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4. Select the television front screen object, open the Material Editor, and double-click on the Standard material in the Material/Map Browser. Name the material Television Screen. Then create a Bitmap map node, locate the tv.ifl file, and connect it to the Diffuse color swatch. Then click the Assign Material to Selection button to apply the material to the screen.

Tip

To see the map in the viewport, click the Show Map in Viewport button. This button makes the frames of the IFL file visible in the viewport. •

5. Because the screen object is a mesh object, you need to use the UVW Map modifier to create some mapping coordinates for the map. Open the Modify panel, and select the UVW Map modifier. Set the mapping option to Planar. Then select the Gizmo subobject mode and transform the planar gizmo until it covers the screen.

6. Click the Play button (/) to see the final animation.

Figure 21.16 shows one rendered frame of the television with the IFL file applied.

FIGURE 21.16

IFL files are commonly used to animate materials via a list of images such as the image on the front of this television.

Working with Previews

More than likely, your final output will be rendered using the highest-quality settings with all effects enabled, and you can count on this taking a fair amount of time. After waiting several days for a sequence to render is a terrible time to find out that your animation keys are off. Even viewing animation sequences in the viewports with the Play Animation button cannot catch all problems.

One way to catch potential problems is to create a sample preview animation. Previews are test animation sequences that render quickly to give you an idea of the final output. The Tools⇒Grab Viewport menu includes several commands for creating, renaming, and viewing previews. The rendering options available for previews are the same as the shading options available in the viewports.

Creating previews

You create previews by choosing Tools⇒View: Grab Viewport⇒Create Animated Sequence File to open the Make Preview dialog box, shown in Figure 21.17. You can also access this command from the viewport General label in the upper-left corner of the viewport.

In the Make Preview dialog box, you can specify what frames to include using the Active Time Segment or Custom Range options. You can also choose Every Nth Frame or select a specific frame rate in the Playback FPS field. The image size is determined by the Percent of Output value, which is a percentage of the final output size. The resolution is also displayed.

The Display Filter section offers a variety of options to include in the preview. These options include Geometry, Shapes, Lights, Cameras, Helpers, Space Warps, Particle Systems, Bone Objects, and Active Grid. Because the preview output is rendered like the viewports, certain selected objects such as Lights and Cameras actually display their icons as part of the file. The Overlay options prints the safe frame borders, frame number and the camera/view name in the upper-left corner of each frame. This is a nice feature that helps in identifying the results.

FIGURE 21.17

The Make Preview dialog box lets you specify the range, size, and output of a preview file.

The Rendering Level drop-down list includes the same shading options used to display objects in the viewports, including Realistic, Shaded, Consistent Colors, Hidden Line, Wireframe, and Bounding Box. It also includes the various Stylized render options including Ink, Color Ink, Acrylic, Tech, Graphite, Color Pencil, and Pastel. There are also options to toggle on or off Edged Faces, Textures, Highlights, and the Background.

New Feature

The ability to render out previews to one of the Stylized options is new to 3ds Max 2012. •

If the Camera View uses one of the multi-pass camera effects such as depth-of-field or motion blur, you can enable these effects for the preview also.

Output options include the default AVI option; a Custom File Type option, which enables you to choose your