just like the VIZBlock, it is used for organizing linked data from DWG files. When linking DWG data to 3ds Max, you need to decide how the incoming entities are to be organized in the scene. Objects in DWG files are commonly organized by layers, blocks, and entities, while 3ds Max scenes are organized by parent/child hierarchies of objects.
Boolean Operation Boolean Operation Bound Vertex Binding spline vertices via the Refine and Bind functions in Editable Spline (Vertex) (page 1–297) is useful for connecting splines when building a spline network for use with the Surface Modifier (page 1–842). The fence is operand A, and the cat is operand B. Upper left and right: A minus B Second to upper left: B minus A Second to lower left: Union Bound vertices are black, allowing them to be easily distinguished from standard vertices.
920 Glossary The Align command (page 1–462) uses the maximum and minimum extents of the object’s bounding box to align objects. Bulge Physique allows you to “bulge” a mesh based on the orientation of a limb. Bulging the mesh is used to simulate muscle contraction. of mass can move outside of the biped body; for example, moving the center of mass forward can help simulate lifting a heavy object. The center of mass uses three animation tracks to animate the biped.
CIBSE Files CIBSE Files The CIBSE file type is the file format for photometric data adopted by the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers. It is used primarily in Great Britain. Clip Controller In crowd animation (page 2–1154), the GlobalMotionClip and MasterMotionClip controllers are used to create animation for multiple objects. Birds, butterflies, schools of fish, and bugs can be animated using these tools.
922 Glossary Composite Compound (or complex) materials let you create a material consisting of two or more sub-materials. The real power in using compound materials is that each sub-material can be as complex as any standard material. The Multi/Sub-Object compound material lets you assign different materials to different sub-objects, at the sub-object level of your geometry. You load or create compound materials using the Material/Map Browser.
Continuity • Maps containers with all map types and map parameters. Control Lattice • Single Map containers with a single map type and its associated parameters. • Object containers directly below a named object item defining the creation parameters of an unmodified object. • Modified Object containers holding all of the modifiers applied to an object as well as the creation parameters. Continuity A property of curves, including NURBS curves. A curve is continuous if it is unbroken.
924 Glossary Control Vertex (CV ) Cool It’s useful to be able to edit a material in the Material Editor and have it immediately updated in the scene. Sometimes you want to work on a material without affecting the scene. You want to adjust a material until you’re sure that it’s what you want, and then reassign it. In other words, you want to cool a hot material (page 3–953). You cool a material by copying it in the Material Editor sample slots.
CPY Files CPY Files CPY files contain postures, poses and tracks you have copied and saved on the Copy/Paste rollout (page 2–966). You can load a CPY created with one biped to another biped. See Copying and Pasting Postures and Poses (page 2–910) and Copying and Pasting Tracks (page 2–926). Creation Parameters An object’s creation parameters are settings, typically available on its Parameters rollout, that you make when you first add the object to the scene.
926 Glossary Track View. Curve View doesn’t use soft-selection like the Key Window, instead it has a specialized Show Layered Edit command for the equivalent of soft selection on biped keys. CV Curve CV NURBS CV curve A NURBS curve defined by CVs. The CVs don’t necessarily lie on the curve. Instead, they form a control lattice that affects the curvature of the curve. CVs (control vertices) in the lattice surrounding a NURBS surface Short for control vertex.
Deformable Envelope Deformable Envelope In Physique (page 2–1076), envelopes (page 3–934) follow the Physique deformation spline (page 3–927) that runs through the joints in the skeleton’s hierarchy. A deformable (as opposed to rigid) envelope is one that moves the mesh vertices it encloses as the skeleton moves. A link can have both a deformable and a rigid envelope. When it has both, the effect of the two is averaged, creating a less flexible skin.
928 Glossary curves typically are represented by cubic equations and have a degree of 3. can be toggled with the Particle View menu command Display > Depot. Delegates To add an action to the particle system, drag it from the depot to the event display (page 2–131). To view a description of an action in the description panel (page 3–928), click its entry in the depot.
Diffuse Color at render time, especially if the polygon becomes non-planar via transformation of its vertices. Such transformation and certain other operations can, incidentally, cause automatic rearrangement of a polygon’s diagonals. Diffuse Color Vase has a mapped diffuse color. Diagonals on the default Cylinder primitive Diagonals are normally invisible, but in 3ds Max they appear as dashed lines when you use the Turn or Edit Triangulation tool.
930 Glossary Dithering Video Post. Here, dithering provides a smoothing effect between the separate images making up the "blur." Video Post dither is set as a percentage of total dither. Dock and Float These terms describe manipulations to user-interface elements, such as toolbars. You dock a toolbar, for example, when you align it with the edge of another interface element, typically a window or panel. Square on the right shows dithering.
DWG Files scene. You would have to edit the motion of the ball on many frames to make even a simple change. Using a dummy object easily solves this problem by breaking the motion into two simple components. One component is the bounce of the ball. The other is the path through the scene. DWG Files The DWG file is the primary, native file format of drawing files created by AutoCAD, Autodesk Architectural Desktop, and Autodesk Mechanical Desktop®.
932 Glossary Dynamics Biped Dynamics (page 3–916) calculate a biped’s airborne trajectory, the bending of its knee or knees on landing, and the biped position so it maintains balance when the spine is rotated. When parameters change, dynamics cause the biped to adapt. Dynamics Blend A parameter in the Body section of the Key Info rollout (page 2–954), used with freeform animation (page 3–945). Blends between biped and spline dynamics.
Editable Poly patch surface to an editable mesh. Editable meshes require little memory, and are a natural method of modeling with polygonal objects. An actively linked object cannot be collapsed to an editable mesh. Using the File Link Manager (page 3–422), you have to Bind the object first. Editable Poly An editable poly (page 1–1022) is a type of deformable object. An editable poly is a polygonal mesh; that is, unlike an editable mesh, it uses more than three-sided polygons.
934 Glossary See also IK Goal (page 3–954) Environment Map Envelopes In Physique (page 2–1076), the envelope is the primary tool for controlling skin deformation. An envelope defines an area of influence about a single link in the hierarchy. If the envelope is deformable (page 3–927), mesh vertices within that envelope follow the movement of the Physique deformation spline (page 3–927).
Event you can visualize the effect you get with spherical environment mapping. Shrink-wrap wraps the map around a giant sphere, leaving only one singularity. Cylindrical is like a giant cylinder. The Screen system maps the image directly to the view, with no distortion. It’s similar to planar, in that it’s like a giant backdrop hung in the scene. Unlike the other environment mapping methods, Screen is locked to the view. When you move the camera, the map moves with it.
936 Glossary appearance. You can use tests (page 3–1021) to send particles to other events if the particles meet certain qualifications. A single chain of linked events as shown in Particle View (page 2–125) is known as a flow (page 3–942). Extents Event Display The event display, the main window in the Particle View (page 2–125) dialog, contains the particle diagram (page 3–989). This is where you build and edit the particle system. Bounding box shows the extents of the model boat.
Faceted Faceted Note: You can use Physique (page 2–1076) to control an FFD space warp. Physique actually deforms the space warp’s control points, which in turn deform the model. FGM File An FGM file (.fgm) is a final gather map file. It is used by the mental ray renderer (page 3–78) to save the results of a final gathering pass. Generating and saving an FGM file can speed up subsequent renderings. Vase on the right uses a faceted material.
938 Glossary Configuration dialog. You can type a value in the FOV field of the dialog to precisely set FOV for the active Perspective view. Use Field of View (FOV) to change the amount of the scene visible and the amount of perspective flare applied to a Perspective or Camera view. The Field of View button appears in the viewport navigation control panel when a Perspective or Camera view is active.
Figure Mode strobing in your video output, change the parameter to Even. Filter Color / Filter Opacity Figure Mode When you work with a biped (page 2–843), you use Figure mode (page 2–982) to fit the biped to the mesh or mesh objects (page 3–972) that represent your character. You should have Figure mode turned on when you attach the mesh to the biped with Physique (page 2–1076).
940 Glossary two methods of pixel averaging. Only one can be active at a time. Both methods require approximately the same rendering time. Summed-area filtering generally yields superior results but requires much more memory. Pyramidal filtering requires the program to allocate memory equal to approximately 133% of the size of the bitmap. By comparison, summed-area filtering requires the program to allocate approximately 400% of the size of the bitmap.
First Vertex First Vertex Same scene with final gather used to smooth the global illumination First vertex of a spline When you create a spline object, the software numbers the vertices from 1 to the total number of vertices in the spline, according to the order of creation. When the spline is displayed in viewports, the first vertex has a box around it. Same scene with final gather but no global illumination, for comparison Final gathering can greatly increase rendering time.
942 Glossary Flat Mirror Flow A particle system (page 3–990) can contain any number of separate particle flows. Each flow consists of an isolated chain or sequence of events (page 3–935), as depicted in Particle View (page 2–125). A flow typically contains a global event (page 3–949) and a birth event (page 3–916), and any number of additional local events (page 3–963). Flat mirror map reflects the ice-cream shop’s interior.
Flyout Fluorescence is light emitted from an object when it absorbs radiation (for example, ultraviolet light) from another source. Raytrace materials have the ability to simulate fluorescence. Flyout For example, you might want to animate a figure that always points to another object. Bind the hand of the figure to the other object. Turn IK on and as you move the object the hand and arm of the figure move to point at it.
944 Glossary viewports. The footstep position and orientation in the viewport controls where the biped will step. In Track View — Dope Sheet, each footstep appears as a block that represents a support period in time for each of the biped’s feet. Moving footsteps in time is done in Track View — Dope Sheet. Tip: To see the footsteps, you must turn on Edit Keys in the Dope Sheet. There are three ways to create footsteps for the biped. The first way is to place footsteps individually, one at a time.
Freeform Animation If you later discover you need to output to PAL video (at 25 frames per second), you can switch to the PAL frame rate. The 90 frames are automatically converted to 75, producing the same total animation time with a different number of frames. You can later switch back to NTSC frame rate to restore the original 90 frames of animation. Freeze/Unfreeze You can switch back and forth between frame rates at any time without losing animation data.
946 Glossary Function curves appear in the Track View, and provide the best method of viewing and editing animation tracks. With the function curve display, you can actually see the characteristics of the animation as they change over time. The steepness of the curve indicates the velocity of an object in the scene. If the curve steepens, the object is accelerating. If the curve flattens out, the object is slowing. You can display key dots in function curves, as well as in the key editing displays.
Gait Pattern performs its post-processing only on those objects or materials. Warning: The mental ray renderer (page 3–78) does not recognize Z-depth with G-buffers. G-buffer data is saved on a single layer.
948 Glossary Gamma Correction You do this in the Gamma panel (page 3–824) of the Preferences dialog (Display Gamma). • Determine the gamma value to be applied to files output by the renderer and files input into the software, such as texture maps. This control is also in the Gamma panel of the Preferences dialog (Files Gamma).
Gizmo/Center Gizmo/Center Global Event The first event (page 3–935) in a particle flow (page 3–942) is always a global event, whose contents affect all particles in the flow; the rest are local events (page 3–963). Although a global event has the same name as the Particle Flow source icon, selecting the source icon in a viewport doesn’t highlight the global event, nor does highlighting a global event select the corresponding source icon.
