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2 Chapter 17: Rendering
Obj ect-Lev el R en derin g Con tr ol s
Yo u c a n c o n t r o l r e n d e r i n g b e h a v i o r at t h e o b j e c t
level. See
Object Properties (page 1–111)
and
Object Properties Dialog (page 1–111)
.
R end er S cen e D ia lo g
Rendering menu > Render
Main toolbar > Render Scene button
Rendering creates a 2D image or animation based
on your 3D scene. It shades the scene’s geometry
using the lig hting you’ve set up, the materials
you’ve applied, and environment settings such as
background and atmosphere.
The Render scene dialog has multiple panels.
The number and name of the panels can change,
depending on the active renderer. These panels
are always present:
Common panel (page 3–27)
Contains the main controls for any renderer,
suchaswhethertorenderastillimageoran
animation, setting the resolution of rendered
output, and so on.
Renderer panel (page 3–35)
Contains the main controls for the current
renderer .
Render Elements panel (page 3–126)
Contains the controls for rendering various
image information into individual image
files. This can be usef ul when you work
w ith compositing, image-processing, or
special-effects software.
AtthebottomoftheRenderScenedialog
are controls that, like those in the
Common
Par ameters rollout (page 3–27)
,applytoall
renderers. These are descr ibed in this topic’s
“Interface section, below.
Tip: When you render a very large image, you might
get a message that says “Er ror Creating Bitmap,
or that says y ou are out of RAM. If this happens,
turn on the Bitmap Pager. You turn on the Bitmap
Pager in
Rendering Preferences (page 3–863)
.The
Bitmap Pager prevents a rendering from hanging
because of overuse of memory. On the other hand,
it slows down the rendering process.
Choice of a R ender er
Three renderers are provided with 3ds Max.
Additional renderers might be available as
third-par ty plug-in components. The renderers
provided with 3ds Max are:
Default scanline renderer (page 3–37)
Thescanlinerendererisactivebydefault.It
renders the scene in a series of horizontal lines.
Global illumination options available for the
scanline renderer include
light tracing (page
3–43)
and
radiosity (p age 3–50)
.
Thescanlinerenderercanalso
render to
textures (page 3–139)
(“bake textures), w hich
is especially useful when preparing scenes for
game engines.
mental r ay renderer (page 3–77)
The mental ray renderer created by mental
images is also available. It renders the scene in a
series of square “buckets.
The mental ray renderer provides its own
method of global illumination, and can also
generate caustic lighting effects.
In the Material Editor, a variety of
ment al ray
shaders (p age 2–1520)
provide effects that only
the mental ray renderer can display.
VUE file renderer (page 3–126)
The VUE file renderer is a special-purpose
renderer that generates an ASCII text
description of the scene. A view file can include