Computer Masters i need your Advice!

[creature4000]

My Alienware Laptop is 5 years old and running great!!!

 

[bagelsncheesey]

You're a graphic designer/VFX guy like me P. Running the programs you want, go with:

iMac 20 inch, standard on everything except upgrade your RAM to the 4GB SDRAM.

 

[Darth Caedus]

My Alienware Laptop is 5 years old and running great!!!

$5,000 later, I want to get one too, but it's too expensive.

You should get this nice 486...it even has a TURBO button

 

[p!tu]

$5,000 later, I want to get one too, but it's too expensive.

You should get this nice 486...it even has a TURBO button

WOOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Darth Caedus]

WOOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[darthviper107]

You're a graphic designer/VFX guy like me P. Running the programs you want, go with:

iMac 20 inch, standard on everything except upgrade your RAM to the 4GB SDRAM.

It's kind of funny, here at my college we used to have two computer labs in the art building, one was the Mac lab and one was for PC (windows....) but all the Windows-based PC's were old Dell Inspirons so this year they replaced them all with new iMacs dual-booting Windows. They're pretty, but they don't run Maya or Zbrush as well as a regular Windows-based desktop PC would. But then again I don't use them much because I work with 3ds Max on my computer.

 

[Amanaman]

What are the best 3D drawing/animation apps? At least the top 3. It's been a while since I've used Maya, and I'd like to get back into it. I took a look at zbrush, and it looks less technical and more geared towards artists.

 

[creature4000]

It all depends what your using 3d for?

Character design= Maya

Everything else = 3DSMax

 

[darthviper107]

What are the best 3D drawing/animation apps? At least the top 3. It's been a while since I've used Maya, and I'd like to get back into it. I took a look at zbrush, and it looks less technical and more geared towards artists.

Maya is used for most movies--Star Wars, LOTR, POTC, The Matrix Trilogy--almost everything. But, 3ds Max is used for almost every video game, there are some particular movies that used 3ds Max but Maya pretty much dominates movies. They are both very similar. Zbrush isn't the same type of program, it's used for 3D sculpting, all those intricate characters in movies are sculpted in Zbrush--Like Davy Jones in POTC was made with Zbrush but was animated with Maya.

Top programs:

Autodesk Maya
Autodesk 3ds Max (yes, owned by the same company)
Softimage XSI (used to be used by ILM for animation until they switched to Maya)
Lightwave 3D (used for Serenity, Battlestar Galactica, but that's the best work done with the program)
Cinema 4D
Houdini

So I say Maya or 3ds Max, and I prefer 3ds Max since it has more modeling tools and higher performance (at least at this point). Plus it's got more learning materials than the any other program.

 

[Skiman]

I gonna agree with lcummins on this...

Mac is very over priced for a buget, the machines you can build today with the parts it almost cost 3 times as much by just slapping Mac on front of it, painting it white and getting a cool sleek design but if you don't care about any of that, then -$2000 and get a PC, LOL.

As the old PC's to new PC's you can get by with 5-8 year old PC's as apposed to newer ones but it depends what your using it for, like e-mail, browsing, composing editors, programming, picture editing, etc.. older machines can be used for this but the newer graphics, anti-aliasing, HD avi, mpeg, xvid codecs rendering, DVD compression, GAMING, etc... a newer PC will benefit greatly in these areas..

I'm in the mist of building a PC myself this year.

My parts:

Intel Dual Core 2 https://compare.intel.com/pcc/showchart.aspx?mmID=35605&familyID=1&culture=en-US

Dual Core Duo Family https://compare.intel.com/pcc/default.aspx?familyID=1&culture=en-US
(more processors that are cheaper)

(There's also Intel® Core™2 Quad processor and Intel® Core™2 Extreme processor but to stick to budget Dual Core Duo should be just fine)

8 gigs of ram CORSAIR 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Retail (new egg has very cheap total cost $160+shipping)
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145184

EVGA GeForce 9800 GX2 Video Card - FREE Crysis PC Game, SSC Edition, 1GB GDDR3, PCI Express 2.0, (Dual Link) Dual DVI, HDMI
https://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3830973&CatId=3669

Antec TruePower Quattro TPQ-1000 1000W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Power Supply - Retail
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371012
Power Supply, I'm using 1000W but with a heavy GPU card then you might need at least 500W or more

Hard Drive space at least 1 terabyte these days why not it's so cheap!

D-Link DGE-530T 10/ 20/ 100/ 200/ 1000/ 2000Mbps PCI Gigabit Desktop Adapter 1 x RJ45 - Retail Agreed with the gigabyte network cards (NIC) these days like lcummins was saying, it used to be way expensive but transferring giganto files especially after rendering videos will make this less tedious!!! https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833127134

Depends on what OS (operating system) you going to get as well, mainly all you can find out there on retail shelves is Windows Vista and this DVD image of an OS is a memory hog, hence at least the 4 gigs of ram, Vista Ultimate supports 8+ and I think all the way up 128+ with servers but no need for that, LOL. (Of course this being the 64-bit version, you can dedicate a number of instances and different processes per CPU which is really nice)

Let me know if you have any questions and feel free to contact me by PM if yah want, I'm a software engineer and server designer by day...

 

[occulum]

*hugs work Mac*
*will hug home Mac later* .....

 

[Skiman]

*hugs work Mac*
*will hug home Mac later* .....

j/k Oc...

 

[creature4000]

Since there is a lot of CG people in this thread....


Does anyone know where I can buy 3DS Max 2008 (non student)?????


Thank You!!!

 

[darthviper107]

https://store.autodesk.com/DRHM/ser...dsk&Locale=en_US&Env=BASE&productID=103837600

That's 2009--I think the serial will work for the last three versions (2009, 2008 and version 9) but I would contact them first and check. You might also want to check and see if there's a reseller near you and they could probably hook you up. They have a tool on the autodesk site so you can check for resellers in the area.

 

[The Ween]

What's the hate on Vista? Mine's got it and I don't have any problems with it. I've never had XP though. I went from Windows 98 to Vista. I don't do all the stuff you all do though.

 

[darthviper107]

Vista is OK, but some stuff isn't supported, like if you have some older hardware. And some software programs have problems with it. Any version of 3ds Max before 2008 will only work on Vista if you use it in OpenGL mode which isn't good because it runs much slower that way. Plus Vista uses more resources than it should. And it doesn't really have any advantage over XP except for the stuff that they put into it that they just didn't want to put in XP (like DirectX 10).

 

[Skiman]

Like Viper was saying Vista is all right on the machine that are pre-loaded with it, some older machines may run sluggish if they don't have enough ram, I recommend at least 2 gigs of ram. Vista also runs some services like file indexing and superfetch which can be disable in your services and that takes some hog from the resources. Both of these services are constantly hitting the hard drive at all times and run in the background so it causes the machine to run sluggish unless you have some beefed up ram like 4-8 gigs!

 

[SideshowDennis]

If you're going to be serious about getting a video production job using these programs you need to know how to efficiently use both a mac and a pc. The more you know, the more attractive you become to potential employers. That being said, if you have a pc now, I suggest you get a mac, or vice versa. You can always keep an old computer around to keep your skills up in a different platform. When you look through want ads and classifieds a lot of places ask you to know how to use one or the other, so you may as well be able to use both. A lot of designers do this to make themselves more marketable.

Just something to consider.

 

[geto10]

Pitu, get your self an iMac!! Bought my 24'' earlier this year, coolest thing ever!