team wants to do annimation for 1st time in 5 years - HELP!

[KenWittlief]

we have several students who want to do an annimation this year - we have not done one since '99 - I have a few questions:

1. what version of 3D studio Max were we up to last year?
2. We have been unable to locate our copy of 3DSM from last year, but we have several copies going back to '99. Can we get the CD for the latest version from somewhere (or download it) and use our old dongles?
3. does the SW still require the dongles, or is there some other form of licensing used now? If the dongles work, how many of our old dongles would still be usable?
4. is the documetation for 3DSM all online?
5. In general terms, what do you really need, performace wise, to run the SW on a PC? could you run it on a notebook? I know rendering takes serious processing power, but for capturing drawings and the more simple (tedious) tasks, whats the min you would want in a PC?

The students want to get started learning the SW now - I have been able to find a copy of Release 3, but I dont know what year its from.

[Pat Fairbank]

1. I believe we used version 5 last year, but 6 is out now.
2. I don't believe you can use licences from previous years, but you can buy an upgrade version which is considerably less expensive.
3. The dongles haven't been used since version 4 came out; there is a software licencing system now.

Not too sure about #4 or #5.

[Ryan Dognaux]

1) We were running on Max 5 last year, but since Max 6 is out now that's most likely what we'll get this year.
2) I'm not sure exactly what you're asking, or what you mean by "dongles" but since you lost your lastest 3DS Max CD, I dunno if you can run it or not. You could always get those 30 day trial version CD's which basically have everythign a liscenced copy of Max has.
3) Again w/ the dongles.. is this like an old form of registering or something?? We use CD Keys now...
4) By documentation do you mean... can you find tutorials and such?? There's tons of that stuff out there, and even some tutorials have been created specifically for FIRST.
5) What do you mean by SW?? Do you mean.. SM maybe?? Studio Max? To run a new version of Studio Max, you're going to need at least probably a Pentium 3 with around 850 Mhz and proabably at least 25 GB of space. This would be the minimum, meaning nothing else installed on the computer for it to run smoothly. A Pentium 4 with 1.5 Ghz + will really do you well, especially on the rendering part. Rendering takes forever on slower computers unless you want to net render... still, newer computers will do you better than older ones. SM can be run on a notebook as far as I know.. just have a good notebook.

I know my answers aren't very clear, but I didn't exactly understand your questions except for a few... so I hope that helps.

[KenWittlief]

the dongle is a little device you plug into the printer port on the PC - it was an old way of enabling SW - you could install the SW on any PC you wanted, but you have to physically plug the dongle into the one you wanted to use, so only one person could be using it at any given time.

Sounds like this has been obsoleted, and a CD key is used now.

So what do other teams do? do you all buy multiple copies of 3DSM so that more than one person can work on it at a time?

I would think that since we own a copy from the previous 5 years, we should be allowed to have 5 people using it at the same time, right? (ie, if it were still running with the dongles, we would have 5 dongles by now).

So what would I have to do to get 3DSM running on several machines in the next week or so, to allow the students to practice with the software? Are we stuck with using the demo version for a month?

what would we do after the kickoff then, when we will need more that one copy of Rev 6?

[Jeremy_Mc]

1. Last year was 5. This year we will presumably get 6.
2. You can get a trial, but the dongles died long long ago...

[For those who don't know, the dongles were a pre C-Dilla form of licensing protection]

3. Nope.
4. Well if you get a demo CD [or a CD of any sort] then there will be massive documentation contained within the program in Windows Help Format.
5. You'd want atleast a PIII probably...a PII might work. You'd definitely want a Pentium-class processor [meaning you could use an Athlon or Pentium but not Duron or Celeron]. 3dsMAX 5 is optimized for Pentium 4's, so if you could get one of those it would probably be better.

[Ryan Dognaux]

Originally posted by KenWittlief

So what do other teams do? do you all buy multiple copies of 3DSM so that more than one person can work on it at a time?

I would think that since we own a copy from the previous 5 years, we should be allowed to have 5 people using it at the same time, right? (ie, if it were still running with the dongles, we would have 5 dongles by now).

So what would I have to do to get 3DSM running on several machines in the next week or so, to allow the students to practice with the software? Are we stuck with using the demo version for a month?

what would we do after the kickoff then, when we will need more that one copy of Rev 6?

Since our team has been doing animation for a few years, we have multiple copies of 4 and 5, but the thing is you have to buy a multi-user lisence to have multiple copies of Max on computers. This can become expensive... I think Discreet and Autodesk need to provide more than one lisence each year because it's just not feasible to have one person doing an animation. The demo version would probably be the best way to go at the moment for getting 3DS Max up on many machines to get practice in, and while you have the month buy some multi user lisences.. or just wait till kickoff to do that.

In fact, I would definately wait till the kickoff the buy the multiuser lisences. Just wait till 6 comes out and buy it for that, and use the demo copies at the moment.. that's my suggestion. Hope it helps.

[stevek]

Last year we went through an upgrade of our previous versions.

It cost us- $250 to go from version 3-5 and $150 to go from 4-5. This is the Educational Upgrade.

I dealt with Jeff Mazzone at Tor Comp. (888) 561-7521 They are an Authorized Educational Reseller. They may redirect you based on Geographic Region but give them a try. I don't know what the upgrade to 6 will be or is. You can also buy Full Education Versions from them if you need more seats of the software.

We used to run on a PIII 850 as our fastest computer. After the first few weeks it was the only one that could open the scene and process the info. two years ago, they added a new computer center in the school with 20 PIII 900MHZ Its good enough and the Net render makes up for the speed changes. But the faster the better. You can get basic 2.2GHZ comp with 256MB Ram for $700 or so, More ram is much better but wont cost much more. So try to raise some money to cover the costs if you need more computer power.

[Justin Stiltner]

I dont know the exact details of how this worked with my team 2 years ago.. it was when they were still using the dongels, but our mentor called autodesk(i think) and talked to someone and they mailed her 5 more keys for free.

You may try calling or contacting the FIRST autodesk rep. from your area and see what you could get... couldent hurt.

on the subject of computers you could build an computer for animation with only what you will need and it sould be less than 700 easily.. also rember that you could use existing monitor, keyboard and mouse from a computer.. just bring in yours, plug in and start working.. then when your finished for the night hook the old one back up for use the next day

[djcapelis]

Mmmmmm... renderfarms, tasty.

Most schools are perfect for this too, large computer networks idle for 3/4 of the day.

[Jeremy_Mc]

Originally posted by Justin Stiltner
on the subject of computers you could build an computer for animation with only what you will need and it sould be less than 700 easily.. also rember that you could use existing monitor, keyboard and mouse from a computer.. just bring in yours, plug in and start working.. then when your finished for the night hook the old one back up for use the next day

$700!? Where are you buying your parts!?

Look on www.newegg.com and www.tcwo.com for some super cheap pricing. I suggest those because it's usually a lot better to order everything from one place...but if you're OK with ordering each part from (usually) a different place, check out www.pricewatch.com .

We've built a few machines that could do 3-D Animation for around $450 with no keyboard/monitor (just the machine).