Make Preview, Play Preview, Save Preview

You can use animated maps to add movement to a scene. For example, to simulate a sky view, you could map an animation of moving clouds to a clerestory window. The Make Preview options let you experiment with the effect in the Material Editor before you apply it to your scene.

• (Material Editor): Compact > Make/Play/Save Preview flyout
• Compact Material Editor menu bar > Material menu > Make Preview, View Preview, or Save Preview
• (Slate Material Editor: Select a map node. > Utilities menu > Render Map, or right-click a map node and choose Render Map.)

The buttons on the Make Preview, Play Preview, Save Preview flyout let you preview the effect of an animated map on the object in a sample slot. You can use an AVI file, or IFL file as a source for the animation. The finished preview is saved as a new AVI file and automatically played back. You can also view the preview in a sample slot by dragging the time slider.

This flyout has three options:

• Make Preview Displays a Create Material Preview dialog to create an AVI file of the animated material.

  When the preview is complete, it is saved as _medit.avi in the \previews subdirectory. The file is then opened in the Windows Media Player and played back.

  Without this option, the only other way to preview a complex animated material in real time is to use the renderer to render an animated sequence and save it to an AVI file, a digital disk recorder, or a video tape recorder.

• Play Preview Uses the Windows Media Player to play the current _medit.avi preview file in the \previews subdirectory.
• Save Preview Saves the _medit.avi preview to an AVI file of a different name in the \previews subdirectory.