Hey I'm kind of a noob with 3dsmax but I am slowy but surely getting there. I've hit a problem which I can't work my way around, I made a material which reflects objects around it and when I render the scene, it's all fine and dandy, but in my viewports and when I go and to make an animation ("animation>make animation") I just get the flat colours of the material and none of the mapping, if anyone could help it would be much appreciated thanks.

In 3ds max 8 reflections do not work in viewports.
To see a reflection you have to render the scene.

To render an animation in the render options set the number of frames to render and set the name of the file to which your renders will be saved..
You can render to o sequence of images or you can render to an avi movie file.

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Andyba, 3d artist
skills: 3d modeling, texturing, rendering, 3d character animation, compositing
3d software experience: 3ds max, Maya, Softimage XSI, Deep Paint 3d, Body Paint 3D, Wings 3D, Z Brush
2d software experience: Adobe Photoshop, Adobe After effects, Macromedia Flash, Freehand

not sure about your queery.

have you render the animation, or you just make a preview of your animation..

Andyba is right, you have to render your animation to see the reflections.
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interior designer / 3d visualizer

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