Autodesk 12812-051462-9011 User Guide 3 - Page 107

Be aware that the tracks for a material assigned to an object are distinct from the material tracks that belong to the Material Editor: animating a material in the Material Editor affects the scene only if the material is hot on page 8006. Animating Mapped Materials As with basic materials, you can create animation keys for map parameters. The noise parameters and the Noise map on page 5886 itself provide the Phase parameter specifically for animating the noise function. You can also produce an animated material by applying an animated bitmap as a map. This automated bitmap can be an AVI on page 7326 or MOV on page 7348 file, or an image sequence in the form of an IFL on page 7339 file. Changing One Material into Another Probably the easiest way to animate the change of one material into another is to create a Blend material on page 5708, make the two other materials its sub-materials, and then animate its Mix Amount parameter. Preview and Playback When you animate a material, or use an animated bitmap in a material, you can create and view a preview of this material before you decide to use it in a fully rendered animation. See also: ■ Creating and Playing Animated Material Previews on page 5362 ■ Synchronizing an Animated Bitmap with the Scene on page 5363 Creating and Playing Animated Material Previews You can create a preview movie of an animated material. Use Make Preview on page 5333 in the Material Editor. Clicking this button displays the Create Material Preview dialog on page 5366, which like the Renderer has controls for which frames to render, playback speed, and output size. The preview movie is saved in the \previews subdirectory in a file called _medit.avi. Each time you create a new preview, the Material Editor overwrites this file. To keep a preview movie on hand, save it under a different name by using the Save Preview button on the same flyout as Make Preview. 5362 | Chapter 19 Material Editor, Materials, and Maps