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[artleon]

i'm working with maya 6 on windows xp home with SP2

i already did my reading and searching and i've deleted all history and cleared the script editor and i'm trying to use the paint weight map tool and maya keeps struggling to paint the map for the joints and eventually crashes. after i read i think i just need a better and more powerful lappy that can handle this work. maya seems to be heavy duty as i have never had an issue in lightwave.

my laptop is my workstation due to the size of my desk and so i can work in maya anywhere i go. portability. i'm learning maya 6 and trying to finish a porfolio i am working on so i can update my submission for a job.

i have a dell inspiron 1100
2ghz intel celeron
640mb ram (don't know what kind)
80gb hdd 5400rpm
Intel(R) 82845 G/GL/GE/PE/GV Graphics Controller

is my guess that i need a better lappy right?

i've looked into a powerful HP lappy
windows xp media center edition
AMD Turion 64 ML-40 2.2GHz
Dual 100GB hard drives
17" WXGA+ widescreen
1024MB of DDR memory
ATI Radeon® Xpress 200M IGP graphics card

there is a 2gb ram laptop for $300. would that be necessary or just a luxury to go that high? i read that somebody post here whose intentin was to crash a 2gb computer and succeded but from the description went WAAAAYYY over board on what they put into the scene and rendered.

does maya even work on media center edition? is there no difference. i've never seen or worked with it. all i know is that xp home is buggy and xp pro is more stable.

from my knowledge an Nvidia graphics card is the best but way expensive to get for a lappy. i've looked at the top of the line alienware laptop and it goes for over $4000 USD

if you guys believe it's best to upgrade to this laptop i will go buy it. it will be a great investment. so i can finish my work in maya. i'm getting frustrated with all the crashing and how slow maya gets after a while. especially when my laptop heats up. the interaction with the UI is sluggish.

thank you to ALL that reply.

[magicsy]

yeah u definitely need more memory(ram) 2 meg would be brilliant but 1024 will be fine.

[artleon]

so i bought the laptop mentioned above yesterday. installed all my software and transfered files from my old lappy. maya still crashed as i tried to use the paint weight tool onmy character. i had all the geomtry visible and the joints as well. and i kept clicking to see if i could get to come back from a crashed state but it closed on it's own. i tried again. this time i only had the geomtry needed for the moment. but when i clcik on the geometry with theweight brush the geometry goes to wireframe instead of staying visible to me as it does in the tutorials. and i have to wait a while and click on the screen again a short while later and wait another while and finally i see the result. i don't see it happening instantaneously as it occurs in the riggind for low poly games tutorial. and my character is heavier on the geometry than the character in that tutorial. what can i do? is there anything i can do to get the interface to react as fast as it does in the tutorial.

[artleon]

well no replies i see but today i spent some time back tracking on fixing some geometry on the head of my character. and skin binding again the head to the joints. and now the paint weight tools is working much better. i think the geomtry i had was confusing maya so much that it would it make it work really hard calculate and to show results seconds later instead of instantly. it could be it not sure. but it's working alot better now that i cleaned it up. i hope i'm right.

[blomkaal]

So I take it Maya works fine with Media Center Edition?

[NeoStrider]

it's the fact that you have an onboard video processor... they just don't come anywhere close to meeting the minimum requirements for running maya properly.