950 Glossary Note: A global event is the only event that can be wired to another event without using a test (page 3–1021). It’s almost always wired directly to a birth event (page 3–916). When the Specular Level is too high, and Glossiness is too low, you can get harsh backlights on your surfaces. The Soften option mitigates this. Important: When you use an operator globally, be sure not to use the same operator locally (that is, in any other events in the system) to avoid potential conflicts.
Grid Object Grid Object The head object always points at the center of the target. Helper Object 3ds Max helper objects are used to help you set up an animation, but do not render. Crowd animation (page 2–1154) uses two kinds of specialized helper objects: crowd (page 2–1187) and delegate. Hide/Unhide One grid establishes the pitch of the boat, another the pitch of the ship.
952 Glossary Child—An object controlled by its parent. A child object can also be a parent to other children. An object that doesn’t have any parent is by default a child of the world. (The "world" is an imaginary object that acts as the root of all other objects in the scene.) Home Grid Ancestors—The parent and all of the parent’s parents of a child object. Descendents—The children and all of the children’s children of a parent object.
Horizon Horizon If you raise or lower the camera, raise or lower the target by an equal amount, in order to keep them level and maintain the horizon. Hot Horizon in the distance of a scene The horizon of a scene is the edge of vision at the height of the camera, parallel with the world coordinate plane. You can view the horizon in camera viewports. A camera is level when it and its target are the same height from the world coordinate plane.
954 Glossary Hotspot/Falloff IGES (Initial Graphics Exchange Specification) The Initial Graphics Exchange Specification (IGES) is an ANSI standard that defines a neutral form for the exchange of information among dissimilar computer-aided design (CAD), computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) systems, and computer visualization systems. Hotspot and falloff cones, highlighted in red. You’ve seen how a flashlight or a theater follow spot casts a circle of light.
IK Solution joint of a kinematic chain. By default, its name is IK Chain01. The kinematic chain is a single branch of a hierarchy used for animation with inverse kinematics (IK) (page 3–958). The chain starts with the end joint and travels up through ancestors until it reaches the start joint. When you move the IK goal, the IK solver then uses IK calculations to move and rotate all other objects in the kinematic chain to react to the object you moved.
956 Glossary You can also apply image motion blur as a render effect (page 3–269). (Another option, object motion blur (page 3–981), is not meant to simulate a camera, but to improve the rendered appearance of fast-moving objects.) Applying image motion blur is a two-step process: 1. Turn on image motion blur for the object you want to blur, using the Object Properties dialog (page 1–117). You cannot apply both image motion blur and object motion blur to the same object in the same rendering. 2.
Influence Influence An influence is the object that is required for the behavior or appearance of another object to be correct. For example, an eye with a LookAt Constraint (page 2–406) on a tennis ball is a dependent of the tennis ball, and the tennis ball is an influence of the eye.
958 Glossary viewport, what you see as multiple objects are multiple instances of the same definition. number is added to the end of the clip name in the Mixer. If you wanted to create a school of swimming fish, you might begin by making many instanced copies of a single fish. You could then animate the swimming motion by applying a ripple modifier to any fish in the school. The whole school would swim with exactly the same motions.
Inverse Kinematics (Biped) • Joints are constrained with specific positional and rotational properties. or foot to follow another object or be attached to world space. The default is Body. • Position and orientation of parent objects is determined by the position and orientation of child objects. • Join to Previous IK Key—Determines if the key should be part of the previous key (with the same reference position as the previous key).
960 Glossary Isometric View Keyframes/Keys Isometric view of a scene The red boxes indicate keyframes, the dotted line shows the interpolated trajectory. A special type of axonometric view (page 3–913), where the sides of the object are equally inclined to the screen, producing equal foreshortening along the edges. You can create an isometric view by rotating a User view. Keyframe Mode Keyframe mode is active while the Auto Key button (page 3–717) is turned on.
Knot an object that you specify as a terminator for the chain. 3ds Max automatically determines the kinematic chain when you select and transform an object with the IK button turned on. properties including color, visibility, renderability, and display. An object can assume these properties from the layer on which you create it. You can adjust layer properties from the Layers toolbar (page 3–688) and the Layer Manager. See also Knot A value in an array or "knot vector" associated with a NURBS curve.
962 Glossary See also Keyframe Mode (page 3–960) Keyframes/Keys (page 3–960) Lift In footstep animation (page 3–943), the state of a foot at the frame when it is about to lift away from a footstep. Light Map A light map or lighting map is a bitmap (page 3–917) that stores the lighting levels (intensity and color) falling on an object in the scene. Typically, you create a light map by rendering to a texture (texture baking) (page 3–144).
Links is used to negate and basic move, rotate or scale transforms. The local coordinate system is the coordinate system that relates specifically to the selected object. Links Each object has its own local center and coordinate system as defined by the location and orientation of the object’s pivot point. The local center and coordinate system of an object combine to define its object space. Links are the segments of the Physique deformation spline (page 3–927).
964 Glossary Lofting number of key points. These cross-sections are cut out to form two-dimensional templates that are then placed on a rail. The model builders fill in the space between the templates to generate the surface of the model. You create loft objects using a similar process. You first create two or more spline objects. One of these splines will be the rail, which is referred to as the path. The rest of the splines are the cross-sections of your object, which are called shapes.
Luminous Flux Luminous Flux Luminous flux is the quantity of light energy per unit time arriving, leaving, or going through a surface. The lumen (lm) is the unit of luminous flux in both the International System (SI) of units and in the American System (AS) of units. If you think of light as particles (photons) moving through space, then the luminous flux of a light beam arriving at a surface is proportional to the number of particles hitting the surface during a time interval of 1 second.
966 Glossary Map Bias Map Channel On the right, increased map bias makes the dog appear to float. Left: Scene uses different map channels to place different copies of the same maps in different locations. Map bias moves the shadow toward or away from the shadow-casting object (or objects). Right: The three maps used to create the streets and the traffic markers painted on them By default, this value is 1.0 world coordinate unit.
Mapped Material different map channels to have different mapping types (planar, cylindrical, spherical, and so on). Mapping Coordinates If you apply a map that uses a certain map channel to an object that has no mapping coordinates for that channel, the map doesn’t appear on the object. When you render, a Missing Map Coordinates (page 2–1623) dialog appears to warn you of the problem. The dialog lists the map channel and the object name.
968 Glossary once around the sphere, and then gathered at the top and bottom. Shrink-wrap mapping is also spherical, but truncates the corners of the map and joins them all at a single pole, creating only one singularity. • 3D procedural maps (such as Noise or Marble) 3ds Max provides a number of ways to apply mapping coordinates: • Face-mapped materials • Use the Generate Mapping Coords option in the creation parameters rollout of any standard primitive.
Marker Data Maps offer the level of realism you look for in materials. The different types of maps you can use range from the common bitmap, to the flexible procedural map. For many map types, the renderer needs instructions telling it where the map should appear on the geometry. These instructions are called mapping coordinates (page 3–967).
970 Glossary have default smoothing groups. The default material ID assignment depends on the type of geometry. Most curved objects such as spheres have a single material ID. Boxes have six IDs, one for each side. Cylinders have three: ID number 1 and 2 for the two caps, and ID number 3 for the sides. Hedra have three: one for each of their P, Q, and R axes.
Materials Materials Matte Object Spheres with variations of the standard material type (no maps used): Matte object reveals part of the background, making the hamburger geometry appear to be inside the oven. Green sphere: High Glossiness Red sphere: Constant shading Blue sphere: 60% opacity Yellow sphere: Wireframe mode, slight self-illumination A material is data that you assign to the surface or faces of an object so that it appears a certain way when rendered.
972 Glossary MAXScript MAXScript is the general-purpose scripting language for 3ds Max and related products. While it works the same for all products, some functions are specific to each. You can use MAXScript to automate many tasks, including modeling, animation, material construction, and rendering. You can also use MAXScript to add custom command-panel rollouts to the user interface. The interface to MAXScript is on both the MAXScript menu (page 3–780) and the Utilities panel (page 3–778).
MIX Files (page 3–975), transitions (page 3–1027), balance information (page 3–914)) as well as the result of the arrangement. A mix is sometimes called a raw mix to distinguish it from a mixdown (page 3–973). You can save a mix to a MIX file (page 3–973). MIX Files A MIX file contains data from the Motion Mixer, including information on trackgroups (page 3–1024), tracks (page 3–1023), clips (page 3–975), transitions (page 3–1027) and balance information (page 3–914).
974 Glossary Modifiers Example: Stack display of mesh showing its sub-object hierarchy, and Edge sub-object level chosen The modifier stack (page 3–760) is the key to managing all aspects of object modification.
Motion Blending The purpose of the morph object in 3ds Max is to create an animated object that changes shape by morphing between two or more objects. Although it appears that a single object is changing form, in reality the morphing process translates the position of the vertices from their arrangement in one object to the arrangement in another, relative to their local coordinate system. camera works.
976 Glossary BIP files used in Motion Flow (page 3–976) and the Motion Mixer (page 3–976) are called motion clips. You can use these tools to combine several motion clips and make a longer or different animation. A BIP motion clip can be created by saving animation (page 2–920) you have made on the biped, or by importing motion-capture data (page 2–1061).
Motion Synthesis Each biped in the Motion Mixer is assigned a balance track (page 3–914), which automatically compensates for differences in balance between upper and lower body motion. coincident CVs (or more) create an angular cusp. Fusing CVs shows the effect of multiplicity. To make the motion in the Mixer affect the biped in the scene, you must turn on Mixer Mode in the Biped rollout (page 2–936). See Using the Motion Mixer (page 2–604).
978 Glossary • Values less than 0.0 negatively scale the value of the function curve. See also Ease Curve (page 3–932) Left: Spotlight with negative multiplier subtracts light from the scene. Right: Multiplier of 0 and a negative density on a shadow whose color is white creates the effect of a negative shadow. An unusual characteristic of the Multiplier is that you can use negative values to create negative light. You can use negative lights to further control the lighting in your scene.
Network Rendering The ideal place to install the Network Manager is on a file server. If you have a PC already set up as a texture-map file server, this would be an ideal place for it. You specify which PC is to be the Network Manager in the Network Job Assignment dialog, a subdialog of the Render Scene and Video Post Execute Sequence dialogs. to render network processes. The Server has no user interface itself, but you can set various options for it from the Queue Monitor client.
980 Glossary Normal NURBS The normal of each face can point in a different direction. Fountain basin modeled as a NURBS surface A normal is a vector that defines which way a face or vertex is pointing. The direction of the normal indicates the front, or outer surface of the face or vertex. NURBS (Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines) are a technique for interactively modeling 3D curves and surfaces.
NURBS Surface A NURBS object (page 3–980) consisting of one or more sub-objects. The 3ds Max documentation uses "NURBS model" to emphasize the final result of NURBS modeling using a variety of sub-objects and techniques. Modifying an instanced object is the same as modifying the original. NURBS Surface Each instance has its own set of transforms, object properties, and space warp bindings. These are not shared among instances. A surface object created by NURBS modeling (page 3–980).
