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42 Chapter 2: Viewing and Navigating 3D Space
Keyboard shortcut: Ct rl+Alt+B
Wa rning: If you zoom in too far, you can exceed the
limit of virtual memory, and crash 3ds Max. When you
perform a zoom that requires more than 16 megabytes
of virtual memory, an alert asks if you want to display the
background during the zoom. Choose No to perform
the zoom and turn off the background. Choose Yes to
zoom with the background im age. Your machine might
run out of memory as a result.
Animate Backgroun d
Turnsonanimationofthebackground.Showsthe
appropriateframeofthebackgroundvideointhe
scene.
ApplySourceAndDisplayTogroup
All V iews—Assigns the background image to all
viewports.
Active Only—Assigns the background image to
only the active viewport.
Viewport
Thenameofthecurrentlyactiveviewportappears
in a list to the lef t of the OK and Cancel buttons.
This reminds you which viewport you’re working
w ith and lets you change the active viewpor t by
selecting its name from the list.
Note: When you use different images for different
viewports, the sett ings for each viewport are stored
separately. Each time you display the Viewport
Background dialog, the sett ings of the cur rently
active viewport are displayed. If you switch the
viewport using the list, the settings remain the
same.Thisisusefulforcopyingsettingsfromone
viewport to another.
Select B ack ground Image Dialog
Views menu > Viewpor t Background > Background
Source group > Files > Select Background Image dialog
UFO model rendered against a background
The Select Background Image dialog allows you
to choose a file or sequence of files for a viewport
background.
You can also convert a set of sequent ially numbered
files to an Image File List (IFL) (page 3–616).This
isthesameprocessusedbytheIFL Manager Utility
(page 3–619).
Procedures
To select a background image for a viewport:
1.
Activatetheviewportwhereyouwantthe
image.
2. Choose Views menu > Viewport Background.
3. Under Background Source in the dialog that
displays, click Files.
4. In the Look In field, navigate to the directory
containingthefileyouwanttouseforthe
background.
Note: The S elect Background Image File dialog
uses the last location where a bitmap was
chosen, rather than t he default bitmap path
defined on the Configure User Paths dialog
(page 3–808).