8

1294 Chapter 16: Material Editor, Materials, and Maps
Changing One M ater i al into A nother
Probably the easiest way to animate the change
of one material into another is to create a
Blend
material (page 2–1397)
, ma ke the two other
materials its sub-materials, and then animate its
Mix Amount parameter.
Preview and P layba ck
When you animate a material, or use an animated
bitmap in a m aterial, you can create and v iew a
preview of this material before you decide to use
it in a fully rendered animation.
See also
Creating and Playing Animated Material Previews
(page 2–1294)
Synchronizing an Animated Bitmap with the
Scene (page 2–1294)
Creati ng and P lay ing Ani mated
Material Previews
You can create a preview movie of an animated
material. Use
Make Preview (page 2–1278) in the
Material Editor. Clicking this button displays the
Create Material Preview dialog (page 2–1296) ,
which like the Renderer has controls for w hich
frames to render, playback speed, and output size.
The preview movie is saved in the
\previews
subdirectory in a file called _medit.avi .Eachtime
you create a new preview, the Material Editor
overwrites this file. To keep a preview mov ie on
hand, save it under a different name by using the
Save Preview button on the same flyout as Make
Preview.
Pr ocedur es
To create a preview of an animated material:
1.
Choose Make Prev iew from the flyout.
2. IntheCreateMaterialPreviewdialog,setthe
preview conditions y ou want, and then click
OK.
The Material Editor creates the preview.
To play back a preview of an animated material:
1.
Choose Play Preview from the flyout.
TheMaterialEditorstartstheWindowsMedia
Player with the active preview movie loaded.
2. Click Play to view the preview movie.
Tosaveapreviewmovieunderadifferentname:
1.
Choose Save Prev iew from the flyout.
The Material Editor displays a file save dialog.
2. Enteranewnameforthepreview,andthen
click OK.
Sy nchr oniz ing an A nimated
B itmap with the S cene
Bitmaps (page 2–1441) have a Time rollout with
controls that let you synchronize an animated
bitmap with scene animation.
Interfa ce
Start Frame—Theframenumberofthe3dsMax
scene at which the bitmap animation beg ins to
play.
Playback R ate—S ets the bitmap’s playback rate.
This value is a multiplier: 1.0 is one bitmap frame
per scene frame, 2.0 i s twice as fast, 3.33 is 1/3 as
fast, and so on. Default=1.0.