982 Glossary Object Space Left: Object motion blur. Right: Object motion blur with dithering. Tip: Don’t use object motion blur to simulate the A book in object space rests on a table in world space. blur created by a camera. For this purpose, use image motion blur (page 3–955) or scene motion blur (page 3–1007). Object space is the coordinate system unique to each object in your scene. It tracks the location of everything applied to an object.
Object Space (Biped) Most modifiers (page 3–974) operate in object space. See Object-Space Modifiers (page 1–557). Omnidirectional Light Object Space (Biped) When you use freeform animation (page 3–945) to animate a biped, you can place a biped limb into the space of another object, or into world space. For example, if the biped’s hands are in the space of a ball, then wherever the ball moves the hands move with it.
984 Glossary Omniflector A space warp (page 3–1014) that deflects particles. Omniflectors are also capable of refracting particles and generating spawned particles.
Operand Operand An operand is one of a set of objects upon which an operation such as Boolean (page 1–338) is to be done. The Boolean operation takes two operands: the first operand is called operand A, and the second operand is called operand B. Operator In Particle Flow (page 2–109), the operator is the basic element of the particle system; you combine operators into events (page 3–935) to specify the particles’ characteristics over a given period of time.
986 Glossary Note: These settings do not affect the path a delegate takes, which is produced by other behaviors such as Seek and Avoid. Orientation influences only the direction the delegate faces as it traverses the path. From the origin, the coordinates at a location 100 units to the right, 150 units up, and 60 units away are X=100, Y=150, Z=60, or (100,150,60). Orthographic View Origin Origin is the 0,0,0 point where the X, Y, and Z axes intersect.
Out-of-Range Types of orthographic views: top and bottom; front and back; left and right. this example do not move from frame 20 to frame 100. Orthographic views are a special case of axonometric views (page 3–913). You can set viewports to the various orthographic views using the viewport right-click menu (page 3–731) or keyboard shortcuts (page 3–871). Applying the Cycle out-of-range type will make the key pattern in frames 0–20 repeat cyclically for the remaining 80 frames.
988 Glossary Overshoot technique can reduce the size of shadow maps and thereby improve rendering speed. PAL PAL (Phase Alternate Line) is the video standard used in most European countries. The frame rate is 25 frames per second (fps) or 50 fields (page 3–938) per second, with each field accounting for half the interleaved scan lines on a television screen. Parameter Space NURBS objects have, in addition to their existence in 3D space, a parameter space that includes the array of knot values.
Parameter/Parametric Unlike physical building blocks, which have a fixed shape and size, the geometric primitives (box, sphere, torus, and so on) are parametric; you can change their dimensions, segment settings, and other features after you create them. Parametric objects respond to changes in their parameters by dynamically updating their properties. Changing a parameter can dramatically alter the structure and appearance of an object.
990 Glossary and logic. You edit the system by clicking actions (page 3–903) and events in the diagram and changing their values, by adding new actions and events, and by creating wires between events. The particle system object generates the particles over time. You use particle systems primarily in animations. 3ds Max provides several built-in particle systems, including Spray and Snow. Your configuration might have other plug-in particle systems installed.
Patch Patch The Path constraint (page 2–398) also lets you assign a line or other shape as a motion path. A motion path is a form of trajectory (page 3–1025). Get Path (Lofting) Example of a patch model A patch is a type of deformable object. A patch object is useful for creating gently curved surfaces, and provides very detailed control for manipulating complex geometry.
992 Glossary produce the result you want. You can flip the orientation of the path by pressing Ctrl while getting the path. Pressing Ctrl aligns the path so that the tangent to the first vertex of the path is aligned with the negative Z axis of the shape. Perspective View Path Follow Behavior In crowd animation (page 2–1154), the Path Follow behavior lets you direct delegates to traverse a specified path during a crowd simulation.
Phases of Leg Motion adjusting the correct distances of hotspot and falloff for the light. Phases of Leg Motion A leg’s motion has four phases, beginning with the foot on the ground. Then the foot lifts, moves through the air, and returns to the ground again. Biped divides this motion into four phases, as follows: • Touch—Occurs at the leg keyframe where the leg’s foot first touches the ground and always corresponds with the start frame of a footstep in Track View — Dope Sheet.
994 Glossary square meter or candelas per square inch. The candela was originally defined as the luminous intensity emitted by a single wax candle. The photon map stores photons only for objects that can receive caustics, global illumination, or both. Finally, luminous intensity is the light energy per unit time emitted by a point source in a particular direction. The unit of measure of luminous intensity is the candela.
Pivot Point Note: For NURBS and FFDs, physique deforms the control points (control vertices), which, in turn deform the model. Pivot Point Pixel A pixel (short for Picture Element) is a single point in a graphic image. Graphics monitors display pictures by dividing the screen into thousands (or millions) of pixels, arranged in rows and columns. Plant In footstep animation (page 3–943), the state of the biped foot when it is flat on a footstep.
996 Glossary Surface, or when you create an individual point sub-object. Points that are part of a Point Curve or Point Surface are constrained to lie on the curve or surface. Point Surface Points behave somewhat like vertices for spline objects (page 1–266), but their behavior is not identical and they are a distinct object type. Helper object points (page 2–23) are also a distinct object type.
Precedence parts, as opposed to the overall pose (page 3–996). You can copy and paste postures. See Copy/Paste Rollout (page 2–966). Precedence You control an IK solution (page 3–955) by setting joint precedence to determine which joints contribute the most to the IK solution and which joints contribute the least. Joints with high precedence values are calculated first, and, therefore, contribute more motion to the IK solution.
998 Glossary Projector Light Shadows created by projecting image of palm trees By adding a map to a light, you turn it into a projector. You can assign a single image, or you can assign an animation to create the effect of either a slide projector or a movie projector. Three procedural maps (bricks, Perlin marble, and splat), with variations A procedural map can be generated in two dimensions, or in three. For example, Wood has a grain that goes through the assigned geometry.
Quadtree additional markers for the top, bottom, and middle of the two props. If these tracks are detected, character studio creates a 3ds Max dummy object. shadows use more memory at render time than spotlights do. The length of the prop is the average distance between the top and bottom prop marker during animation. The prop will be oriented in the plane of the three prop markers, and its origin will be at the bottom prop marker.
1000 Glossary Ray-Trace Acceleration (mental ray Renderer) The mental ray renderer (page 3–78) provides three different ray-tracing methods of accelerating the process of ray tracing. The methods are: • BSP (Binary Space Partitioning). This method (the default) performs best for most purposes. • Grid. This method can perform better on multiprocessor systems. • Large BSP. This method can perform better with large scenes and with distributed bucket rendering.
RAYHOSTS File and the depth of the quadtree (page 3–999) used to calculate ray tracing. Advanced ray-traced shadows are the same as ray-traced shadows, however they provide antialiasing (page 3–907) control, letting you fine-tune how ray-traced shadows are generated. RAYHOSTS File The RAYHOSTS file is a text (ASCII) file that lists the name of host systems capable of mental ray rendering (page 3–78) in a distributed network.
1002 Glossary any slider, it mixes with the values of the other two, and the result appears in the swatch beneath the sliders. For example, if you move the Red slider all the way to the right (value 255) and leave the other two at the left (0), the active swatch turns red. If you then move the Green slider all the way to the right, the swatch turns yellow.
Repel Behavior the Physique modifier, you’d use reinitialization. Or maybe you’ve repositioned the biped structure relative to the mesh, or scaled both; you’d need to reinitialize Physique settings to recognize those changes. You set the resolution of the image you are going to render on the Render Scene dialog (page 3–2). Rotoscoping Repel Behavior In crowd animation (page 2–1154), the Repel behavior lets you specify any object or objects (sources) that will force delegates to move away from them.
1004 Glossary the arm and leg links simultaneously, by moving the link with the Move transform, instead of using scale. Rubber-Band mode scales both the link and its child in a single step. Sample Range This is particularly useful when fitting a biped to a skin prior to applying the Physique modifier (page 2–1076). For example, rubber-banding the upper arm rescales the upper and lower arm objects and moves the elbow link without affecting the position of the shoulder or the wrist.
Sampling (mental ray Renderer) effect is somewhat like the falloff of a soft-edged spotlight. The default Sample Range value is 4. The Sample Range value can be any floating-point number from 0 to 20. Values of 2 to 5 are recommended. Values below 3 can produce coarse-edged shadows. You can reduce this effect by increasing the map size. Values greater than 5 can produce streaking and moiré patterns. You can reduce this effect by increasing the map size or the Bias value.
1006 Glossary You choose the sampling filter and set other sampling options on the Render Scene dialog > Renderer panel > Sampling Quality rollout (page 3–98). Note: Area lights (Area Omni Light (page 2–1298) and Area Spot Light (page 2–1299)) have their own sampling controls. These affect only shadows cast by the area light. They are independent of the sampling used to render the scene as a whole.
Scene Extents renderer to provide a quick and simple rendered view of your scene as you work on it. You might also have other plug-in or third-party renderers that you’ve installed to work with 3ds Max. Scene Extents Just as an object’s extents (page 3–936) are its maximum dimensions in X, Y, and Z, the extents of a scene are its maximum dimensions in these three axes, and define a box that encloses the entire scene.
1008 Glossary Script Scripts (Motion Flow) A sequence of instructions used to automate a task. Scripts are typically text files containing coded instructions for a particular application. In motion flow mode (page 2–1026), a script is a list of clips (BIP files) that are executed sequentially to animate a character. You can create scripts either manually or automatically using crowd animation (page 2–1154). In 3ds Max, the MAXScript utility supports a scripting language.
Segment Segment shadows are completely replaced by the diffuse color, creating the illusion of self-illumination. Unless you use environmental effects, only lights illuminate your scene; they don’t appear in the rendering. You can use self-illuminated materials on objects that represent lights to provide things like car headlights, and so on. A self-illumination map lets you use a map to affect the intensity in different areas of the self-illuminated surface.
1010 Glossary The mental ray manual, Programming mental ray, describes how to write custom shaders. Shaders (Standard Materials) For a standard material (page 2–1465), the shader is the algorithm that controls how the material responds to light. Shaders especially control how highlights appear. They also provide a material’s color components, and control its opacity, self-illumination, and other settings. Shaders are often named for their inventors; they can also be named for the effect they provide.
Shadow Map (mental ray Renderer) edge and can require less calculation time than ray-traced shadows, but it’s less accurate. You can adjust the shadow map settings to achieve a sharper shadow. This involves changing the resolution and the pixel sampling of the shadow’s bitmap. Because shadow-map shadows are only bitmaps, you need to keep in mind their resolution in relation to your distance from the shadow, and the detail required by the shadow.
1012 Glossary You can make shapes renderable to create tubular forms in the rendering. Renderable shapes don’t appear any different in viewports. Shapes can also be NURBS curves (page 1–1078). You can use NURBS curves in exactly the way you use spline-based shapes. You can also use a NURBS curve as the basis for a NURBS model that includes multiple curve and surface sub-objects. • The local Y axis of the shape is aligned with the local Z axis of the path.
