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Rendering menu > ActiveShade Floater or ActiveShade Viewport
Toolbar > ActiveShade Floater or Quick Render (ActiveShade)
Right-click viewport label. > Views > ActiveShade
ActiveShade gives you a preview rendering that can help you see the effects of changing lighting or materials in your scene. When you adjust lights or materials, the ActiveShade window interactively updates the rendering.
ActiveShade preview of material changes
Above left: Before the update
Above right: After changing the material for the fabric to a mapped material and increasing the highlights on the material for the wood
ActiveShade preview of lighting changes
Above left: Before moving a light in a viewport
Above right: After moving the light
There are two ActiveShade options:
Only one ActiveShade window can be active at a time. If you choose one of the ActiveShade commands while an ActiveShade window is already active, you get an alert that asks whether you want to close the previous one. If the previous ActiveShade window was docked in a viewport, the viewport reverts to the view it previously showed.
Tip: You can drag and drop materials from the Material Editor to ActiveShade windows and viewports, as you can with other viewports.
Note: 
You can't make a maximized viewport an ActiveShade window, or maximize an ActiveShade window.
When you right-click an ActiveShade window, the quad menu displays an ActiveShade menu. This menu contains a number of ActiveShade commands.
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.
Tip: When an object in an ActiveShade window has a mapped material, select it before you change a map or adjust its parameters.
For the sake of interactivity, the ActiveShade window is limited in what it will and won't update interactively. An ActiveShade rendering is not necessarily the same, and in general is less precise, than a final production rendering.
Tip: When 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.
Applying a modifier or otherwise changing object geometry does not interactively update the ActiveShade window.
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.
To display a free-floating ActiveShade window, do one of the following:
Choose Rendering menu > ActiveShade Floater.
Click the ActiveShade Floater button on the default main toolbar.
Choose Quick Render (ActiveShade) from the Quick Render flyout.
Note: As with Quick Render, the ActiveShade window respects the Output Size setting in the Render Scene dialog. To use a different render size, set it first in Render Scene, and then open the ActiveShade window.
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.
If you have a Microsoft Intellimouse, you can use its third button/wheel to zoom and pan:
Roll the wheel to zoom in or out.
Press the wheel, and drag to pan.
Note: You can use any third-button device to pan the image. To enable this, choose the Pan/Zoom option in the Viewports panel of the Preferences dialog
Both the viewport and floating versions of the ActiveShade window have essentially the same controls as a Virtual Frame Buffer. In an ActiveShade viewport, the toolbar is off by default. In a floating ActiveShade window, the toolbar is always visible.
Tip: 
In an active ActiveShade viewport, you can toggle toolbar display by pressing the spacebar. The Keyboard Shortcut Override Toggle must be turned on for the spacebar to control the toolbar this way.
Tip: Save Bitmap—Allows you to save the rendered image displayed in the iReshade window.
Tip: Clone Virtual Frame Buffer—Creates a Virtual Frame Buffer window that contains a copy of the ActiveShade window. This allows you to update the ActiveShade window with the previous image still displayed so you can compare the two. You can make any number of clones of an ActiveShade window.
Tip: Enable Red Channel—Displays the red channel of the rendered image. When turned off, the red channel is not displayed.
Tip: Enable Green Channel—Displays the green channel of the rendered image. When turned off, the green channel is not displayed.
Tip: Enable Blue Channel—Displays the blue channel of the rendered image. When turned off, the blue channel is not displayed.
Tip: Display Alpha Channel—Displays the alpha channel.
Tip: Monochrome—Displays an 8-bit grayscale of the ActiveShade rendering.
Tip: Clear—Clears the image from the ActiveShade window.
Tip: To redisplay the image, right-click the ActiveShade window and choose Tools > Initialize or Tools > Update Shading from the lower-right quadrant of the quad menu.
Tip: Channel Display List—Lists any channel rendered along with the RGB image. When you choose a channel from the list, it is displayed in the ActiveShade window. For an ActiveShade window, only the RGB, Alpha, and Node Render ID channels are available.
Tip: Color Swatch—Stores the color value of the last pixel you clicked. You can drag this color swatch to any other color swatch in 3ds max, or you can click the color swatch to display the Color Selector for further detail. In addition, you can leave the Color Selector dialog displayed while right-clicking over the image in the Virtual Frame Buffer.
Tip: Right-Click Menu—Right-clicking the ActiveShade window displays a quad menu with ActiveShade Commands.
When you ALT+right-click the ActiveShade window, it not only updates the color swatch, it displays a pop-up with information about the rendering and the pixel beneath the mouse.
If you hold the right mouse button down while dragging, the information in the pop-up changes with each new pixel the mouse crosses.
The display includes the following information:
Width—The width of the image in pixels.
Height—The height of the image in pixels.
Type—The type of image, based on color depth. For example, 24 bits (RGB) or Paletted Image (256 Colors).
Aspect—The pixel aspect ratio.
Gamma—The gamma value carried in the bitmap file.
Red—The red component value (0 to 255) and the percentage of red.
Green—The green component value (0 to 255) and the percentage of green.
Blue—The blue component value (0 to 255) and the percentage of blue.
Alpha—The alpha component value (0 to 255).
Mono—The monochrome value of the pixel, using the same formula used by monochrome material map channels such as bump and opacity maps.
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