INSIDE 3DS MAX® 7 [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Renderable Spline Modifier

In 3ds max, you can only render objects that are composed of polygonal geometry. Lights, cameras, helpers, and space warps never render because they do not contain polygons. Splines only render if Renderable is checked from the Rendering rollout. Renderable converts splines to geometry (polys) and also gives you the option of setting the thickness of the spline and the number of sides. This arrangement has its limitations, however. For example, a circle with a large thickness renders similarly to a Torus primitive (Figure 5.11).

Using the File Link Manager, you can attach spline objects to a scene and make them all renderable by setting their Renderable parameter in the Rendering tab (Figure 5.12).

However, all splines brought in with the File Link Manager will render the same size.

The new Renderable Spline modifier now allows you to pick and choose which splines will and will not be renderable, providing greater render flexibility. Pick and choose which linked splines will or will not render by checking or unchecking Renderable in the Render Spline modifier that has been applied to those splines. The Renderable Spline modifier gives you more specific control than does the File Link Manager (Figure 5.13).

You can also instance the Renderable Spline modifier to many splines, even those that are not linked files. This way, changes you make to the Renderable property of one spline will affect all the others.