Sliding Footstep See also Sunlight (page 3–1018) Sunlight and Daylight Systems (page 1–418) Sliding Footstep In footstep animation (page 3–943), changing biped foot key parameters enables the biped feet to move or slide during a footstep period. This feature is also available for motion-capture file import to allow the biped feet to slide or pivot. In the viewports, a sliding footstep is displayed as a footstep with a line through the middle. Smoothing Groups will render as a smooth surface.
1014 Glossary space warp causes delegates to avoid an object while following its contours. You can also use multiple space warps on a single object or objects. Multiple space warps appear in an object’s stack in the order you apply them. Space Warps Space warps (page 2–55) are objects that provide a variety of "force field" effects on other objects in the scene. Space warps themselves are not renderable.
Speed Vary Behavior Spline Matching specular color to the diffuse color makes the surface less shiny. Top: Spline Speed Vary Behavior In crowd animation (page 2–1154), the Speed Vary behavior is useful for objects whose velocity changes as they move, such as strolling tourists who might occasionally slow down to do some sightseeing. Splice The term splice means to cut a sequence, insert a segment and join the cut ends to the segment. It can also mean a simple joining of ends to a segment.
1016 Glossary MAXScript first searches for .mcr (macroScript definition files) in the ui\macroscripts directory. These macroScript definitions are not compiled at this time; rather they are just scanned to identify the macroScripts that have been defined. MAXScript next searches for .ms, .mse, and .mzp files in the plug-in path directories (defined on the Configure System Paths dialog (page 3–810) and Configure User Paths dialog (page 3–808)) and their subdirectories, and compiles these files.
Sub-Object Sub-Object Left: A selection of face sub-objects Middle: A selection of edge sub-objects Right: A selection of vertex sub-objects A sub-object s a subset of an object’s geometry. Many objects have various types of sub-objects that you can work with independently. For example, an editable mesh object’s (page 1–996) sub-objects are vertices, edges, faces, polygons, and elements. To access sub-objects, go to the Modifier panel.
1018 Glossary Subtractive opacity darkens colors behind the material by subtracting the material’s colors from the background colors. If you simply want to reduce the apparent opacity of a material, while maintaining the color values of its diffuse (or mapped) properties, use subtractive opacity. See also of the rendered scene.
Surface Follow Behavior An example would be birds flying over a row of telephone poles, and then each one dropping to land on top of a different pole. Surface Follow Behavior In crowd animation (page 2–1154), the Surface Follow behavior moves delegates with respect to object surfaces. Target objects can be animated. For example, you can apply an animated Noise modifier to a patch grid to simulate a choppy water surface, and objects guided by Surface Follow will stay on top.
1020 Glossary TCB ( Tension, Continuity, Bias) The TCB Position controller provides Tension, Continuity, and Bias controls of the splines of a function curve. TCB Controllers (page 2–377) also produce curve-based animation much like the Bezier controllers (page 2–310). However, TCB controllers do not use tangent types or adjustable tangent handles. They use numeric values to adjust the Tension, Continuity, and Bias of the animation. Tension—Controls the amount of curvature in the animation curve.
Terrain Terrain Test The basic function of a test in Particle Flow is to determine whether particles satisfy one or more conditions, and if so, make them available for sending to another event. When a particle passes a test, it is said to “test True.” To send eligible particles to another event, you must wire (page 3–1033) the test to that event. Particles that don’t pass the test (“test False”) remain in the event and are repeatedly subjected to its operators and tests.
1022 Glossary 0 to 159, at which point the frames field increments by one, and the ticks field returns to 0. You can step forward or backward at single increments by clicking the single-frame buttons among the playback buttons. When you use the MM:SS:TICKS Display format, you see minutes (MM), seconds (SS), and ticks, each separated by colons.
Topology-Dependent Modifier from one to the other would cause the object to crumple or turn inside out as it morphs. Topology-Dependent Modifier Topology-dependent modifiers perform operations on explicit, topological sub-object selections. The Edit Mesh and Mesh Select modifiers are examples of modifiers that perform operations or selections on explicit vertex or face numbers.
1024 Glossary Trackgroup In the Motion Mixer, motions are placed on tracks, and the tracks are organized into trackgroups. In other words, each trackgroup is a holder for one or more tracks. Each trackgroup can be filtered so the tracks within it affect only certain parts of the biped, such as its arms or legs. Every biped in the Motion Mixer can have multiple trackgroups, each with its own selection of biped parts. See Adding Tracks to the Mixer (page 2–607) and Filtering Mixer Tracks (page 2–612).
Trajectory • Animation tracks contain the actual animated values for an item. Only controller items have an animation track. • Position keys are displayed as white boxes surrounding the appropriate frame dot on the curve. The values in an animation track are usually displayed as keys. Some controllers don’t use keys and instead display their values as a range bar or some other graphic symbol. For example, the Wave Form item displays a sound file as a two-channel sound wave.
1026 Glossary Scale gizmo Move gizmo Transforms Moving, rotating, and scaling a figure When you create any object, 3ds Max records its position, rotation, and scale information in an internal table called a transformation matrix. Subsequent position, rotation, and scale adjustments are called transforms.
Transition each object always has only one position, one rotation, and one scale transform. Translucency You can animate your transforms by turning on the Auto Key button and then performing the transform at any frame other than frame 0. This creates a key for that transform at the current frame. Transition In the Motion Mixer and in Motion Flow, a transition is a gradual change between two motion clips. You can set the frames at which the transition starts and ends in each clip.
1028 Glossary Twist Links when entering UNC path names into file selection dialogs. Some networks require drive letters instead of UNC names. Directories on such networks can be mounted as drive letters and shared over the network. See Mounting a Directory (page 3–188).
Vector Field orientation of a map, relative to its geometry. To do this, you need the third coordinate. The W coordinate also has a meaning for 3-dimensional procedural materials. Vectors and Vector Handles Vector Field In crowd animation (page 2–1154), a vector field is a special type of space warp that crowd members can use to move around irregular objects such as a curved, concave surface. The vector field gizmo, a box-shaped lattice, is placed and sized so that it surrounds the object to be avoided.
1030 Glossary Velocity Interpolation One method of interpolation used in motion flow editing (page 2–1026). By default, in a transition between two motion clips, velocity is interpolated to blend smoothly between clips. If transitions are optimized, then a sophisticated algorithm is used that minimizes sliding feet. Vertex A vertex (plural form: vertices) is a single point whose sole property is its position in 3D space, which is typically defined by values for the X axis, Y axis, and Y axis.
VIZBlock Because viewing mapped materials slows the viewport display, it’s up to you to decide which map (if any) you want to display. To display a specific map, you go to that map’s level in the Material Editor, and then turn on its display. (If you later go to a different map in the same material, and turn its display on, the other map is automatically turned off.) A VUE file contains a sequence of frames to render.
1032 Glossary Transform Command Spotlight Command Transforms the specified object. Controls the location, color, and other characteristics of a target spotlight. The first parameter is the name of the object. This is the name as it appears when you use 3ds Max, but enclosed in double quotes. The second parameter is a transform matrix.
Walking Gait The parameter is a placeholder for the roll angle—but this is an "empty," unused parameter that must always be zero. To use roll in a VUE file, use a camera view instead of a user view. When influenced by the Wall Seek force, delegates turn until they’re heading toward the grid. This behavior is useful for moving objects toward a rectangular area, such as a doorway. The parameter is the width of the rendered image, in world units.
1034 Glossary a global event (page 3–949) to a birth event (page 3–916), represented by a dashed blue line; and one that connects a test (page 3–1021) to a local event (page 3–963), represented by a solid blue line. To delete a wire, right-click it and choose Delete Wire, or click it (it highlights in yellow) and then press the Delete key. Or, with a wire between a test and an event, drag from either connector to a blank area of the event display (page 3–936).
Workbench in one direction while changing the field of view in the other. World Coordinate System Workbench The Animation Workbench is a customized version of the Track View function curve editor designed to be used with bipeds. It contains a Curve View that displays keys on function curves which you can edit similar to the way you work in Track View.
1036 Glossary World Space For example, if the biped’s feet are in world space, then when you move the center of mass, the feet stay planted in the same location. World-Space Modifiers (WSM) World space is the universal coordinate system that applies to the entire scene. A world-space modifier, as opposed to an object-space modifier (page 3–983), affects an object but uses world coordinates. A book in object space rests on a table in world space.
XRef (3ds Max Externally Referenced File) See also XRef (3ds Max Externally Referenced File) (page 3–1037) XRef (3ds Max Externally Referenced File) An XRef in 3ds Max is an externally referenced file or object. XRefs allow multiple animators and modelers to work on one scene at the same time without interfering with each other’s work. There are two ways to XRef another scene: • XRef Scene (page 3–407) The File > XRef Scene command XRefs an entire scene.
1038 Glossary
index Index Symbols & Numerics A 1-rail sweep surface 1–1204 2 3 4 links 2–1111, 2–1150 2 feet down 2–988, 2–997 2.
