Workstations For Poor 3D-artists

Peter writes: "Ace's hardware has written an 'article for the creative people, who are searching to build or buy an affordable number cruncher to run their favorite workstation application. Maybe you already have an Athlon Thunderbird/XP and you are wondering if a dual Thunderbird/Athlon XP workstation might make sense for you. Or you might be interested in an affordable dual Athlon MP 1800+ workstation.' Included are benchmarks based on almost all available 3D-animation packages."

Re:Consider all of your options

[doctor_oktagon]

Considering the parent to this post was marked "intersting", I think "paranoid" would be a more accurate description.

If you are blinkered enough to follow the mighty chipzilla instead of AMD in 2001 for desktop performance then you need to smell the coffee or at least try a fair comparison.

Yes, your P4-optomised build of the kernel will scream, but when I go out and buy 3d tools to run on top of a micro$haft operating system I can't just go recompiling the application to fit the specific hardware it's running on, and that usually means it's much faster on an Athlon by default.

And Athlon-based systems should be *much* cheaper than their Intel counterparts ... if not then your PC manufacturers are shafting you.

The sooner people start realising the desktop processor market is about more than Intel then the sooner people may be ready to consider more than one desktop operating system ... it's the same FUD that holds people back.

Re:Dual Athlon XP?

[Anonymous Coward]

No mod is reqquired.

There is literally NO difference between an MP and an XP of the same model number (ie 1800+ ect) other than the model string returned by the cpu.

Also since the model strings are programable by the bios, the bios on a single cpu athlon board programs the cpu to return Athlon XP as its model string, regardless of weather the cpu is an MP or an XP.

Conversly, the tyan duely board, programs the cpus to return Athlon MP as the model string, regardless of the cpus being stamped MP or XP on the outside.

Re:386/486/pentium

[ackthpt]

My first experience with PoV (and dkbtrace) was on a 25MHz 386. Complex scenes (due to objects, textures, solids and such) could take an entire weekend to render, which now take a few minutes on a 933MHz PIII (at work, but can't be doing that here) I'd run thumbnails, which took 10-15 minutes until I was pretty sure of what I was getting then launch it on Friday evening before heading home, one scene finished about an hour after I got in on Monday morning (had to busy myself shuffling paper or something ;) Yeah, you could do this on a 386/486, but why would you want to, when people are throwing away Pentium 133 machines?

Compilers only got a quick mention

[Snowfox]

Visual C++ was the only compiler tested, which is a shame.

Codewarrior benefits from SMP, as do typical "make -j " project builds under unices.

Re:Macs

[J05H]

as a digital artist (3d, 2d and video), I used Macs and Amigas for years, both in school and then professionally. A few years ago, I jumped on the opportunity to switch to WindowsNT for my paying work, and also built a PC for home use. I will NEVER go back to relying on Macs for paying work, to unreliable, to hard to maintain, crash to much, and they are way slow compared to modern PC hardware.

make mine... whatever goes fast and is stable...

Programs...

[Trillian_Angel]

Well, from a poor starving artist prospective, (and one who has had the terror/(privlidge?) of having to use numerous OS for graphics, the solution is quite simple.
Use paper. Saves time, saves hassle and pencils are only a buck a piece if you are going for the most expensive in the market... and Pencils don't need to be upgraded.
But seriously, I use a gig athlon machine with Debian installed, and I use the GIMP for most of my art stuff... and in all honesty, art takes patience... if you're modelling something and your machine is *that* slow, then go ahead, upgrade, but anything above 800 mhz is and 128 meg of ram can handle it... and the more ram the better. Maybe it isn't a processing problem afterall... ram helps too.
Any athlon would be a expensive paperweight without ram to back it anyway. (And cooling fans.. lots of them)

Re:3D Artists?

[mati]

I am a CS student, and my roommate is an art student. He's picked up 3D rendering skills quite fast and shows great potential, but the man cannot afford more than his K6-2 to do his rendering on (I guess he has too much pride to use some cpu time on my box). I'm not trying to justify warez here, but draw your own conclusions. The software must be learned somehow ;)

Of course, another of my more well-off artist friends paid a grand for an educational-discounted version of 3DS MAX...

Re:cheap to say the least

[ergo98]

First thing is, heatsinks are much larger today and probably have a much greater risk of falling off. Not to say that risk in itself is very high. Furthermore, the fact is that Intel does offer this kind of protection now and AMD does not. It's simply one area where the Intel chip beats the AMD, and makes it (to me) seem of higher quality.

I believe that recent AMD chips do indeed have thermal overload protection [tech-report.com], though it does require the involvement of the motherboard (I haven't looked into it, but it could be that Intel is just the same. Anyone know for sure?). Nice feature, sure, but to call it a quality issue just seems silly : If they put a titanium case around the processor to allow it to survive 4000G impacts, would that be a quality issue or a unnecessary gimmick?

There are two reasons I'm using an Intel chip and motherboard: Stability, and RDRAM. I know everybody hates it, but some of the things I use are memory intensive and DDR RAM just does not compare.

