3ds Max 2012 Bible - Kelly L. Murdock [275]
Working with the ActiveShade window and the RAM Player
Understanding render types
Creating an environment
After hours of long, hard work, the next step—rendering—is where the “rubber hits the road” and you get to see what you've worked on so hard. After modeling, applying materials, positioning lights and cameras, and animating your scene, you're finally ready to render the final output. Rendering deals with outputting the objects that make up a scene at various levels of detail.
Max includes a Scanline Renderer that is optimized to speed up this process, and several settings exist that you can use to make this process even faster. Understanding the Render Scene dialog box and its functions can save you many headaches and computer cycles. However, other rendering options are available.
The need for all these different rendering engines comes about because of a trade-off between speed and quality. For example, the renderer used to display objects in the viewports is optimized for speed, but the renderer used to output final images leans toward quality. Each renderer includes many settings that you can use to speed the rendering process or improve the quality of the results.
Render Parameters
Commands and settings for rendering an image are contained within the Render Scene dialog box. This dialog box includes several tabbed panels.
After you're comfortable with the scene file and you're ready to render a file, you need to open the Render Scene dialog box, shown in Figure 23.1, by means of the Rendering⇒Render Setup menu command (F10) or by clicking the Render Scene button on the main toolbar. This dialog box has several panels: Common, Renderer, Render Elements, Raytracer, and Advanced Lighting. The Common panel includes commands that are common for all renderers, but the Renderer panel includes specific settings for the selected renderer.
Cross-Reference
The Common and Renderer panels for the Default Scanline Renderer are covered in this chapter. The Raytracer and Renderer panel for the mental ray renderer are covered in Chapter 47, “Rendering with mental ray and iray”; the Render Elements panel is covered in Chapter 49, “Compositing with Render Elements and the Video Post Interface”; and the Advanced Lighting panel is covered in Chapter 45, “Working with Advanced Lighting, Light Tracing, and Radiosity.” •
FIGURE 23.1
You use the Render Scene dialog box to render the final output.
Initiating a render job
At the bottom of the Render Scene dialog box are several controls that are visible for all panels; these controls let you initiate a render job. The render modes are Production, Iterative (a selection in the drop-down list), and ActiveShade. Each of these modes can use a different renderer with different render settings as defined using the Assign Renderer rollout.
Note
If any objects in the rendered scene are missing mapping coordinates, then a dialog box appears as you try to render the scene with options to Continue or Cancel. A similar dialog box appears for any missing external files or any missing XRefs with options to continue, cancel, or browse from the missing file. •
Iterative rendering mode is different from production in that it doesn't save the render to a file, use network rendering, or render multiple frames. Using this mode, you can leave the settings in the Render Scene dialog boxes unchanged while still getting a test render out quickly. This makes it a good mode to use for quickly getting test renders.
The Preset option lets you save and load a saved preset of renderer settings. When saving or loading a preset, the Select Preset Categories dialog box, shown in Figure 23.2, opens (after you select a preset file in a file dialog box). In this dialog box, you can select which panels of settings to include in the preset. The panels listed will depend on the selected renderer. All presets are saved with the .rps file extension.
FIGURE 23.2
The Select Preset Categories dialog box lets you choose which settings to include in the preset.
The Viewport drop-down