8

Bitmap 2D Map 1441
Bitmap 2D Map
Material Editor > Maps rollout > Click a M a p button. >
Material/Map B rowser > Bitmap
Bitmaps shown in Material Editor sample slots
A bitmap is an image produced by a fixed matrix
of colored pixels, like a mosaic. Bitmaps are useful
for creating many kinds of materials, from wood
grains and wall surfaces to skin and feathers. You
can a lso use an animation or video file instead of a
bitmap to create an animated material.
When you assign the Bitmap map, the
Select
Bitmap Image File dialog (page 2–1445)
opens
automat ically. Use this dialog to specify a file or
sequence as the bitmap image.
The Bitmap map c an synchronize the frames of a
bitmap sequence to the age of particles to which
the map is applied. With this effe ct, each particle
displays the sequence from the start when it is
born, rather t han b eing ass igned whichever frame
is current. This is achieved by turning on the
Sync
Frames To Particle Age check box
.Also,when
using Particle Flow, assign the mater ia l containing
the Bitmap map to a Material Dynamic operator.
For more details and a pro cedure, see
Material
Dynamic Operator (page 2–187)
.
Note: To save loading time, if a map with the
same name is in two different locations (in two
different paths), it is loaded only once. This poses
aproblemonlyifyoursceneincludestwomaps
thathavedifferentcontentbutthesamename.
In this case, only the first map encountered will
appear in the scene.
Suppor ted File Types
The Material Editor supports t he following file
formats:
AVI fi les (page 3–658)
BMP files (page 3–659)
CIN files (Kodak Cineon) (page 3–659)
DDS fi les (page 3–660)
FLC files (page 3–662)
GIF files (page 3–662)
IFL files (page 3–666)
JPEG files (page 3–670)
MOV files (QuickTime Movies) (p age 3–670)
MPEG files (page 3–671)
PNG files (page 3–678)
PSD fi les (page 3–678)
RGB files (SGI format) (page 3–683)
RLA files (page 3–680)
RPF files (page 3–681)
TGA files (Targa) (page 3–683)
TIFF files (page 3–684)
YUV files (page 3–685)
Note: If your scene includes animated bitmaps
with materials, projector lights, or environments,
the animation file is reloaded once per frame. If
your scene uses multiple animations, or if the
animations are large fi les, rendering w i l l be slower.