8

1040 Glossary
Function curves appear in the Track View, and
provide the best method of viewing and editing
animation tr acks. With the funct ion curve display,
you can ac tually see the characterist ics of the
animationastheychangeovertime.Thesteepness
of the curve indicates the velocity of an object
inthescene.Ifthecurvesteepens,theobjectis
accelerating. If the curve flattens out, the objec t
is slowing.
You can display key dots in funct ion curves, as well
as in the key editing displays. In function curves,
the key dots appear as small, black squares. The
two ways to turn on their display are to click the
green icon beside the track label, or to click the
function curve itself.
There are two basic ways to edit function curves.
You can either change the posit ion of the key dots,
thereby altering the cur ve, or you c an edit the
tangents and the values of the keys themselves.
Fu sin g
In NU RBS curves and surfaces, fusing connects a
point to a point or a CV to a CV. (You can’t fuse a
CV to a point, or vice versa.) This is one way to
connect two curves or sur faces. It is also a way to
change the shape of curves and sur faces.
Fused points b ehave as a single point or CV until
you unfuse them. Fusing points does not combine
the two point objects or CV sub-objects. They are
connected but remain distinct sub-objects that
you can unfuse later .
Fused CVs behave much like a single point, but the
property of multiplicity for coincident CVs also
applies.ThefusedCVshaveproportionallymore
influence on the curve, which can become more
sharplycurvedinthefusedCVs’vicinity,oreven
angular if more than t wo CVs are fused together.
FX File
An FX file defines a DirectX 9 (DX9) shader. It is
a text file created using the Higher-Level Shading
Language (HLSL) standard. The
DirectX 9 Shader
material (page 2–1422)
can apply DX9 shaders to
objects, and display them with DX9 shading in
view por ts.
By default, D X 9 shaders are saved in the
\3dsmax8\maps\fx directory (the name of the
3ds Max root directory might be different on your
installation).
Impor tant: For a DX9 shader’s parameter to be visible in
the DirectX 9 Shader material’s interface, the FX file must
contain code to label the parameter, define its type,
and (optionally) limit its range. (A few other UI settings
are also provided.) You can find examples of files that
containthiscodeintheabovedirectory.
Note:
ThefollowingWebpageprovides
a specification for the DirectX 9 Shader
material 3ds Max: h
ttp://sparks. discreet.com/
knowledgebase/techdocs/searchable/techdoc_
DXMaterialFormat/DxMaterial_Effect_
format.htm.
G-Buf fer
G-Buffer (graphics buffer) is a type of renderi ng
channel. Two file formats output by 3ds Max,
RLA (page 3–680) and RPF (page 3–681) ,can
incorporate masks that are based on graphics
buffer (G-Buffer) channels instead of the more
widely used RGB and alpha channels. In addition,
some kinds of Filter and Layer events as well
as certain
rendering effects (page 3–214) can
post-process objects or m aterials designated by
the G-Buffer.