I have created omni light with shadow and decay for the streetlight of the city cartoon, but I will only be able to see this result when renderizing the scene. When I carry out a “Make Prevew” in Animation main menu, the effects of light and the most prepared materials what I create, are completely useless, Those are not possiveis of being seen. When I render the scene I am creating an image 2D, as simple as a photography. My question is: 3d Studio Max was developed essentially for the criation of 2D images or 3D movies???

If you have the option to upgrade to Max 2009, viewport shadows are now possible.

Max 2012
Windows 7 64 SP1

I think you might be mixing up terminology.

Yes you can create a 3D-Stereographic movie with 3ds Max, but it still involves rendering 2D images. One for the left-eye to view, one for the right-eye to view. That is the only way any “3D” program can display a 3D movie.

Even when you Arc Rotate the viewport, you are seeing a series of still 2D images.

Make Preview does not render as in the Rendering menu. It only captures the scene as it is displayed in the viewport. One capture of a 2D image per frame. It then compiles those 2D images into a movie.

So, to answer your question, 3ds max is used to create objects that exist in a virtual 3D space which we as humans view as 2D representations either on the monitor viewport, or as rendered bitmap image files.

What kind of 3D moives are you thinking about?
If you want holographic 3D, or a 3D interface of some type, then no, 3D Studiio was not developed with those types of output in mind.

If you are wanting “full-rendered quality” in the viewport, try Active Shade. But if you want “full-rendered quality” in an animated viewport, then you are not alone. I think everyone would love to have full-rendered real-time playback.

A recent 800x600 pixel rendered image took over 3 hours to render a single frame on a quad-processor system. That type of scene would not be a candidate for a full-rendered real-time playback.

Tim Wilbers [FA]

College of Arts and Sciences
Department of Visual Arts
University of Dayton
http://www.udayton.edu/
3ds Max: 7.5, 8, 9, 2008, 2009, 2010

Along the lines of full 3D rendered real time, you can build scenes in Max and export them to a game engine.

Max 2012
Windows 7 64 SP1

If I’m redaing this correctly, krops1234 is trying to make an animation instead of a still frame.  What you need to do is render a sequence of frames, and either save them as a movie file (avi, etc.) or as images and use something like RAM player in Max, Autodesk Combustion, or Adobe Premiere to compile them into a movie format.  Animation => Make Preview is for making a simple preview at viewport quality, usually used to test animation paths.  In the render dialog, you can set a range of frames or tell it to render the Active Time Segment.  It will render each of the frames in your animation and not just a single frame then.

3DS Max Design 2011 64-bit - Advantage Pack
Dell Precision T5500, Dual Six Core Xeon X5650 @ 2.67GHz, nVidia Quadro 5000, 24 GB RAM, Win 7 Enterprise 64-bit
Minneapolis, MN, USA

OT: Wow, Chris, pretty well learned for a little kid (avatar).
:)

Max 2012
Windows 7 64 SP1

Chris,

That makes sense.
Once was you could count on most to have done the Getting Started tutorial (the flying knife and magic bottle secen, now replaced a battle scene) but with Design 2009, the section on “Rendering the Animation” is not included.

Tim Wilbers [FA]

College of Arts and Sciences
Department of Visual Arts
University of Dayton
http://www.udayton.edu/
3ds Max: 7.5, 8, 9, 2008, 2009, 2010

Ok guys You are right...The section “Rendering the animation” is not included in the 3ds Max 2008 tutorial… It was a very sensible decision to include it in the 3ds Max 2009 Tutorial, seeing that it is a crucial information for someone in its first contact with the software. Once more, Thanks you all…

No, that is not correct. With 2009, the product became two: 3ds Max 2009, and 3ds Max Design 2009.

Rendering the Animation is included in the 2008 tutorials.

It has always been included, with the exception of 3ds Max Design 2009, which was released after 3ds Max 2008.

(The tutorials and the on-line help are your friends. Play with them often.)

Tim Wilbers [FA]

College of Arts and Sciences
Department of Visual Arts
University of Dayton
http://www.udayton.edu/
3ds Max: 7.5, 8, 9, 2008, 2009, 2010

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