1040 Index ActiveShade 3–17 commands (quad menu) 3–22 floater 3–21 glossary 3–904 quick render 3–17 viewport 3–21 actual stride height 2–992, 2–995 actual stride length 2–992, 2–995, 2–997 actual stride width 2–992, 2–995, 2–997 adapt locks 2–871, 2–980, 3–905 adaptation 3–905 adapting keyframes to edits 2–871 keys to footstep edits 2–871 adaptive antialiaser dialogs 2–1533 to 2–1534 adaptive control 1–167, 1–828, 2–1534, 2–1698 adaptive degradation glossary 3–905 override 1–34 viewport configuration dial
Index after trajectory 2–944 age test 2–211 AI import dialog 3–524 airborne option 2–988, 2–995, 2–997 airborne periods 2–878, 3–906 aliasing/antialiasing alias against background 3–826 and supersampling 2–1459 fast adaptive 2–1533 filters 1–567, 3–38 glossary 3–907 multiresolution adaptive 2–1534 align 1–462 align geometry dialog (edit poly) 1–679 and pivot point 2–488 camera 1–468 dialog 1–462 editable mesh objects 1–1011 editable mesh vertices 1–1011 flyout 1–462 grid to view 2–35 keys (Track View) 2–55
1042 Index NURBS 1–1091 preferences settings 3–828 previewing animations after attaching Physique 2–1084 sample animations in this release 2–920 saving 3–476 selecting and moving tracks 2–886 show ghosting 1–46 tips (NURBS) 1–1099 toggle animation mode 2–278 utilities 2–653 with radiosity 3–60 animation controls 3–716 animation layer weight 2–325 to 2–326 animation layers 2–325 to 2–326, 2–333 to 2–334, 3–690 animation layers toolbar 3–690 animation menu 3–681 bone tools 1–411 constraints 2–371, 2–392 to
Index explode 1–110 open 1–109 using 1–98 assembly commands 1–107 assembly heads helper objects 1–111 assembly menu assemble 1–107 attach 1–111 detach 1–110 disassemble 1–110 explode 1–110 asset browser 3–504 internet download dialog 3–515 preferences 3–514 using 1–17 asset tracking dialog 3–487 icons 3–498 open from vault 3–389 asset tracking dialog 2–920, 3–487 asset tracking dialog icons 3–498 asset tracking prompts 3–498 assign controller (Track View) 2–546 controller rollout (motion panel) 3–774 mater
1044 Index AutoCAD DWG/DXF import options dialog 3–536 AutoCAD, AutoCAD Architecture, and Revit working with 3–440 autodesk inventor files importing 3–552 Autodesk Vault 3–487 Autodesk VIZ files 3–525 autogrid 3–913 AutoGrid 2–7 automatic auto archive 3–819 auto backup 1–19, 3–819 auto secondary (lens effects) 3–238 auto termination (IK) 2–499 automatic exposure control 3–295 unit conversion 3–815 automatic mapping rollout rendering to texture 3–163 autoplay preview file 3–815 AVI files 3–168, 3–609 avoid
Index using 3–202 batch rendering completed 3–203 before trajectory 2–944 behavior assignments and teams dialog 2–1200 behavior rollout 2–1211 behaviors 2–1159, 3–915 avoid 2–1211, 3–913 fabric 1–579 obstacle-avoidance 2–1164, 3–983 orientation 2–1214, 3–985 patch-based 3–991 path follow 2–1216, 3–992 repel 2–1218, 3–1003 scripted 2–1220, 3–1008 seek 2–1220, 3–1008 space warp 2–1221, 3–1013 speed vary 2–1222, 3–1015 surface arrive 2–1223, 3–1018 surface follow 2–1226, 3–1019 wall repel 2–1227, 3–1033 wall
1046 Index biped rollout 2–936 bipeds and crowd simulation 2–1187 correcting posture 2–925 deleting 2–854 linking objects to 2–854 moving objects 2–890 posing 2–847 posing a biped 2–925 rotating objects 2–891 scaling after physique is applied 2–1099 visible in playback 2–944 bipeds dialog 2–643 birth event 3–916 birth operator 2–143 birth script operator 2–145 bitmap map 2–1631 bitmap pager 3–828 bitmap pager statistics dialog 3–514 bitmap proxies 3–32 bitmap proxies dialog 3–496 bitmap/photometric path e
Index material IDs 1–338 overlapping elements 1–338 surface topology 1–338 troubleshooting problems with 3–885 with maps and materials 1–338 bound vertex 1–297, 3–919 boundary conditions (and tendons) 2–1147 bounding box (and envelope creation) 2–1111 bounding box (glossary) 3–919 bounds (inner/outer) 2–1085 box BoxGizmo 3–304 standard primitive 1–171 box caustics filter 3–106 box method 2–1242 box selected render bounding box/selected dialog 3–16 branching events (particle flow) 2–123 break spline at sele
1048 Index orbit/pan camera 3–749 orbit/pan light 3–755 pan (Track View) 2–595 pan (user interface) 3–743 percent snap 2–38 perspective 3–747 pick material from object 2–1448 place highlight 1–467 play/stop 3–723 previous frame 3–723 quick align 1–465 quick render 3–17 quick render (Production) 3–17 render scene 3–12 roll camera 3–747 roll light 3–753 save sequence 3–324 scale keys 2–559, 2–580 scale values 2–581 select and link 2–422 select and manipulate 2–15 select and move 1–439 select and rotate 1–43
Index multi-pass parameters 2–1383, 2–1386 orbit/pan 2–1381, 3–749 placing 1–7 roll 3–747 setting lens size 2–1373 target 2–1371 truck 3–748 using clipping planes to exclude geometry 2–1379 using horizon to match perspective 2–1380 using move and rotate to aim 2–1379 using transforms to aim 2–1379 with target 2–1371 zoom 2–1381 candela 3–965 canopy mode 1–214 cap holes modifier 1–569 cap surface 1–1195 capsule 1–195 capture viewport 1–35 car paint material and shader 2–1576 car-wheel constraint 2–757 carto
1050 Index transition 2–1048 clip controllers 2–1179, 3–921 clip frame numbers motion mixer 2–615 clip mode 2–1027 clip properties dialog 2–1027, 2–1045, 2–1059 clipping planes 2–1373, 2–1379, 3–921 clips 2–1045 combining 2–1026 create 2–1027 looping with motion-capture filtering 2–1061 menu 2–632 move 2–1027 path 2–1041 ClipState dialog 2–1253 clone 1–476 clone and align tool 1–459 clone options dialog (particle flow) 2–132, 2–136 cloning 1–476 clone 1–476 materials 2–1432 objects 1–453, 1–474, 1–483 sha
Index color clipboard files 1–950 color clipboard utility 1–165 color coding 2–945 color controls 2–1485 color modifier maps 2–1692 color palette vertexpaint modifier 1–950 color RGB controller 2–317 color selector 1–161, 3–815 color space 3–1 colors assign random 1–161 biped IK/FK keys 2–1005 biped keys in Track View 2–947 biped trajectories 2–1005 footsteps 2–869 in Track View 2–944 vertex type 2–1089 colors panel (customize UI) 3–799 COM 2–933 COM/DCOM server control utility 3–792 combining animations 2
1052 Index configure communication center 3–713 Direct3D 3–844 driver 3–821, 3–840 key mode 3–725 modifier sets 3–772 OpenGL 3–841 presets (video post) 3–327 software display driver 3–840 system paths 3–810 time 3–725 track bar 3–703 user paths 3–808 utilities button sets 3–779 viewports 3–853 configure paths 3–808 configure preset dialog 3–33 configure system paths 3–810 plug-ins path configuration 3–814 configure user paths 3–808 bitmaps 3–189 external files 3–811 file i/o path configuration 3–810 FX fi
Index default settings 3–828 Euler XYZ rotation 2–318 expression 2–320 frame duration 2–502 general-purpose controllers 2–295 limit 2–335 linear 2–341 list 2–342 local euler XYZ rotation 2–344 look at 2–344 make unique 2–550 master point 2–346 morph 2–300 motion capture 2–347 noise 2–353 on/off 2–355 paste 2–545 point3 XYZ 2–317 position XYZ 2–356 properties 2–560 PRS 2–357 reaction 2–358 scale XYZ 2–371 script 2–372 slave 2–313 smooth rotation 2–374 specifying default 2–294 TCB 2–377 time duration 2–502 t
1054 Index copy time (Track View) 2–568 copy track (Track View) 2–568 joint parameters 2–495 materials 2–1409, 2–1432 modifiers 2–544 patch surface 1–968 presets 3–437 splines 1–308 transform keys 2–283 CPY files 2–1263 crash recovery 1–20 crease at link’s joint 2–1140 at parent’s joint 2–1140 create clip 2–1027, 2–1045 envelopes 2–1111 footsteps 2–988 keys for inactive footsteps 2–865, 2–990 layer 2–974 random motion 2–1035, 2–1055 script 2–1030, 2–1048 separate tracks for biped arms 2–980 shared motion
Index footsteps automatically 2–862 freeform animations 2–886 independent surfaces from NURBS curve objects 1–1114 individual footsteps 2–863 iso curve 1–1168 lathe surface 1–1190 linear arrays 1–487 mirror curve 1–1160 mirror surface 1–1187 models with NURBS 1–1094 multicurve trim surface 1–1214 multiple footsteps 2–862 multiple slices 1–1019 multisided blend surface 1–1213 normal projected curve 1–1169 NURBS curves from splines 1–1115 NURBS CV curve 1–1110 NURBS models 1–1079 NURBS point curve 1–1106 NUR
1056 Index geometry rollout 2–1240 global clip controller 2–1241 icon size 2–1240 object/delegate associations dialog 2–1196 priority rollout 2–1235 scatter objects dialog 2–1189 select behavior type dialog 2–1205 select delegates dialog 2–1205 set start frames dialog 2–1237 setup rollout 2–1188 smoothing rollout 2–1238 solve rollout 2–1232 state dialog 2–1207 state transition dialog 2–1208 crowd simulation avoid behavior 2–1211 cognitive controller 2–1206 solving 2–1168 crowd system 3–925 CS amplitude op
Index cylinder chamfer 1–192 CylGizmo 3–306 standard primitive 1–177 cylindrical area omni light 2–1298 D damper 1–396, 2–66 damping joint action 2–466 dashpots angular 2–732 linear 2–730 data files path for 3–813 data management asset tracking dialog 3–487 open from vault 3–389 daylight IES sky 2–1312 IES sun 2–1309 DDS files (glossary) 3–611 deactivate all maps 1–50 deactivate footsteps 2–865, 2–990 decay 2–1345 default controller settings 2–294, 3–828 controllers 2–294 heights 2–1 keyboard shortcuts 1–
1058 Index key 2–904, 2–956, 2–962 keys 2–554, 3–703 layers 2–974 maps 2–1413 material 2–1413 mesh modifier 1–626 operator (particle flow) 2–146 patch modifier 1–627 Schematic View 3–652 script 2–1030, 2–1048 selected keys (track bar) 3–703 spline modifier 1–627 tendons 2–1096 time (Track View) 2–567 Track View 2–598 transition 2–1051 transitions 2–1034 delete keys 2–502, 2–554 delete selected animation 3–698 delete time (Track View) 2–567 delete Track View 2–598 delete twist pose 2–950 delete UVW mapping
Index Direct3D driver 3–838, 3–843 to 3–844 Direct3D driver setup dialog 3–843 directional parameters 2–1348 directories for network rendering 3–187 mounting 3–188 sharing 3–188 DirectX 10 3–847 DirectX 9 shader material 2–1613 DirectX 9 shaders, FX file 3–946 DirectX shaders 2–1464, 2–1613 to 2–1614 disable layer 2–325 to 2–326 disable particle system 2–121 disabling playback 2–1084 disassemble 1–110 disc (circular) area light 2–1299 displace disp approx modifier (OSM) 1–628 displace mesh (world space) 1–
1060 Index pivot 1–251 sliding 1–251 dope sheet 2–501, 2–507, 2–1002 modes menu 2–521 toolbars 2–538 Dope Sheet editing footstep timing 2–869 DOS command-line rendering 3–211 double support 2–988, 2–992, 3–930 double-sided 3–901 double-sided material 2–1591 download options (asset browser) 3–515 drag and drop and copied/instanced maps 2–1451 and instanced objects 3–456 content from web pages 3–523 maps and materials 2–1423 modifier 1–499 sub-object material assignment 2–1424 with i-drop indicator 3–523 dr
Index layer event (video post) 3–337 lens effects filter (video post) 3–345 loop event (video post) 3–342 negative filter (video post) 3–345 normals 1–634 output image event (video post) 3–339 preset settings 3–438 pseudo alpha compositor (video post) 3–382 pseudo alpha filter (video post) 3–346 range bar (video post) 3–327 ranges (Track View) 2–573 scene event (video post) 3–329 simple additive compositor (video post) 3–383 simple wipe compositor (video post) 3–383 simple wipe filter (video post) 3–347 st
1062 Index edit wire 2–412 editable mesh 1–996, 3–932 aligning 1–1011 edge 1–1006 edit geometry rollout 1–1011 element 1–1009 exploding 1–1011 face 1–1009 object 1–1001 polygon 1–1009 selection rollout 1–999 vertex 1–1003 editable objects and edit modifiers 1–506 editable patch 1–968 attach 1–986 changing vertex type 1–986 deleting vertices 1–986 detach 1–986 edge 1–980 element 1–984 geometry rollout 1–986 handle 1–979 object 1–974 patch 1–981 vector 1–979 vertex 1–975 visibility of 1–989 editable poly 1–
Index glow lens effects 3–226 lens effects 3–223 manual secondary lens effects 3–242 merging from other files 3–220 ray lens effects 3–234 rings lens effects 3–230 star lens effects 3–246 streak lens effects 3–250 elements 3–933 of rendered textures 3–146 rendering 3–130 ellipse 1–274 email notification network rendering 3–196 rendering 3–33 emission rollout (particle view) 2–136 emit start/stop values, and frame rate 2–144 emitter (particle flow) 2–135, 3–933 empty flow operator 2–209 enable ease or multi
1064 Index expanding animation tracks 2–886, 2–888 expert mode 1–51 explicit axis keys 2–297, 2–357 explode assemblies 1–110 editable mesh objects/sub-objects 1–1011 explode angle threshold 1–1011 groups 1–106 objects into faces 2–105 particle system 2–68 splines 1–308 explode angle threshold 1–1011 exploding objects 2–68 explosion 2–68 explosions 2–120 export animation motion mixer 2–624 export selected (file menu) 3–486 exporting 3D DWF 3–555 3DS files 3–532 Adobe Illustrator files 3–534 animation 2–921
Index f-stop 3–90, 3–101 face - definition 3–936 face extrude modifier 1–682 face/edge thresholds (optimize modifier) 1–748 faces assigning to smoothing groups 1–1009 beveling and extruding 1–1011 creating 1–1011 dividing 1–1011 tessellating 1–1011 faceted (glossary) 3–937 facial animation 2–1100 facial expression 1–729 fade filter (video post) 3–344 fade in/out (lights) 2–1345 falloff 2–1111, 2–1130, 2–1136, 2–1338 falloff map 2–1670 glossary 3–954 light falloff 3–753 family elements from Revit 3–457 rend
1066 Index file output 3–266 file properties 3–500 file types BIP 2–920, 3–916 BVH 3–920, 3–969 CAL 2–1070 CSM 2–1065, 3–920, 3–925, 3–969 CWS 3–135 FIG 2–936, 2–1070 .