Totally agree. Dual-channel RDRAM is expensive, but very fast. That solution scales too, doesn't it? (i.e. technically can't they easily make quad-channel, octuple-channel, etc.).

does video card matter?

[acomj]

This seems like a silly question, but do any 3d programs use the videocard as a render processor. It seems the 3d video cards have a dedicated 3d rendering processor built in.

If you can get 90 + fps in quake /// but setting up the vidoe card to do 1 frame every minute at a very high quality setting and then doing a frame grab.......

Maybe the cards can't handle this because there designed for games....

Re: Blender

[aWalrus]

Blender has matured A LOT in the past two years. I'm not a regular Blender user, but I introduced it to a friend and he became quite attached to the thing in less than a month. The interface is extremely weird, but it really shines once you get to understand it. Its main purpose, I think, is to keep you focused on the work at all times, and with one hand on the keyboard and the other on the mouse, kind of what Macintosh or Linux do with their CTRL/APPLE+Left click interfaces.

One thing that never ceases to amaze me is the size of the program. It is hardly more than one Megabyte!!!!! and once you get to know how to use it, there's practically nothing you can't achieve with, say, 3dStudio that blender can't do one way or the other (considering 3dS's signature of around 300 megs, that's saying something).

Finally, for those interested, it's a free download in here: Blender site [blender3d.com] (no, I'm in no way associated with the company that makes it, I just think it's one hell of a product). Plus, there are a lot of tutorials at their site you can check out to sort out that freaky interface. (oh, and it runs on linux quite well, too) ;-)

Re:does video card matter?

[Pyromage]

Most packages will support real-time hardware-accelerated rendering in the editor view, but there's a reason why the final renders are not usually going to be HW accelereted. It's for quality: When you use the vidcard to render, you're dependant on it: you can only render with features it has, to a level of precision it supports. Do any video cards support ray-tracing? I don't know if it could even be done in conjunction with a video card (but i am not a 3d programmer). What about correct shadows? Those stencil-buffer shadows are approximations, designed to run FAST, not WELL. That's why nvidia's professional line (the quadro) is NOT the same as their consumer/gamer line, the geforce. No, you do not want to render via video card.

I wish I had known this 6 years ago

[donglekey]

I figure I will put this out there because it needs to be said. For anyone getting into 3D, this is the process that you need to take.

You need a computer, make it a x86 PC running windows 2000 Professional, this is the best way to go right now. Linux, Mac, SGI, are not options for you in terms of money and ease of use. A PC will be low cost and dynamic. If you already have a computer, there is nothing wrong with using that, unless you can't put more than 128 MB of RAM in it.

Put as much RAM in it as you can 128 will work, 256 will be comfortable and let you get into more complex projects, 512 will probably be more than you will use, but it isn't a bad thing.

Your processor speed matters, but if it can run windows 2000 you will be fine. Renders may turn out to be slow on a slow computer, but with enough RAM they will be slow and steady, and still allow you to get work done. If you can get a fast processor, good, if not, don't sweat it.

Get a good gaming graphics card. Go for a Geforce 2 MX or Radeon or a Geforce 3 if you can afford it. They will all work very very well. It will increase interactivity and minimize frustration.

Get access to broadband and use morpheus to pirate all the goddamned software you can find. Look for Lightwave 6.5b or 7.0, 3DS Max R4, Maya 4, Softimage 3D (rare), Softimage XSI 1.5 (rare), or Houdini (super mega rare). - (The magic five, 95% of studios will own at least on of these programs) Finding good 3D software for the Mac is very difficult, Lightwave and Maya are the two programs you should be concerned with, and Maya for MacOSX was just recently released and will be extremely difficult to find, if not impossible.

Look for Photoshop 6.0, After effects 5.0, and Painter (rare) to compliment your 3D software.

Get Sound Forge 5.0 and Cool Edit to mess around with any sound you might want.

Take the time to click every button in every program you have and figure out what it does. After you know the features pretty well start a project, if you are enthusiastic about 3D you will certainly have something you want to achieve.

Try to make it look good, but don't get frustrated if it doesn't. Completing something is much better than keeping your standards so high, you freak out and don't progress.

Reading is good, experience is better, make sure you have both read about animation and do as much as possible.

While you are doing all this, save up to actually buy the educational, or full version of the software, it is worth it. I am not just saying this so I don't look like an ungrateful pirate, I truly mean it, all of that software is worth every penny.

Don't believe any nay-sayers or egotists, this is the way to go. I know about Blender and other free projects, just avoid them, pirate, and save up for the real version of what you like best. The free projects won't be ready for at least 2.5 years, probably more. Blue Moon Rendering Tools is a very good renderer and is free, but works off of the Renderman standard, and it will be very difficult to get anything to interface with it.

And lastly, remember, take it further, take it further, take it further!

If you want to get into 3D, save this comment and make it a check list. Flame me if you like, but I know that this is the best path to take to enter the world of 3D and computer animation, it will take you where you want to go.