So the new mac pro is out, which is the computer I've been waiting for to do my animation and such on. Unfortunately it's way more expensive than everyone was expecting, so I'm going to have to figure out exactly what I'm wanting. I still don't want to stay with Windows, and Linux doesn't really support all the software that I'm wanting to use yet, though it does run Maya which is very cool. I just want a stable, solid platform with very high processing power to do rendering and video editing and modeling, etc. If I decide to go for the more expensive option right now, I could have a virtual 16-cores in my computer, but I haven't figured out yet whether I'll even be able to take advantage of that. I don't really know why I'm posting this, but I guess since it's part of the process, blogged it will be.
Later people... I'll be doing some skinning hopefully today or tomorrow or the next day. You know how it goes...
Stuart
The Delgo character looks pretty good. Maybe a bit rough around the edges but that can be fixed later. Did you use your stylus and pencil thing to paint it? I think that would be fun.
ReplyDeleteErick
No, I didn't use my stylus and tablet, although I would like to learn to use it effectively. I didn't feel like digging it out and plugging it in. Maybe someday.
ReplyDeleteOh, by rough around the edges, do you mean pixelation? Cause that's just an artifact of the screenshot. The actual mesh is relatively smooth, though it still has a relatively low number of polys.
ReplyDeleteHay... I had a look at the official specs/prices on apple's website... the base 8 core really doesn't seem all that bad... but the options look like they'll really bring it up. My guess is you'd probably want two hard drives in RAID to protect your files.... which looks to be quite a bit. Have you considered getting a cheaper quad core for doing all your modeling and stuff with OSX... and then building a cheaper PC based (with linux or something) 8 core system for doing rendering... or even just start with the quad core mac and get started on that... and build a dedicated rendering machine when you can afford it later again... I'm not exactly sure how Maya's renderings system works with it's license though.. if it even is possible to model on one computer and render on another with a single license...
ReplyDelete~Daryl
P.S. The Jaggies are called aliasing.
P.S. ... I must correct my silly grammatical error... *its
ReplyDeleteHmm... that is an idea...
ReplyDeleteI won't get RAID yet, but I might think about the quad-core. One thing though is that the quad RAM tops out at 8 GB, whereas the octo goes all the way up to 32 GB... not sure why that is, but anyways.
PS I had to wikipedia it, but yes, I guess the screenshot is an "alias" of the actual window, thus the distortions and incorrect sampling may be called "aliasing"
I did some research and it turns out there are two limits to how much ram you can have: the OS and the motherboard. The mother board limit is simply dependent upon how much ram it can take/support... so really it's up to the manufacturer... though there are of course limits to what can be done physically etc. So my guess would be simply that the 8 core system uses a mother board that supports more ram. When it comes to the OS... it depends on the bit rating... a 32 bit OS (i.e. 32 bit processor) can only support 4GB max (2^32 bytes = 4 GBs)... actually less since the OS needs to devote resources to other things too (like video ram)... with a 64 bit OS... the limit is much greater... (1.72E10 GBs) so usually there's a limit set (Vista 64 bit is 16 GB I think)... So my guess is that maybe Apple limits it to 8 GB in the quad core, but with 8 cores, it has more resources to commit to a higher ram limit... or something like that.
ReplyDeleteP.S. in computer graphics... anti-aliasing is the term that refers to the process by which jagged edges along models are removed... but I'm sure you know that.. right?
Thanks for the research, and yes I know about anti-aliasing, but I wasn't sure if it applied to a screenshot over an actual render. Anyway, I think it's the motherboard that is limiting it, which really sucks, because I kind of want to buy a base model without being limited in the upgrade options. I'm pretty sure they wouldn't let me (diff mobo) add a second chip if I bought the quad.
ReplyDeletePS I did some skinning yesterday, but the screenshots I'm not done (or started) painting weights on the model. Apparently that's an intermediate topic, so the book doesn't cover it, though it assumes that you'll do it on your own with the model... weird.
oops, ignore "the screenshots"... I wish you could edit your own comments
ReplyDelete