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634 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects
Targa files are widely used to render stil l 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.
Inter face
Clicking Render or Setup in the Render Output File
dialog (page 3–9) displays the Targa Image Control
dialog.
When you render to a Targa file, you have the
following options:
Image Attributes group
B its-Per -Pix el—Choose the color depth: 16-bit,
24-bit, or 32-bit.
Co mpress—Applieslosslesscompressiontothefile.
Alpha S plit—Creates a separate file for the
alpha channel. The file name created for the
alpha-channel file starts with a_ and then appends
thefullfilename. Forexample,ifyoucheckthis
box and render the file greek004.tga,3dsMax
creates the fi le a_greek004.tga for the alpha
channel.(Sometimesthenamewillbelongerthan
8characters.)
Pre-Multiplied Alpha—When on, pre-multiplies the
alpha channel. Pre-multiplying saves computation
time if you later use this image in compositing. See
Premultiplied Alpha (page 3–997).
Additional Information group
Author Na me, Job Name/ID, Comments—These
fields are available for you to add information
about the file.
Note: To control w hether or not the renderer
uses the env ironment map’s alpha channel in
creating the alpha for the rendered image, choose
Customize > Preferences > Rendering, and
thenturnonUseEnvironmentAlphainthe
Background Antialiasing group.
If U se Environment Alpha is turned off (the
default) the backg round receives an alpha of 0
(completely transparent). If Use Environment
Alpha is turned on, the alpha of the resulting image
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.
TIFF Files
TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) is a
multiplatform bitmap (page 3–917) format
originating on the Macintosh® and in
desktop-publishing applications. TIFF is a
common choice if you plan to send your output
to a print service bureau or import the image into
apage-layoutprogram.