Index arc rotate 3–744 array 1–448 default tangent types 3–721 dolly camera/target 3–746 dolly light/target 3–751 field of view 3–741 flyout (glossary) 3–943 material ID channel 2–1444 orbit/pan light 3–755 quick render 3–17 select and scale 1–440 selection region 1–80 timing preferences 3–815 use center 1–445 zoom extents 3–740 zoom extents all 3–737 focus plane 3–90 fog VRML97 helper 3–600 fog environment effect 3–282 folder motion flow editor 2–1041 foliage 1–210, 1–214 follow object binding to 2–461 gl
1068 Index free lights direct 2–1293 linear 2–1307 spot 2–1290 free-form deformation (FFD) box 2–91 box/cyl modifier 1–685 cylinder 2–95 modifier 1–683 select modifier 1–689 freeform 2–999 animation 2–902 convert to 2–999 converting to footsteps 2–885 inserting period between footsteps 2–883 method 2–833 setting period in footstep animations 2–883 freeform animation 2–886, 2–1002, 3–945 freeform method 3–945 freeze freeze rollout (display panel) 1–54 freeze/unfreeze (glossary) 3–945 freezing/unfreezing ob
Index tracker 2–671 types of 3–304 using transform gizmos 1–426 gizmos rollout 1–791 global and local exclude/include dialog (for raytraced maps and materials) 2–1531 global clip 2–1179, 2–1246 global clip controller 2–1241, 3–950 global event (particle flow) 3–949 global illumination 3–51, 3–61, 3–93, 3–106, 3–940 global illumination (mental ray) 3–80 global lighting (rendered environment) 3–272 global motion clip 2–1179 global raytracer settings dialog 2–1528 global settings and defaults for bitmap proxi
1070 Index light attributes 2–1351 shadows 3–223 styling 1–526 styling rollout 1–526 hair and fur and lighting 1–519, 3–220 rendering options 3–221 hair and fur feature components 1–517 hair and fur modifier 1–516 animation 1–520, 1–540, 1–545 display rollout 1–549 dynamics 1–520, 1–540, 1–545 dynamics rollout 1–545 frizz animation 1–520, 1–540 frizz parameters rollout 1–540 general parameters rollout 1–534 growth objects 1–517 guide hairs 1–518, 1–526 instanced hair 1–523 kink parameters rollout 1–542 ma
Index hierarchy panel 3–773 commands 2–487 IK 2–491 link info rollouts 2–499 pivot 2–487 hierarchy right-click menu (Track View) 2–516 hierarchy window (Track View) placing selected objects 2–588 selecting by name 2–589 high dynamic range images 3–613, 3–621 high-resolution rendering 3–197 highlights anisotropic 2–1492 Blinn 2–1493 metal 2–1494 multi-layer 2–1495 Oren-Nayar-Blinn 2–1493 Phong 2–1493 specular color 3–1014 hinge constraint 2–747 hinge polygons from edge dialog 1–1073 history list 3–390, 3–50
1072 Index IK rollouts 2–491 auto termination 2–499 display options 2–458 IK solver rollout 2–453 inverse kinematics 2–497 object parameters 2–491 spline IK solver rollouts 2–478 IK solvers 2–440, 2–446, 2–453, 2–461, 2–472 illegal video colors 2–1434 illuminance 3–955 image alpha filter (video post) 3–344 image file formats 3–608 image file list IFL control dialog 3–618 IFL manager utility 3–619 image filter event (video post) 3–335 image input event (video post) 3–332 image input options (video post) 3–
Index instanced hair hair and fur modifier 1–523 instanced modifiers 1–511 instanced objects AutoCAD 3–456 rendering properties 3–457 instances 1–472 glossary 3–957 make unique 2–575, 2–577 of maps 2–1451 overview 1–472 propagating materials 2–1432 propagation 2–1432 shape instance operator (particle flow) 2–178 instances in motion mixer 3–958 integration steps (particle flow) 2–139 intensity (light) 2–1276, 2–1279 intensity mapping 2–1539 intensity/color/attenuation parameters 2–1345 intensity/color/distr
1074 Index jumping dynamics of 2–878 parameters 2–861 K KBD files 3–793, 3–804 keep apart operator 2–172 key filters 2–590, 3–718 key info Bezier controllers 2–310 key info rollouts 2–304, 2–306 master track key info dialog 2–391 key info rollout 2–954 key interpolation 2–833 key mode 3–724 key modes (links) 2–430 key reduction settings 2–1070 using motion-capture filtering 2–1061 key tangents toolbar 2–535 key tools toolbar 2–535 keyable icons 2–531 keyboard additional commands 3–669 creating primitives
Index layer properties dialog 3–662 select dialog 3–438 layers toolbar 3–688 add selection to current layer 3–667 create new layer 3–667 select objects in current layer 3–667 set current layer to selection’s layer 3–667 layout (viewports) 1–26, 3–856 layout menu (Schematic View) 3–643 layout mode glossary 3–961 leg link 2–984 leg states 2–867 legacy DWG import 3–547 length 2–990 transition editor 2–1051 lens effects 3–223 auto secondary 3–238 blur 3–260 brightness and contrast 3–265 color balance 3–265 dep
1076 Index free direct 2–1293 free linear 2–1307 free point 2–1304 free spotlight 2–1290 light falloff 3–753 light include/exclude tool 2–1283 light lister 2–1285 mental ray shadow maps 2–1360 mr sky 2–1318 mr sun 2–1319 name and color rollout 2–1273 omni 2–1295 orbit/pan 3–755 photometric lights 2–1301 placing 1–7 positioning 2–1282 properties of 2–1276 roll 3–753 standard 2–1288 target area 2–1307 target direct 2–1292 target linear 2–1305 target point 2–1303 target spotlight 2–1289 truck 3–755 types of
Index list views (Schematic View) 3–645 listener listener window (glossary) 3–963 MAXScript listener 3–781 load 2–1070 buffer only 2–1065, 2–1070 file option 2–936 marker name file 2–1065 .
