2009
Timing
At the bottom of the window, profiling and timing information is shown :
The information presented is:
■ The current time step (simulation step) on page 3892 used for the simulation.
This value is initially taken from the
Preview & Animation rollout on page
4085 but can also be changed by using the
Performance menu on page 4102.
■ The number of substeps on page 3892 used for the simulation. Again, this
value is initially taken from the
Preview & Animation rollout on page 4085
but can also be changed by using the
Performance menu on page 4102.
■ The current simulation time; that is, the time that the current image in
the preview represents in the final animation.
During the preview, reactor tries to run the simulation in real time. In other
words, if a simulation step of one second takes only 0.7 second of CPU to
simulate, reactor "waits" 0.3 second before simulating the next step. That way,
the animation is presented in the window at the same speed as the final
animation in 3ds Max.
However, for complex scenes or slow CPUs, simulating a particular period of
time can take actually more CPU time than the specified period. For example,
a simulation step of one second might actually take two seconds to calculate.
In that case, it is not possible to present the animation in real time, and the
animation is therefore presented during the preview at a slower speed that
the final animation will have once it has been created. When this happens,
the preview reports it by appending an asterisk (*) to the current time:
Simulation menu
Play/Pause (P) Starts and pauses the simulation. If the simulation is paused,
the display remains active and you can still pan, rotate, and zoom the camera,
but the physics world remains still.
Reset (R) Resets the simulation, returning objects to their initial positions.
The Real-Time Preview | 4101