After completing a particular scene or animation you will probably want to distribute your work in some way. There are several Render options available in 3D Studio Max, although some are not as obvious as others. The following goes through the main parts of the Render Scene options. The render menu can be found by clicking Render>Rendering on the topmost main toolbar.

1. The menu portion displayed above details the frame(s) that should be rendered to disk. You can choose a single frame, a series of frames, or even specific frame numbers. This last option may be useful when you want to see only keyframes of your animation rendered out.

2. The option Every Nth Frame allows you to render out every frame, or every 2nd frame, or every 3rd, etc.

3. The last option, entitled File Number Base, allows you to render out still images in a sequence starting with a particular base number. This is particularly important if you are creating a high quality sequence of files that you will want to load easily into an Non Linear Editor (such as Adobe Premiere) and want to add frames to an existing sequence.


Part Two - Output Size

1. The Output Size is fairly self-explanatory, howevery, a larger output size is directly related to quality which is directly realted to the time needed to complete the render. Therefore, if you are making an Internet movie at 320*240, it would be a waste of time to render out a higher quality file because of the amount of time it would take to create a larger output size.

If you don't need to create a Custom file size, choose one of the drop down options that suits your needs.

2. The Aperture Width relates to the lense you used to take the snapshot or video. If you know what the aperture was, you should enter it into this area.

3. The Image Aspect and Pixel Aspect relates to the ratio relationship between width and height as well as how the pixels are drawn onto the screen respectively. A Pixel Aspect of 1.0 looks great on a computer screen, but DV uses 0.9. This often looks a bit distorted on a computer screen, but looks great on a TV source.


Part Three - Options

1. The Options menu allows additional control over how the file will be rendered.

2. Atmospherics, Effects, and Displacement are rendered out by default, however, they can take a long time to render. If you want to speed up the render time and render out a quick test, atmospherics can be turned off in the renderer.

3. On the other hand, items like Force 2-Sided is unselected by default. When a basic shape like a box or a sphere are created, they only have an outside. If you zoom towards one of these shapes to the point that you are inside of it, the inside has no colour or material. There are ways to modify the shape and the way colours and materials affect it to show both the inside and outside, however, forcing a 2-sided render will accomplish this task.

If you completed the box explosion tutorial, you will have noticed that when the box's pieces flip in the air, they disappear. This is a result of the box only having one side. By rendering both sides a more realistic tumble through the air will be created.


Part Four - Render Output

1. The Render Output menu is as important as choosing which frames to render. If you do not complete this step, clicking on render will create nothing at all. You MUST select the Files... button in order to decide the name of the output file, where it will be saved, and in what format. This may include a series of still images, or it may be an avi file using the DiVX codec.

When you choose to render a particular output type for the first time, you will be provided with specific options for the chosen codec.

2. The Use Device... option is related to an external video device that you may want to record to.

3. The Virtual Frame Buffer, if selected, will allow you to see each frame as it is rendered.

4. Net Render, if selected, will check to see if you have a network render farm setup and will request which frames it should render while other computers on your network are working hard to complete other frames.

5. Finally, Skip Existing Images refers to the possibility that you rendered using individual images rather than an AVI file and that for some reason the rendering was interupted. You can resume the render without having to rerender existing images. Unfortunately, an AVI will need to be rerendered rather than being appended too.


Part Five - Final Options

1. The Final Options provide some basic, but important features. The first allows you to choose between a Production, Draft, or Active Shade. The last has only been available since r4 of Max. Production is the highest quality, while Draft is obviously a lower quality that renders out much faster.

2. The icon to the right with the arrows allows you to copy the attributes you have setup for one and transfer it to the other. If you do not use this icon when switching between the two, all options reset to default.

3. The Viewport option is also quite important. Of the four possible views that are displayed on your screen at any one time, you can choose which of those to render out. The perspective view, for example, will provide a 3D view whereas a front, right, left, etc. view will be 2D.

4. Finally, by clicking on Render you confirm all options and will render out your still or video.