Max & 3D animation

[Jutai]

Haig or anyone else with knowledge on the subject, I'm wondering about some stuff...

My friend is starting to get into 3D animation and he is starting to build an NT based computer dual processor and all so he can run the demanding programs. Of course he's not rich so anywhere he can save money is preferable... Right now he's got Animation Master by HASH but he's looking to expand his library and is looking into some system stressing programs like LightWave. He doesn't have much hardware knowledge but I told him image quality is Matrox's thing and I know the g400 chipset is powerful, but he wants to be able to run a lot of these programs and is looking for something powerful enough to run even the likes of Maya and Softimage which I've heard requires some really hefty video cards like the Oxygen series or else you will be waiting forever for the smallest tasks. Well whatever information you have in this area would be great.

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-Chris K.

[dbdg]

As far as I know the benefits the oxgen (high price cards) have over the top gamming cards is the redraw. On those cards you aren't supposed to have to wait for it to redraw complex scenes. Other than this I don't think there is much differnce. Apart from the fact if he wants to play games oxygen cards suck at it where as the G400 is the greatest card out.


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PIII 450 not o/c G200 128 MB PC100.

[paulcs]

3DLabs has a Glint-based Oxygen board that can be gotten for a little over $200.00. NT and dual processor support should be excellent. One assumes the image quality is excellent. It's not a gaming board however. I've seen some benchmarks, and the G400 beats it hands down in that department.

I'm hoping that the miniGL is a sign that Matrox is separating OpenGL gaming from OpenGL application use. They appear to have very different demands.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[SCompRacer]

Just be leary of the current Matrox OGL beta ICD in apps. Works great for me in games but have had OGL problems in 3D Studio MAX.

No complaints, just use the beta OGL on the gaming drive and the regular OGL driver on the work drive.



[This message has been edited by SCompRacer (edited 09-27-1999).]