ActiveShade Commands

When you right-click an ActiveShade window, the quad menu displays an ActiveShade menu. This menu contains a number of ActiveShade commands.

ActiveShade and Object Selection

If you select an object before you invoke ActiveShade, ActiveShade is done only for that object. This can greatly increase the speed of ActiveShade.

Similarly, once the ActiveShade window is open, the initialize and update steps (whether automatic or manual) are done only for the selected object.

In a "docked" ActiveShade viewport, you can select objects by right-clicking, turning on Select Object in the Tools (lower-right) quadrant of the quad menu, then clicking the object you want to select. In an ActiveShade viewport, only one object at a time can be selected.

What ActiveShade Does and Doesn't Do

For the sake of interactivity, the ActiveShade window is limited in what it can update interactively. An ActiveShade rendering is typically less precise than a final production rendering.

TipWhen you change geometry by transforming it or modifying it, right-click the ActiveShade window and choose Tools Initialize from the quad menu (lower-right quadrant). This updates the ActiveShade rendering.

• Moving an object does not update the ActiveShade window.
• Applying a modifier or otherwise changing object geometry does not interactively update the ActiveShade window.
• Reflections are rendered only in the Initialize pass.
• Materials are displayed as RGBA data with 8 bits per channel.
• Multiple changes to a material might lead to deterioration in image quality.

  If you see this happening, right-click the ActiveShade window and choose Tools Initialize from the quad menu (lower-right quadrant).

• Masks are reduced from 8x8 to 4x4 subdivisions per pixel. The mask is corrected to 6-bit opacity (0 to 63 rather than 0 to 255). This might result in some visual noise around object edges.
• Because of the preceding item, filters are coarser than in full-scale renderings, but they still have significant subpixel information.
• There is a limitation of 16 subdivisions per pixel. Because of this, any objects behind the sixteenth occluding object for a given pixel will be ignored. Rendered back faces count as separate objects.
• Reshading uses compressed normals and other direction vectors. This should have no visible effect.
• ActiveShade does not render atmospheric effects, rendering effects, or ray-traced shadows (the only shadows it can render are shadow-mapped shadows).

Procedures

To display an ActiveShade window in a viewport:

• Click or right-click the Point-Of-View (POV) viewport label. From the POV viewport label menu, choose ActiveShade.
  Note You can't make a maximized viewport an ActiveShade window, or maximize an ActiveShade window.

To display a free-floating ActiveShade window:

• Choose ActiveShade from the Render flyout.

To update an ActiveShade window after moving an object or changing object geometry:

1. Right-click the ActiveShade window.
2. In the Tools (lower-right) quadrant of the quad menu, choose Initialize.

To see the toolbar in an ActiveShade viewport:

1. Click the viewport to make it active.
2. Press the Spacebar to display the toolbar.

   Pressing spacebar again toggles the toolbar off, and so on.

   You can also turn toolbar display on or off by right-clicking and using the quad menu.

To change an ActiveShade viewport to another kind of viewport:

1. Turn on the toolbar in the ActiveShade viewport.
2. Right-click the toolbar.
3. In the pop-up menu, choose the type of view to display.

   You can also restore the viewport to its previous status by right-clicking the viewport and choosing View (upper-left) quad Close.

To zoom and pan in an ActiveShade window:

You can zoom in and out and pan the image in the ActiveShade window. You can even do this while a scene is rendering.

1. Hold down Ctrl and then click to zoom in, right-click to zoom out.
2. Hold down Shift and then drag to pan. (The window must be zoomed in.)

If you have a three-button mouse, you can use its third button or wheel to zoom and pan:

1. Roll the wheel to zoom in or out.
2. Press the wheel, and drag to pan.
   NoteYou can use any third-button pointing device to pan the image. To enable this, choose the Pan/Zoom option on the Viewports panel of the Preferences dialog.

Interface

Both the viewport and floating versions of the ActiveShade window have the same controls as a Rendered Frame Window. In an ActiveShade viewport, the toolbar is off by default. In a floating ActiveShade window, the toolbar is always visible.

TipIf you clear the image, you can redisplay it by right-clicking the ActiveShade window and choosing Tools Initialize or Tools Update Shading from the lower-right quadrant of the quad menu.