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18 Chapter 17: Rendering
ActiveShade preview of material changes
Above left: Before the update
Above right: After changing the material for the fabric to a
mapped material an d increasing the highlights on the material
for the wood
ActiveShade preview of lighting changes
Above left: Before moving a light in a viewport
Above r ight: After moving the light
There are two ActiveShade options:
•
Viewport—The ActiveShade rendering appears
in the active viewport.
•
Floater —The ActiveShade rendering
appears in its own window.
OnlyoneActiveShadewindowcanbeactiveat
atime. IfyouchooseoneoftheActiveShade
commands while an ActiveShade window is
already ac tive, 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 v iewpor t reverts to the view it prev iously
showed.
Tip: You can drag and drop materials from the
Material Editor (page 2–1409) to ActiveShade
windows and view ports, as you can with other
view por ts.
Note: You can’t ma ke a maximized viewport
an Ac tiveShade window, or maximize an
ActiveShade window .
ActiveSh ade Commands
When you right-click an ActiveShade window, the
quad menu (page 3–694) displays an ActiveShade
menu. This menu contains a number of
ActiveShade commands (page 3–22).
Acti v e S h ad e and Ob ject S e l e ct i o n
If you select an object b efore you invoke
ActiveShade, ActiveShade is done only for that
object. This can greatly increase the speed of
ActiveShade.
Similarly, once the ActiveShade window is open,
the initialize and update steps (page 3–904)
(whether automatic or manual) are done only for
the selected object.
In a "docked" ActiveShade v iewport, you can
select objects by r ight-clicking, turning on S elect
Object in the Tools (lower-right) quadrant of the