9

Make Preview, Play Preview, Save Preview 1435
you could map an animation of moving clouds to
aclerestorywindow.TheMakePreviewoptions
letyouexperimentwiththeeffectintheMaterial
Editor before you apply it to your scene.
ThebuttonsontheMakePreview,PlayPreview,
Save Preview flyout let you preview the effect of
an animated map on the object in a sample slot
(see Sample Ty pe (page 2–1432) for alternatives to
thedefaultsphere.)YoucanuseanAV I f i l e ( p a g e
3–609),orIFL file (page 3–616) as a source for the
animation. The finished preview is saved as a new
AVI file and automatically played back. You can
also view the preview in a sample slot by dragging
the time slider.
This flyout has three options:
•
Mak e Preview—Displays a Create Material
Preview dialog (page 2–1452) to create an AVI
file of the animated material.
When the preview is complete, it is saved as
_medit.avi in the \previews subdirectory. The
file is then opened in the Windows Media
Player and played back.
Without this option, the on ly other way to
preview a complex animated material in real
time is to use the renderer (page 3–27) to render
an animated sequence and save it to an AVI file,
a digital disk recorder, or a video tape recorder .
•
Play Preview—Uses the Windows Media
Player to play the current _medit.avi preview
file in the \previews subdirectory.
•
Save Preview—Saves the _medit.avi
preview to an AVI file of a different name in the
\previews subdirectory.
Pr ocedur es
To create a preview of an animated material:
1.
Choose Make Prev iew from the flyout.
2. IntheCreateMaterialPreviewdialog,setthe
preview conditions you want, and then click
OK.
The preview is created, and then plays.
To play back a preview of an animated material:
• Choose Play Preview from the fly out.
The Material Editor starts the Windows
Media Player. The Player then loads the
current _medit.avi preview file in the \previews
subdirectory and plays it in a separate window.
To view an animated material in a sample slot:
• Drag the time slider through the range of
frames.
By default, all sample slots with animated m aps
updateatthesametime. Tochangethis,see
Material Editor Options Dialog (page 2–1436).
To s ave a pr evi ew u nder a dif fer ent na me:
1.
Choose Save Preview from the flyout.
The Material Ed itor displays a File Save dialog.
2. Enteranewnameforthepreview,andthen
click OK to save the file in the \previews
subdirectory.
To play a r enamed pr ev iew:
1.
Choose Tools menu > Display Image.
2. In the View File dialog, change to the \previews
subdirectory.
3. Select the renamed preview file and click Open.
The preview is played in a separate window.