Ideal Animation Workstation?

[Whidbey]

Money is no object - animation workstation. Do do 3d animation and rendering. Prefer AMD, but am open to all opinions.

What should my friend buy? All new parts.

 

[kcnychief]

Honestly, if money is of no object, and you need to do 3d animation and rendering, you should probably invest in a Macintosh.

It pains me to say it, as I'm a PC Guy, but they tend to be better for those purposes.

 

[BouncingSoul]

Honestly, if money is of no object, and you need to do 3d animation and rendering, you should probably invest in a Macintosh.

It pains me to say it, as I'm a PC Guy, but they tend to be better for those purposes.

I've heard this my entire life but no one seems to know why. I asked in an Apple store once and the dude (smug dude, typical mac guy) said .. and I quote. "They just are okay".

Seriously. Why? Is it just the software cause I thought industry standard was stuff like 3dsmax, Maya & Lightwave and I also thought they were pc titles. It can't be hardware can it? Do macs really have better vid cards? If someone can explain it to me I'd love to hear. I'm trying not to be a jerk or hijack this guy's thread but I'd really really love to hear a good reason or 12.

 

[madmatt]

I think it's a myth. They've always said Macs are better for calculations and animation. I would bet my PC could do those tasks just as well, especially if I added a video card designed for such tasks.

 

[melon]

Honestly, if money is of no object, and you need to do 3d animation and rendering, you should probably invest in a Macintosh.

It pains me to say it, as I'm a PC Guy, but they tend to be better for those purposes.

Umm...actually, it's the exact opposite. Macs are notoriously poor suited for 3D animation and rendering.

If you are serious about 3D animation and rendering, build a dual processor PC workstation with the latest Nvidia Quadro video card. AMD will work just fine. And if you don't know what 3D animation package to use, I'd suggest Alias Maya 7.0. It's expensive, yes, but you did say that money was no object.

Melon

 

[ShepsCrook]

I'd go with AMD opteron 2XX series. Yes, they are server chips but you can go with 2 or more of them on one board. Not to mention you'll have a boatload of power. Or if you want, an X2 or Opteron dual core processor would be more than enough. Max out the board with ram 4GB, no need for extremely high end ram either. And then some 150GB Raptor drives in RAID configuration. Mostly for speed reasons. The Nvidia Quadro or an ATI FireGL card for your graphics, or if you wanted, a 7800GTX or 7900GTX or 1900XT/X would be just fine. Ontop of that, a few large storage drives, like 500gb making 1GB or 2GB of storage for backing up files.