Hardware Requirements

# 1 22-08-2005 , 08:39 PM

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Join Date: Aug 2005

Posts: 32

Hello,

Before I go any further, I know what Alias's minimum system requirements are. I do not need you to quote them or link to them. I have read the hardware it works on, etc.

My question is, though, if you all believe my hardware is sufficient and, if not, what you would recommend upgrading to (yes, I have searched the forums and found a few system requirements-related posts). I am currently using the Maya 6.0 PLE, but I am considering upgrading.

These are my current system specs:

17" LCD (1280x1024 res)
AMD Athlon XP 2500 1.83ghz (eek)
512mb DDR RAM
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128mb

These are, obviously, not the ideal system specs for an advanced 3D modeling/animation/rendering program, but I am on a budget. The LCD is brand new, it works great. I am definitly sticking with that for a while. The video card, motherboard, and processor I have had for a while now. I would really like to hold off for another year on upgrading those. The RAM I can easily upgrade if it will make a significant improvement.

Now, I ask this because I have been trying to learn Maya, and it worked fine, but suddenly when I added an image plane, it literally got to the point where I was not longer able to function properly. When I tried zooming, panning, anything -- it just took FOREVER. And then I tried to create a CV Curve, I plotted the first two points, and then all of the ones I plotted after that didn't even appear! When I clicked the select tool to end the creation process, only the first two (or three) points had been created. Normally, I can create a curve, manipulate it, do whatever no problem. All changes are instant, etc. But for some reason when I throw an image plane into the mix, it slows down dramatically.

So, my question becomes: Do you think my issue is one of hardware, and what would you recommend I do? On the current hardware, would Complete are Ultimate versions work properly as well?

Thank you for your time!

Technel

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# 2 22-08-2005 , 08:48 PM

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Join Date: May 2005

Location: Where do u think I am right now? Alright, I'll tell y' all... I'm at Gnomon Workshop and Highend3d sites...Hehehehe...just kiddin':)!!!!Oh, I'm not a ego member anymore? Cool!!!! I'm a Senior Member now!!!!

Posts: 599

MY computer is worst than that...

Anyone here plays Tibia?

Add me to your MSN list

Tibia is the best MMORPG that i've ever seen...xD

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# 3 22-08-2005 , 09:03 PM

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Originally posted by Total Rookie
MY computer is worst than that...

Originally Posted by

Hehe, then I don't feel as bad. I have been using Lynda.com's tutorials, but I downloaded the free dog tutorial from SimplyMaya. I noticed that he used a different technique than the Lynda videos -- he created a plane and did not use the image plane feature built-into Maya. I decided to try and see if that works better.

This is what happened:

I created the plane, put the image on it, and I created my curve. There was no lag or anything, it worked fine, except when I got half-way down his body, the curve dissapeared. I hid the plane to discover: the curve was UNDER the plane! I moved the plane up to the X axis to see if that helped, but everything over 1/2 of the way down the image plane dissapears. Even the grid did this! The grid displayed on the top half, but on the bottom half it didn't show up!

Any idea what is causing this?

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# 4 04-09-2005 , 10:04 PM

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Posts: 6

This would be video card related. Check if updating your card drivers might solve the issue.

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# 5 09-09-2005 , 05:15 AM

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Join Date: Sep 2002

Location: Plantation, Florida

Posts: 1,568

Why don't you save some money on that LCD and go with a CRT instead then upgrade the CPU and RAM? Sure it will look purty on that LCD screen, but what good is that if it doesn't run?

Dave Baer
Professor of Digital Arts
Digital Media Arts College
Boca Raton, Florida
dbaer@dmac.edu

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# 6 16-09-2005 , 01:25 PM

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Location: New York

Posts: 40

Ihave a similar problem. I have an athlon 64 fx-55 processor, an asus a8v motherboard, an ati radeon 9800 card, and 1.5 ram. One would asume this would be great for a pretty decent speed, but sometimes I am doing simple low poly tasks and it's slow as hell.
Specially whenI try rendering using maya hardware which is supposed to be the fastest since it's using the processor's power and that takes ten times longer than using maya software.

Has any one encountered problems with asus a8v dlx motherboards and the athlon 64 fx-55 processors? I am pissed off i spent my whole income tax check to get a good system to run maya on and I have encountered lots of problems with it.

"It is Difficult to understand the universe if you only study one planet"
-Miyamoto Musashi-

Last edited by ryuhayabusa13; 16-09-2005 at 01:28 PM.

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# 7 06-10-2005 , 07:32 AM

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Originally posted by ryuhayabusa13
Ihave a similar problem. I have an athlon 64 fx-55 processor, an asus a8v motherboard, an ati radeon 9800 card, and 1.5 ram. One would asume this would be great for a pretty decent speed, but sometimes I am doing simple low poly tasks and it's slow as hell.
Specially whenI try rendering using maya hardware which is supposed to be the fastest since it's using the processor's power and that takes ten times longer than using maya software.

Has any one encountered problems with asus a8v dlx motherboards and the athlon 64 fx-55 processors? I am pissed off i spent my whole income tax check to get a good system to run maya on and I have encountered lots of problems with it.

Originally Posted by

1) Hardware Render is designed for FireGL, not Radeon -- Simply switching from GeForce to Quadro I turned a 90-some frame render (exactly the same) with hardware particles from 45-50 minutes to ~1 minute 30 seconds... that's the EXACT same card -- just different drivers.
2) Clear your history often... I was running on a 1000-poly scene and it locked up repetitively... cleared history and it was 100% primo.

Anything more than those 2 basic tips -- you'll need to show more -- like "hijack this" and such.

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# 8 06-10-2005 , 01:32 PM

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Thanks a lot for the tips man. I saw an add of the ati firegl card in the 3-d world magazine. It had this high-res picture of a girl. (elvish like with white hair) which was one of charactes found in one of those Best of CG Artists books "Expose" and D'artiste

anyway, the model ATi V7100 seems to be the "Shin Akuma" out of all those powerful graphics cards, I can't afford to buy that one until i find a job when i graduate this year and then pay my student loans. Bummer :headbang:

But I'll definitelly make sure to delete history before i render. that's a good idea.

"It is Difficult to understand the universe if you only study one planet"
-Miyamoto Musashi-

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# 9 06-10-2005 , 01:59 PM

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To stop the slow down and any other related problems:

Before you create your image plane create a new ortho camera so go to Panels -> Ortho -> New -> and whatever view you want to create now map the image plane onto that camera and switch back to your default camera and it will run faster and should solve most problems

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# 10 07-10-2005 , 07:47 PM

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Posts: 1,292

My system is a P2 800Mhz/GeForce 1 at least untill Wednesday when i get a 4400+ Dual Core/7800GTX user added image

The point being that Maya did work with specs as rubbish as that, badly, but it still did work. Yours should be fine.

Yeah, but no but yeah but no....

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# 11 08-10-2005 , 02:59 PM

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Yeah, Technel and me have similar specs in our computers, have similar issues with rendering and we both can't afford buying new hardware, for a while. The best thing we can do is keep stuff in layers , turn on only whatever we are working on, render things separately and compose them later in aftereffects , combustion or any other of those programs .

Thanks a lot for your feedback guys and I hope both Technel and me can do some decent work with what we have for now. And also Technel, if you are reading this, If for any chance you work with painteffects, turn them off while you are working on something else.

They totally eat up the workflow speed. well you might know that already, but just in case. As a newbie myself on my first maya course I used to commit that mistake frequently and couldn't figure that out.

Good luck on everything and until next time.

"It is Difficult to understand the universe if you only study one planet"
-Miyamoto Musashi-

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