dangiles

We don't start up an external program to edit materials, particle flows, etc. Having Max take care of those functions internally has to be the most efficient use of hardware resources, and the convenience of accessing these functions through modal interfaces that don't lock out all other functions is appreciated. Rendering lacks that convenience. Of course rendering drains resources, but when additional RAM and cores are not required (or, as in my case, unavailable), I'd like to be able to continue developing my scene without having to set up a network, buy a node and run Backburner. But even if I had twenty top-end nodes at my disposal, I'd still like the option to simply go back to editing after clicking the little teapot icon - without the need to redirect the render process elsewhere.

There are a number of workarounds - I've also simply opened the file in another instance of Max and saved incrementally while the original rendered. What I'd like is being able to simply hit render, move the rendered frame window aside and keep working. If the program was managing it, I'm sure that would be the most efficient use of computer resources and time.

Probably on many wish lists and probably unfeasible as well but: I'd like to continue working on my scene while Max is rendering. So much workflow strategy is dedicated to limiting time wasted while the render engine blocks out the rest of the interface. I'd be willing to sacrifice any percentage of my hardware resources to reduce downtime while (non-network) rendering.