9

ActiveShade 19
quad menu, then clicking the object you w ant
toselect.InanActiveShadeviewport,onlyone
object at a time can be selected.
Tip: When an object in an ActiveShade w indow has
a mapped material, select it before you change a
map or adjust its parameters.
What ActiveShade Does a nd Doesn’ t Do
For the sake of interactivity, the ActiveShade
windowislimitedinwhatitwillandwon’tupdate
interactively. An ActiveShade rendering is not
necessarily the same, and in general is less precise,
than a final production rendering.
Tip: When you change geometry by t r ansforming
it or modifying it, right-click the ActiveShade
window and choose Tools > Initialize from the
quad menu (lower-right quadrant). This updates
the ActiveShade rendering.
• Movinganobjectdoesnotupdatethe
ActiveShade window .
• Applying a modifier or otherwise chang ing
object geometry does not interactively update
the ActiveShade window.
• Reflections are rendered only in the Initialize
pass.
• Materials are displayed as RGBA data with 8
bits per channel.
• Multiple changes to a material might lead to
deterioration in image quality.
If you see this happening , right-click the
ActiveShade window and choose Tools >
Initialize from the quad menu (lower-right
quadrant).
• Masks are reduced f rom 8x8 to 4x4 subdivisions
per pixel. The mask is corrected to 6-bit opacity
(0 to 63 rather than 0 to 255). This mig ht result
in some v isual noise around object edges.
• Because of the preceding item, filters are coarser
than in full-scale renderings, but they still have
significant subpixel information.
• There is a limitation of 16 subdivisions per
pixel. B ecause of this, any objects behind the
sixteenth occluding object for a given pixel
wi ll be ignored. Rendered back faces count as
separate objects.
• Reshading u ses compressed normals and other
direction vectors. This should have no visible
effect.
• ActiveShade do es not render atmospheric
effects, rendering effects, or ray-t raced
shadows (the only shadows it can render are
shadow-mapped shadows).
Procedures
To display an ActiveShade window in a viewport, do
one of the fol lowing:
• Choose Rendering menu > ActiveShade
Viewport.
• Right-clicktheviewportlabel,chooseViews,
and then ActiveShade.
Note: You can’t m ake a maximized
viewport an ActiveShade window, or maximize
an ActiveShade window.
To display a free-floating ActiveShade window, do
one of the fol lowing:
• Choose Rendering menu > ActiveShade
Floater.
•
Choose Quick Render (ActiveShade)
from the Quick Render f lyout (page 3–17).
Note: As with Quick Render, the ActiveShade
w indow respects the Output Size setting in the
Render Scene dialog (page 3–2).Touseadifferent
render size, set it first in Render Scene, and then
open the Act iveShade window.