Animating the Still Life Objects

Animated Still Life

Modeling Tutorials

 

Autodesk 3ds Max Tutorials > Introduction > Animated Still Life > 

Rendering the Animation

Rendering multiple frames for a complete animation can be time consuming, even on a fast machine. Each frame is individually processed. Realistic materials, shadow casting, and other factors can slow the process as well. When you're ready to take a break, you can render this animation and then come back after a short time to see the results.

Render your animation:

To complete this tutorial, render the animation you made earlier. The rendering time is probably under 15 minutes, depending on the speed of your machine.

1. From the File menu, use the Open command to load one of your saved animations, either my_still_life_animated_loop.max or my_still_life_animated_flyin.max. Or you can open still_life_animated.max, provided in the \tutorials\still_life folder.
   NoteIf you saved your completed files to a directory other than \tutorials\still_life , when you open one of your files you might encounter messages about missing files. If you do run into this problem, click the Browse button on the Missing External Files dialog. This opens the Configure External File Paths dialog. Click the Add button. Use the Choose New External Files Path dialog to navigate to the directory where you loaded the original file, and then click the Use Path button. Click OK, and then click Continue.
2. Choose Rendering menu > Render to open the Render Scene dialog.
   TipIf your computer is fast, feel free to skip the next step.
3. In the Render Scene dialog > Output Size group, change the default (640 x 480) to 320 x 240.

   This smaller size has only one-quarter the area of the default, making it much faster to render.

4. In the Time Output group, choose Active Time Segment.
5. In the Render Output group, click the Files button. In the Render Output File dialog, name your animation mystill_life_animated.avi. Click Save to save the animation to the default directory (usually \renderoutput).
   WarningYou must either add the extension .avi in the file name, or else select AVI as the file type. If you don't tell the program what type of animation format to save in, the rendering won't work.
6. On the AVI File Compression dialog, do the following:
   • If necessary, change the compressor to Cinepak Codec. There are lots of different codecs to choose from. Cinepak generally gives satisfactory results.
   • Set the Quality high, between 90 and 100.
   • When you’re done, click OK.

   On the Render Scene dialog, Save File is now on and the output field shows the location of mystill_life_animated.avi.

7. At the bottom of the Render Scene dialog, from the list labeled Viewport, choose Perspective.

   You always want to be sure you’re rendering the right viewport.

   Tip Usually you will use a camera viewport, rather than rendering the Perspective viewport. In this case, since the animation was created in the Perspective viewport, you'll use that.
8. Click Render to begin the rendering process.

   Watch a few frames to make sure nothing is terribly wrong. The Time Remaining estimate will give you an idea of how long the rendering will take.

Play the rendered animation:

1. When your animation is finished rendering, chose File menu > View Image File.

   By default, the View File dialog opens in the \renderoutput subdirectory.

2. Highlight mystill_life_animated.avi and click Open to display the Media Player.
3. Play your animation from the Media Player.

   You'll find finished AVI files of both animations (the fly-in and the loop) in the \tutorials\still_life folders if you want to skip the rendering entirely.