In this lesson, you present an overview of the orbital mechanics of the solar system.

Open Seasons03.max.

Rotate and pan the Perspective viewport so that you can see the Earth, Moon and Sun:

Open the Camera sub-panel and click Free. Then click in the Perspective viewport to create a Free Camera:

Press CTRL + C to match the camera to the viewport.
Press C to activate the camera view.
Name the camera Overview:

Choose Rendering > Render.
In the Output Size group, set the Width to 500 and the Height to 250.
Close the Render dialog box.

Right-click on the Camera01 viewport label and choose Show Safe Frame. The safe frames appear in the view:

  

Right-click on the viewport label and choose Configure.
In the Viewport Configuration dialog box, uncheck Action Safe and Title Safe. Then click OK:

The viewport updates to display only the live area of the camera view:

Adjust the view to suit your preferences. Do you want to make the Earth appear larger, or show more of its orbit? When you are done, you can set up the final rendering:

Open the Rendering dialog box and click the Files button.
Name the file SeasonsOV and choose the AVI file type.
For compression, choose 75 or better, depending on how much room you have on your hard disk:

Click OK and Close.
Save your scene file as SeasonsOV.max.

Click Quick Render to render the scene.

Choose File > View File and select SeasonsOV.avi. The Earth orbits the Sun from solstice to solstice:

Next: Visualizing the Seasons