I was considering doing an animation for the IRTC about a month ago.  It
turns out I haven't even had time to start it so I guess I'll have to wait
until the next round.  What I was wondering though (since we're on this
subject at the moment) is:

Can you use 3D Studio MAX (don't worry, I own the commercial version, so
there're no probs with edu.)?  MAX primarily uses a scanline renderer and
automatically switches to it's raytracer when necessary (like when it hits a
reflective sphere).  Now, for the scene to be "legal" do you have to use
raytracing on everything?  This isn't much of a problem really, it's easy
enough to make MAX use a raytracer (or raytracing plug-in such as RadioRay,
a raytracer built for MAX) it's just that it is much slower.

The other thing I've been wondering about is:

Can you use MAX's motion blur?  It's motion blur is internal in the
renderer, but applies the effect afterwards to the objects.  It is
incorporated in such a way that it kind of post-processes the image, but it
gets its OMD (Object Motion Data) directly from the renderer, whether it be
raytraced or scanlined.  It is part of the package, it is not an image
filter and not part of MAX's Video Post (like a DLO or FLT MAX plug-in) and
it is part of the rendering engine and the modelling environment.  Is this
seen as post-processing?  The reason I ask is that when you compress things
to MPEG it greatly helps if the objects are motion blurred because the edges
are smooth and compress well (so the temporal quality ratio doesn't hae to
be as high, which results in a smaller file size).

Thanks.


--
Lance.

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For the latest MAX plug-ins, images and much more, go to:
The Zone - http://come.to/the.zone

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