1078 Index macros path for additional 3–813 MACUtilities 2–665 main toolbar 3–686 main window 1–9 make absolute 3–809 make controller/object unique (Track View) 2–550 make curve on surface dialog 1–1226 make loft dialog 1–1234 make material copy 2–1442 make point curve dialog 1–1235 make point dialog 1–1235 make preview 2–1434, 3–168 make relative 3–809 make selected same size (video post) 3–328 make unique 1–504, 1–511, 2–577, 3–770 Material Editor 2–1442 particle view 2–127, 2–133 manage scene states 3–
Index marble 2–1673 mask 2–1689 mental ray shaders 2–1712 mix 2–1689 noise 2–1674 normal bump 2–1731, 3–150 ”other” (in the material/map browser) 2–1695, 2–1698 to 2–1699, 2–1703, 2–1711 to 2–1714, 2–1716 to 2–1717, 2–1719, 2–1721 to 2–1724, 2–1728 to 2–1732 output 2–1692 particle age 2–1675 particle MBlur 2–1676 Perlin marble 2–1677 planet 2–1678 procedural 3–997 projected 2–1341 raytrace 2–1698 reflect/refract 2–1699 reflection and refraction 2–1695 RGB multiply 2–1691 RGB tint 2–1693 show in viewport 2–
1080 Index applying in particle flow 2–186 applying to an object 2–1405 applying to objects 2–1409 arch & design (mental ray) 2–1549 architectural 2–1535 Architectural Desktop 3–446 assign to selection 2–1441 assigning 3–445, 3–454 AutoCAD Architecture 3–445 blend 2–1588 blocks 3–458 car paint (mental ray) 2–1576 changing 3–446, 3–454 combined when attaching objects/splines 1–295, 1–1011 components 2–1399 composite 2–1589 compound materials 2–1587 copying 2–1409 default material settings 2–1442 deleting 2
Index memory management 3–514 memory use 3–129 mental ray add/edit DBR host dialog 3–128 arch & design material 2–1549, 2–1562, 2–1569 car paint material and shader 2–1576 DGS material 2–1580 distributed bucket rendering 3–128 distributed bucket rendering rollout 3–124 glass material 2–1582 material 2–1544 object properties 1–126 satellite processors 3–128 satellites 3–124 subsurface scattering materials 2–1583 mental ray Connection rollout 2–1461 mental ray indirect illumination rollout 2–1343 mental ray
1082 Index skin wrap modifier 1–818 skin wrap patch modifier 1–824 turbosmooth modifier 1–868 working with mesh sub-objects 1–998 mesh - definition 3–972 mesh conversion 2–206 mesh density, and cloth 1–577 mesh editing 1–935 mesh object (as Physique skin) 2–1076 mesh size (reducing) 2–1099 mesher object 1–374 meshing parameters rollout (radiosity) 3–67 meshsmooth modifier 1–722 MeshSmooth modifier and cloth 1–576 meshsmooth selection dialog 1–1074 messages 3–124 meta-operators cache 2–197 metaballs 1–331,
Index and set key 2–281 and transforms 1–499 attribute holder 1–559 bend 1–560 bevel 1–562 bevel profile 1–565 camera correction 2–1392 camera map 1–513, 1–567 cap holes 1–569 cloth 1–578 conversion 1–871, 1–873 to 1–874 CrossSection 1–623 delete mesh 1–626 delete patch 1–627 delete spline 1–627 displace 1–629 displace mesh (world space) 1–514 displace NURBS (world space) 1–515 edit mesh 1–634 edit normals 1–634 edit patch 1–638 edit poly modifier 1–640 edit spline 1–680 extrude 1–680 face extrude 1–682 FF
1084 Index UVW mapping paste 1–934 UVW Xform 3–447, 3–455 UVW XForm 1–934 vertexpaint 1–936 volume select 1–952 wave 1–957 world space 1–512 WSM 1–512 XForm 1–959 modifiers menu 3–678 animation modifiers 1–557, 1–712, 1–754 to 1–755, 1–848 cache tools 1–758 free-form deformers 1–683, 1–685 mesh editing 1–569, 1–626, 1–634, 1–680, 1–682, 1–746, 1–748, 1–828, 1–834, 1–861, 1–865, 1–935 to 1–936 nurbs editing 1–557, 1–628, 1–848, 1–1101 parametric deformers 1–557, 1–560, 1–629, 1–709, 1–728, 1–743, 1–766, 1–
Index cloning clips 2–611 compare with motion flow 2–604 editor 2–646 export animation 2–624 filtering biped parts 2–645 how to use 2–604 importing clips 2–609 menus 2–629 moving clips 2–611 optimize transition 2–641 preferences 2–651 replacing clips 2–611 reservoir 2–649 toolbar 2–642 trackgroups 2–612 transitions 2–616 user interface 2–628 weight curve 2–619 motion panel 2–301, 2–303 to 2–304, 2–306, 2–463, 2–933, 3–774 motion parameters rollout 2–1183 motion synthesis 2–1172, 3–977 global clip controlle
1086 Index naming materials 2–1409 natural light 2–1280 navigating 3D space 1–21 blocks 3–460 camera and light views 1–33 hierarchies 2–416, 2–425 rendered panorama 3–173 viewports 3–735 navigating the workbench 2–1010 navigator (material/map) 2–1447 NavInfo (VRML97 helpers) 3–599 neck link 2–984 negative filter (video post) 3–345 nested expressions (HTML help viewer) 3–876 net render control (common parameters rollout) 3–79 network working folder 3–487 network plug-in configuration 3–814 network renderin
Index numbers of links that can affect a vertex 2–834 show/hide all 2–944 numeric calculator 1–12 numerical expression evaluator 1–12 NURBS 2–834 and animation 1–1091 and modifiers 1–1089 animation tips 1–1099 blend curve 1–1158 blend surface 1–1183 cap surface 1–1195 chamfer curve 1–1161 concepts 1–1091 creating models 1–1094 curve approximation 1–1238 curve fit 1–1157 curve point 1–1220 curve sub-objects 1–1135 CV curve 1–1110 CV surface 1–1103 definition 1–1091 extrude surface 1–1188 fixing problems wit
1088 Index objects 1–153, 2–960, 2–1282 aligning 2–8 arraying 1–484 binding 2–461 color 1–159 combining 1–338, 1–378, 1–388 copies/instances/references 1–472 creating 1–157 exporting 3–486 freezing and unfreezing 1–70 glossary 3–981 make controller unique (Track View) 2–550 modeling 1–5 modifying multiple objects 1–509 object properties 1–117 select and manipulate 2–15 select and move 1–439 select and rotate 1–439 to 1–440 selecting 1–61, 1–77 selecting by material 2–1439 techniques for cloning 1–474 usin
Index optimize motion flow 2–1058 motion mixer 2–641 transition 2–641, 2–1058 optimize modifier 1–748 optimize transition transition editor 2–1051 optimizing performance (particle flow) 2–120 options 3–828 grid and snap 2–46 Material Editor 2–1436 rendering 3–826 viewports 3–821 options menu Track View 2–526 options menu (particle view) 2–130 options menus (Schematic View) 3–644 to 3–645 orbit/pan camera 2–1381, 3–749 light 3–755 Oren-Nayar-Blinn basic parameters rollout 2–1482 Oren-Nayar-Blinn highlights
1090 Index parameter editor 1–129 parameter space (glossary) 3–988 parameter wiring 1–104, 2–411 to 2–412 parameters custom attributes 1–129 HD Solver 2–491 notes 1–145 parameter collector 1–138 parameter collector menu bar 1–142 parameter editor 1–129 wiring 2–411 parameters panel (particle view) display of 2–129 glossary 3–988 parameters rollout 1–791 parametric (glossary) 3–989 parametric stride length 2–992, 2–995, 2–997 parametric stride width 2–992, 2–995, 2–997 parent overlap 2–1130 PArray 2–256, 2
Index particle motion blur 2–240 particle spawn rollout (PArray) 2–271 particle type rollout (PArray) 2–262 positioning 2–147 to 2–148 rendered as 2–206 rotation 2–153 scaling 2–156 size 2–176 spawn particles 3–1014 speed 2–123, 2–159, 2–162, 2–167, 2–172 spinning 2–154 synchronize animated bitmap textures 2–121 testing particle scale 2–227 unexpected spawning 2–122 viewport display 2–202 PASS file mental ray renderer 3–990 paste 2–1141, 2–1147 a material, map, bitmap, or color 2–1418 paste controller (Tra
1092 Index mr sky light 2–1318 mr sun light 2–1319 photometric webs 2–1326 preset lights 2–1302 target area light 2–1307 target linear light 2–1305 target point light 2–1303 web 2–1326 web parameters 2–1355 photometry 3–993 photon map 3–994 photon maps 3–93, 3–106 photorealistic renderer 3–38 PHY files 2–1098, 2–1106, 2–1263, 3–994 physical scale 3–295 to 3–297, 3–300 physique 2–834, 2–1080, 2–1083, 3–994 and changing geometry 2–1104 and FFDs 2–1104 and groups 2–1083 and other modifiers 2–1104 applying 2–
Index point surface 1–1102 glossary 3–996 sub-object 1–1181 point-path constraint 2–762 point-point constraint 2–750 point3 XYZ controller 2–317 polar snapping mode 2–39 poly select modifier 1–762 polygon - definition 3–936 polygon count 1–1253, 3–861 polyhedra 1–187 POmniFlect space warp 2–78 ponytails 2–984 pose copying and pasting 2–966 pose adjustment 2–1070 poses 3–996 adding 2–1096 copying between bipeds 2–910 reference 2–1076 posing bipeds 2–847 position changing 1–423 ranges (Track View) 2–574 posi
1094 Index priority rollout 2–1235 prism 1–205 prismatic constraint 2–754 PRJ files 3–531, 3–902 problems 3–883 problems caused by unit settings 3–891 ProBoolean 1–378 procedural maps dent 2–1667 glossary 3–997 wood 2–1684 procedures 2–1264 process options rollout 3–124 processing panel mental ray 3–86 processing parameters rollout (radiosity) 3–64 ProCutter 1–388 production render 3–17 productivity 2–833 profile 2–1141 profile view 2–1114 program window 1–9 progressive morphing 1–737 project file format
Index quadtree 3–999 quaternion rotation 2–916, 2–948 quaternion/tcb 2–916 quaternions 2–318 queue video post 3–312 queue manager 3–999 queue monitor client (glossary) 3–999 quick align 1–465 quick render ActiveShade 3–17 flyout 3–17 production 3–17 quick start (batch rendering) 3–201 quickslice 1–676, 1–1058 QuickTime movies 3–621 R radial dialogs density 3–256 falloff 3–257 size 3–259 radial scale 2–1130, 2–1136 parameters (links) 2–1091 radiance file format 3–613 radiance map 3–613 radiance picture fil
1096 Index reactor analyze world 2–813 angular dashpot 2–732 car-wheel constraint 2–757 cloth 2–778 cloth collection 2–781 cloth modifier 2–778 collisions rollout 2–810 compound rigid bodies 2–722 constraint solver 2–736 constraints 2–724 cooperative constraints 2–735 create animation 2–806 deformable bodies 2–777 deformable constraints 2–795 deforming mesh collection 2–794 deforming meshes 2–793 display rollout 2–812 FFD soft bodies 2–786 fracture 2–770 frequently asked questions 2–821 gravity 2–808 hing
Index refine editable spline segments 1–303 editable spline vertices 1–297 glossary 3–1002 refining curves and surfaces (concept) 1–1091 reflect/refract map 2–1699, 3–83 reflectance display 2–1430 reflection maps 2–1508, 2–1695 reflections 3–88 refraction maps 2–1509, 2–1695 refractions 3–88 refresh content communication center 3–715 refresh viewport display 1–50 regathering 3–61 region 1–65 selection 1–65, 1–80, 1–89 to 1–91 selection method (edit menu) 1–92 selection preferences 3–860 zoom region (partic
1098 Index elements separately 3–137 email notification 3–33 large images 3–828 on multiprocessor systems 3–828 portions of scene 2–1379 preferences settings 3–826 presets 3–23 reactor toolbar 3–688 render farms 3–180 render operator (particle flow) 2–206 rendering method 3–853 scene 1–9 shapes 1–262 to texture 3–144, 3–146, 3–150 with caustics (mental ray) 3–80 with global illumination (mental ray) 3–80 with motion blur 3–89 with shadow maps 3–89 rendering algorithms rollout 3–116 rendering commands rend
Index tint 2–1693 right-click menus 3–694 additional quad menus 3–696 animation 3–697 customize display 3–787 display option 3–821 display preference setting 3–821 event display (particle view) 2–133 HTML help viewer 3–879 material editor copy and paste 2–1418 modifier stack 3–766 morpher modifier 1–729 named selection sets 1–85 NURBS 1–1082 sample slot 2–1422 Schematic View selection 3–653 snaps 2–41 spinner 2–282 Track View 2–516, 2–534 Track View toolbar 2–603 viewports 3–731 XRef entities list (XRef ob
