Animation System

[Lev]

Hello !

Since this year's software will probably even more demanding then last year, we face a problem of getting a system to run it.

What kind of computer(s) did you use for animation last year, and how did you get it? Did you get your computer from school, or used your personal computer? Did anyone manage to get a computer from a sponsor?

These are specs of computer our team was using:
1.4 ghz Athlon
768MB pc133 ram
geforce2mx video

This proved to be not enough last year, since the program was trying to allocate ~1.0 GB, and had to use virtual memory, doubling the rendering times. This year it will probably be even worse, because we plan on making more complex scenes...

[Jack]

i used max on a 800mhz w/ 384mb ram. sort of slow, but it works. also, unless something happens we will get max 4.3 for the 2003 season

[MBiddy]

NOT ENOUGH?? I'm pretty sure our rendering computer didn't have near that specs. Even on my computer which has about a third the power of that beast I don't have that much trouble. WORK WITH WHAT YOU GOT!

[Matt VP]

1.47GHz Athlon
1024MB DDR RAM
GeForce 4 TI4200 (LeadTek)

...the network render button is helpful as well two durons doing nothing most of the time

[Lev]

What i'm much more interested is not exact specs, but WHERE did you get computer(s). In my case i had to bring my computer each meeting to school (since the school computer could barely run the program), which nearly destroyed it (unpugging and reattaching everything 10 times a week is not a good thing)

Did most of you just used their home computers and worked at home?

[MBiddy]

Wha? That's insane. Why didn't you just have the people come to your house and use the computer there?

[Soukup]

last year we had a bunch of POS computers from our sponsor. this year however......

we willhave at least 3 computers possibly 4 with more than a gig of DDR ram. those same computers will all be runnning GEforce 4 graphics cards and have kick *ss proccessing power. our fourth computer is maybe going to be bought by our sponsor. in addition we will have 2 render farms. Our first will be at our school using computer that were just given to out robotics teacher from our sponsor, and some other computers that were given to the saem teacher as part of his computer lab. this means maybe 15+ operation computers all hooked together in a render farm. Our second render farm will include everyone's personal computers all hooked together at someone's house. We are expecting rendering to go much faster this year.

as for where we got them. we checked with our sponsor first, and they gave us a bunch of old machines. they aren't top of the line but the work. second we all dug into our pockets and fixed our comuters up as well. you may want to try going to a local computer shop and seeing if they have some computers that you can borrow, and if all else fails, ask for one to be put into your team's budget. A little more funraising could make your work on the animation go a little bit faster.


VERY IMPORTANT. ANY TEAM IN CALIFORNIA OR MICHIGAN OR ANYWHERE ELSE THAT WOULD LIKE TO BE MENTORED BY OUR TEAM PLEASE EMAIL ME. the_direktor@hotmail.com

[Matt VP]

Err right... and you think I'm on crack?

[Soukup]

no man

but you gotta see what we are going to get from our sponsor

[Matt VP]

if we get a dual Xeon system I would be increadibly surprised... they're quite expensive

[Suneet]

Jack, how do you know we'll get MAX 4.3 next year? I was looking forwards to MAX 5... looks like it has more realistic lighting... And Discreet says it's shipping, too.

Also, how do you get sponsors to donate computers? What kinds of sponsors do that? We could use some more... We've just done everything at home.

[Lev]

Well, based on these setups, how long did it take to render the whole animation (not counting post editing, only frame rendering) ?

It was about 15 hours in our case.

Wha? That's insane. Why didn't you just have the people come to your house and use the computer there?

the problem is that we did modeling on two computers, so either way, someone had to bring his computer somewhere in order to cooperate. Plus it seemed more fun to work where the rest of the team was building robot.

[Jack]

Originally posted by Suneet
Jack, how do you know we'll get MAX 4.3 next year? I was looking forwards to MAX 5... looks like it has more realistic lighting... And Discreet says it's shipping, too.

I thought i read that we would get max 4.3. But if you say that discreet is allready shipping max 5, we might get it. i really don't know for sure

[Chris Nowak]

yeah, our sponsors have a bunch of old machines that they need to get rid of. They actually went as far to say that we can't bring them back.

[Soukup]

for those of you looking for computers

talk to whatever company sponsors you

our team is sponsored by Haworth. they make furniture. so most of the people there are not computer oriented. but we talked to someone in charge of the computer systems and found a bunch of computers. all that anyone would have to do is find the head of technology explain your situation, and i'm sure they'll have something for you. if in doubt or you don't have any real sponsor go to a big company in your area. i'm sure they'd be willing to help.

ANY TEAM THAT WANTS TO BE MENTORED THIS UP COMING SEASON OUR TEAM WOULD BE HAPPY TO HELP. GIVE ME AND EMAIL @ the_direktor@hotmail.com