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2 Chapter 17: Rendering
Rendering Effects (page 3–218)
Environment and Atmosphere Effects (page 3–271)
Obj ect-Lev el R end er i ng Contr 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 a t t h e o b j e c t
level. See Object Properties (page 1–117).
R end er S cen e Di al og
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 lighting 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 c an change,
depending on the activ e renderer. These panels
are always present:
• Common panel (page 3–27)
Contains the main cont rols for any renderer,
suchaswhethertorenderastillimageoran
animation, setting the resolution of rendered
output, and so on.
• Renderer panel (page 3–36)
Contains the main controls for the current
renderer.
Additional panels whose presence depends on the
active renderer include:
• Render Elements panel (page 3–130)
Contains the controls for rendering various
image information into individual image
files. This can be useful when you work
w ith comp osit ing, image-processing, or
special-effects software.
• Raytracer panel (page 2–1528)
Contains global controls for ray-traced maps
and materials.
• Advanced Lighting panel (page 3–44)
Contains controls for generating radiosity and
light t racer solutions, which can provide g lobal
illumination for your scene.
• Processing and Indirect Illumination panels
Contain special controls for the mental ray
renderer (page 3–78).
AtthebottomoftheRenderScenedialogare
controls that, like those in the Common Parameters
rollout (page 3–2 7),applytoallrenderers.These
are described in this topic’s “Interface” section,
below.
Tip: When you render a very large image, you might
get a message that says “Error Creating Bitmap,”
or that says you are out of RAM. If this happens,
turn on the Bitmap Pager. You turn on the Bitmap
Pager in Rendering Preferences (page 3–826).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 3–38)
Thescanlinerendererisactivebydefault. It
renders the scene in a series of horizontal lines.
Global illumination options available for the
scanline renderer include light tracing (page
3–44) and radiosity (page 3–51).
Thescanlinerenderercanalsorender to
textures (page 3–144) (“bake” textures), which
is especia l ly useful when preparing scenes for
game engines.