1100 Index sample range (glossary) 3–1004 sample rate 3–98 sample slot 2–1420, 2–1422 active 2–1441 adding bitmap 2–1631 and material name 2–1396 background 2–1433 backlight 2–1432 cool 2–1442 default 2–1442 display adjustment 2–1436 hot 2–1442 right-click menu 2–1422 sample type cube 2–1432 cylinder 2–1432 sphere 2–1432 sample UV tiling 2–1433 samples animations 2–920 motion files 2–920 samples threshold (motion capture) 2–655 sampling 3–1005 filters 3–98 sampling quality rollout 3–98 thresholds 3–98 sat
Index scene motion blur (glossary) 3–1007 scene state camera properties 3–518 camera transforms 3–518 delete 3–520 environment 3–518 layer assignments 3–518 layer properties 3–518 light properties 3–518 light transforms 3–518 materials 3–518 object properties 3–518 rename 3–520 restore 3–520 save 3–520 selected parts 3–518 scenegraph 3–581 scenes 1–4 animating 1–8 archiving 1–19 backing up 1–19 importing 1–16 managing 3–385 merging 1–16 rendering 1–9 replacing 1–16 Schematic View delete Schematic View 3–65
1102 Index by link 2–1089, 2–1150 clip/transition 2–1027, 2–1045 multiple biped links 2–895 nearest bulge angle 2–1095, 2–1114, 2–1141 select all (edit menu) 1–87 select and link button 2–422 select and manipulate 2–15 select background image dialog 1–42 select bitmap image file dialog 2–1635 select invert (edit menu) 1–88 select keys by time (Track View) 2–563 select layers dialog 3–438 select linked objects dialog 3–440 select none (edit menu) 1–88 select object (main toolbar) 1–77 select objects dialog
Index self-illumination 2–1480 to 2–1482, 2–1487 self-illumination (glossary) 3–1009 self-illumination mapping 2–1502 send out test 2–230 separate tracks options 2–888, 2–980, 2–1002 separating particles 2–172 server setup and managing (network rendering) 3–182 set all 2–1070 set as skin pose 1–116 set bulge angle 2–1114, 2–1141 set current layer to selection’s layer 3–667 set free key 2–956 set key 2–280, 2–904, 2–956, 2–962, 3–718 set lowest starting foot height to Z=0 2–936 set multiple keys 2–965 set p
1104 Index shortcuts 3–871 Biped 2–1006 Crowd 2–1182 particle flow 2–140 Physique 2–1111 shortcuts - default keyboard Track View 2–510 unwrap UVW 1–900 show show curves button 3–705 show dependencies (views menu) 1–47 show end result (Material Editor) 2–1446 show end result (modifier stack) 1–503 show frame numbers (viewports preference) 3–821 show ghosting (views menu) 1–46 show home grid (views menu) 2–34 show key times (views menu) 1–46 show last rendering (rendering menu) 3–25 show map in viewport (Ma
Index slider manipulator 2–31 slider, time/frame 3–701 sliding 2–1136 angle 2–1070 distance 2–1070 footsteps 2–1064, 3–1013 parameters (links) 2–1091 sliding and rotational joints (HI IK solver) 2–459 sliding angle 2–1070 sliding distance 2–1070 sliding door 1–251 sliding joints 2–485 to 2–486, 2–496 sliding key defaults 2–956 sliding window 1–261 smart scale 1–440 smart select 1–77, 1–80 smoke map 2–1679 smooth 2–1111 smooth modifier 1–828 smooth rotation controller 2–374 smooth twist mode 2–952 smoothing
1106 Index spawning particles 2–215, 2–230, 3–1014 special controls 1–12 special-purpose controllers 2–296 specification 3–597, 3–954 specify conversion parameters once option 2–1075 specify parameters for each file option 2–1075 specifying default controller values 2–294 default controllers 2–294 reference coordinate system 1–435 speckle map 2–1680 specular color 3–1014 color mapping 2–1500 level mapping 2–1501 specular highlight 2–1481 specular highlights anisotropic 2–1492 Blinn 2–1493 metal 2–1494 mul
Index spiral 1–235 straight 1–239 u-type 1–243 standard flow operator 2–209 standard helpers 2–16 compass 2–27 dummy 2–16 expose transform 2–17 exposetm 2–17 grid 2–20 point 2–23 protractor 2–26 tape 2–24 standard lights 2–1272, 2–1288 skylight 2–1296 standard material 2–1465 standard materials shaders (glossary) 3–1010 standard primitives 1–170 box 1–171 cone 1–172 cylinder 1–177 GeoSphere 1–176 plane 1–185 pyramid 1–182 sphere 1–174 teapot 1–183 torus 1–180 tube 1–179 standard snaps 2–11 standard user gr
1108 Index propagation 2–1432 styling hair hair and fur modifier 1–518, 1–526 styling rollout hair and fur modifier 1–526 sub-materials 3–815 sub-object chamfer curve (NURBS) 1–1161 common controls 1–1122 glossary 3–1017 material assignment 2–1424 selection 1–74, 1–506, 1–508, 1–998, 1–1084 sub-objects Physique 2–1129 subanim controller 2–896 subdivide 1–986, 1–1011, 1–1019 subdivide modifier 1–839 subdivide modifier (world space) 1–555 subdivision displacement rollout editable poly 1–1063 subdivision sur
Index taper modifier 1–863 targa files (glossary) 3–633, 3–997 target and particles 2–218 camera 3–746 lights 2–1289, 2–1292, 2–1303 to 2–1305, 2–1307 target area light 2–1307 target camera 2–1371 target distance 3–90 target linear light 2–1305 target map slot 3–150 target objects - look at controller 2–344 target point light 2–1303 TCB 2–957 controllers 2–377 glossary 3–1020 TCB (biped) 3–1019 tcb rotation controller 2–891 teapot 1–183 techniques cloning objects 1–474 NURBS 1–1094 tee 1–287 teeter deforma
1110 Index and HD IK solver 2–463 color 2–1681 to 2–1682 edge visibility 1–1006 error (camera tracker) 2–677 explode angle 1–1011 LOD 1–1253 motion capture samples 2–655 noise 2–1650, 2–1652, 2–1674, 3–282, 3–288 optimize 1–748 planar 1–719, 1–996 position/rotation (IK) 2–463 reduce keys 2–572 safe video 2–1434 sound 2–386 super black 3–826 supersampling 2–1459 use secondary (IK) 3–830 weld 1–297, 1–842, 1–888, 1–920, 1–1011, 3–542, 3–586 thumbnails open file 3–387 viewport image 3–819 ticks (glossary) 3–
Index displaying toolbars 3–787 dope sheet 2–538 extras 3–688 extras dope sheet toolbar 2–541 HTML help viewer 3–878 icon scheme 3–806 layers 3–688 main 3–686 ranges toolbar 2–541 reactor 2–706, 3–688 render shortcuts 3–689 Schematic View 3–649 snaps 3–690 toolbars panel (customize UI) 3–794 troubleshooting when missing 3–893 video post 3–323 toolbox (NURBS) 1–1083 tools for low-polygon modeling 1–1252 Material Editor 2–1427 precision 2–1 rename objects 1–128 tools menu 3–674 align 1–462 align camera 1–468
1112 Index ranges toolbar 2–541 selecting with 1–69 shortcuts 2–510 sound options 2–520 status bar/view controls 2–588 time menu 2–526 tracks menu 2–524 utilities 2–561 to 2–564 utilities menu 2–533 value display 2–594 view menu 2–532 working with 2–503 workspace 2–504 zoom 2–596 zoom horizontal extents 2–595 zoom region 2–597 zoom selected object 2–588 zoom value extents 2–596 Track View utilities current value editor 2–565 tracker gizmo 2–671 trackgroup filter 2–645 trackgroup filter dialog 2–631, 2–645
Index translucency 2–1491, 2–1538 glossary 3–1027 translucent highlights 2–1496 translucent shader 2–1484 transmittance display 2–1430 transparency 2–1537 TRC convert into CSM 2–665, 3–577 importing 3–577 tri patch 1–995 triangle count 1–1253, 3–861 triangle pelvis 2–984 and physique 2–846 trigonometric functions 1–150 trim clips motion mixer 2–615 trim overlapping segments 1–308 trim/extend modifier 1–866 troubleshooting 3–883 assertion failed errors 3–883 basic troubleshooting start point 3–896 Boolean o
1114 Index unhide all 2–1150 unified motion create 2–1038 uniform scale 1–441 unify normals 1–166, 3–429 units and display of mouse position 3–709 automatic unit conversion 3–387 file load units mismatch 3–852 mismatch 3–852 setup 3–848 synchronizing between programs 3–422 system setup 3–850 troubleshooting problems with 3–891 unit scale preference 3–815 using 2–2 universal deflector 2–89 universal naming convention (UNC) 3–1028 unlink selection 2–422 unlock character 1–115 unlock assignments 2–1150 unloc
Index select by name 1–67 selection filters 1–68 shapes 1–262 shift+clone 1–478 spawned particles 2–242 standard view navigation 1–29 transform gizmos 1–426 transforms 1–424 transforms to aim a camera 2–1379 units 2–2 using crowds behaviors 2–1162 crowd helper 2–1157 delegate helper 2–1157 using props 2–898 using the track sets list 2–590 utilities animation 2–653 asset browser 3–504 assign vertex colors 2–1734 camera match 2–1387 camera tracker 2–667 channel info 2–1738 clean multimaterial 2–1742 collapse
1116 Index vertex 2–1089 operations 2–1150 settings 2–1111, 2–1113 vertex sub-object 2–1150 vertex - definition 3–1030 vertex alpha 1–938 vertex color 1–936 rendering 2–1693 vertex color map 2–1693 vertex count 1–1253, 3–861 vertex display size 3–822 vertex illumination 1–938 vertex normals (scaling) 1–996 vertex to link assignment initialization 2–1123 vertex type 1–975 vertex weld modifier 1–935 vertex-link assignments 2–1111, 2–1113 vertexpaint modifier 1–936 adjust color dialog 1–949 brush options 1–9
Index lens effects filters 3–345 lens effects gradient colors 3–381 lens effects gradient options 3–378 lens effects gradient types 3–379 make an object glow 3–315 make same size 3–328 manual secondary flare parameters 3–357 negative filter 3–345 new sequence 3–323 open sequence 3–323 pseudo alpha compositor 3–382 pseudo alpha filter 3–346 queue 3–312 render in reverse 3–315 resize images 3–315 save sequence 3–324 simple additive compositor 3–383 simple cross fade 3–315 simple wipe compositor 3–383 simple
1118 Index viewport navigation walkthrough 1–30, 3–738 viewport properties menu 3–731 viewport renderer (glossary) 3–1030 viewport rendering 3–853 viewport shaders 2–1464 lightmap 2–1614 metal bump 2–1614 viewport shading 3–853 viewports 1–22, 3–729 and display of modifier effect 3–760 arc rotate snap angle preference 3–821 background 1–38 configuring 3–853 controlling rendering 1–27 create snapshot of 1–35 DirectX manager rollout 2–1464 general concepts 1–22 grab 1–35 layout 3–856 navigating 3–735 prefer
Index water 2–801 rendering 2–803 space warp 2–801 wave wave modifier 1–957 waveform controller 2–381 wave space warp 2–100 wavefront files (obj, mtl) 3–588 Wavefront material files 3–590 Wavefront object files 3–589 waves map 2–1683 web distribution 2–1325 to 2–1326 web distribution (photometric lights) 2–1355 web parameters rollout 2–1355 web site getting content from 3–504 weight 2–1114, 2–1141, 2–1150 assignments (Skin modifier) 1–807 assignments (vertex) 2–1092 vertices (Skin modifier) 1–791 weight ta
1120 Index MapScaler 1–551 PatchDeform 1–552 PathDeform 1–552 subdivide 1–555 surface mapper 1–556 SurfDeform 1–557 world-space tripod 3–729 wrap cursor near spinner 3–815 wrectangle 1–284 WSM modifier 1–512, 1–550 camera map 1–513 displace mesh 1–514 displace NURBS 1–515 MapScaler 1–551 PatchDeform 1–552 PathDeform 1–552 subdivide 1–555 surface mapper 1–556 SurfDeform 1–557 X XAF files 3–472 adding to motion mixer 2–609 adjust time in motion mixer 2–615 adjusting in motion mixer 2–611 combining with mix
