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3D Studio Max Lesson 1.1: A Basic Overview of 3DSMax's Main Tool Bar

By Adrien-Luc Sanders, About.com

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Material Editor and Rendering Tools

3D Studio Max Intro 1.1 img 9
  • Material Editor: Opens the Material Editor window, where you can edit individual materials (surfaces/textures applied to the surface of your modeled objects to create a texture, such as wood grain).
  • Render Scene: Renders a file in a specified format (image, video, image sequence, etc.) with the contents of the scene from the selected viewport or camera view. This can be a still image, or an animated sequence spanning specified frames. The “Render Scene” button creates the final product, and thus can take a long time as it calculates all effects to create each frame. Clicking the Render button also opens your Custom Parameters dialogue, where you can set the options that will affect your final render or your Quick Render.
  • Quick Render: Renders a faster version without full detail (using the current render production settings on the default of “Quick Render (Production)”). Also expands to Quick Render (Draft) and Quick Render (Active Shade). The former performs a quick render without displaying the Render Scene dialogue; the latter renders with selected ActiveShade parameters (such as the effects of changing lighting in a scene).
  • Render Type: Allows you to render only a portion of the scene, selected from the dropdown menue.
  • Render Last: Re-renders an exact copy of the last thing rendered.
  • Active Shade Floater: Clicking this displays an Active Shade rendering in its own window.

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