Well most of what I'll be using seems better optimized for the Windows OS, but some might run better on Mac but you can put Windows on Mac or Apple hardware rather but not OS X on "PC" hardware so I could just buy an Apple machine and put Windows on there to use for the apps not on the Mac platform.
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iMac/Mac Pro for animation or Windows build???? - still deciding sadly
- Thread starter PrinceAvalon
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Well most of what I'll be using seems better optimized for the Windows OS, but some might run better on Mac but you can put Windows on Mac or Apple hardware rather but not OS X on "PC" hardware so I could just buy an Apple machine and put Windows on there to use for the apps not on the Mac platform.
Well, the myth that macs are better at graphics is just that, a myth; it started a long time ago when Thomas Knoll wrote a little program called Display in his mac. Well that little piece of software is one of the most widely used programs in the creative field, but most people know it by the name of Photoshop, presented by Adobe as a commercial app in the mac first. The same thing happended with other indusrty standards as illustrator, inDesign, etc and the myth was born, from the lips of people in the printing industry.
You're in a different industry, and today is not about the tools you use but how you use them. Windows or OS X, both have flaws, one company admits more their problems, and fix them, the other won't admit there's anything wrong with what they make and sometimes releases fixes very quietly. it's all down to the software you use the most and how you use it.
Maya and Max both have strong points, with better support of polygon modeling in Max and Nurbs in Maya. Pretty much both can do the same stuff but the customization of the GUI on Maya and other parts has made it the standard in hollywood.
If you're modeling, you need a single CPU in both apps and a good video card since both are really single threaded for this purpose. For rendering and other functions extra CPU's are necessary in both programs since these parts are multi threaded. RAM (both system and video) allows you to handle bigger amounts of polys.
So if your main soft is Max go for a windows machine, if not either will do the job, but often down the road you will start upgrading parts so usually this is done faster, cheaper, better and with more options on a windows rig.
Take a look at this article on a proper website for people in DCC, not that dreadful site creativecow, it doesn't include tests on a mac, but it does it in one of the main workstations used by DCC pros:
http://www.cgchannel.com/news/viewfeature.jsp?newsid=9305
You're in a different industry, and today is not about the tools you use but how you use them. Windows or OS X, both have flaws, one company admits more their problems, and fix them, the other won't admit there's anything wrong with what they make and sometimes releases fixes very quietly. it's all down to the software you use the most and how you use it.
Maya and Max both have strong points, with better support of polygon modeling in Max and Nurbs in Maya. Pretty much both can do the same stuff but the customization of the GUI on Maya and other parts has made it the standard in hollywood.
If you're modeling, you need a single CPU in both apps and a good video card since both are really single threaded for this purpose. For rendering and other functions extra CPU's are necessary in both programs since these parts are multi threaded. RAM (both system and video) allows you to handle bigger amounts of polys.
So if your main soft is Max go for a windows machine, if not either will do the job, but often down the road you will start upgrading parts so usually this is done faster, cheaper, better and with more options on a windows rig.
Take a look at this article on a proper website for people in DCC, not that dreadful site creativecow, it doesn't include tests on a mac, but it does it in one of the main workstations used by DCC pros:
http://www.cgchannel.com/news/viewfeature.jsp?newsid=9305
So who is the one that admits to their flaws and the one that doesn't but will tend to fix them?
Most importantly, thanks for the info.
I wasn't sure that's why I was asking around and figured come to a Mac forum to get advice not just a random fanboi running around saying windows is **** all hail Apple lol or vice versa.
Well I have about 4500 US dollars to spend on the hardware lol so that's some nice hardware. I was wondering now go for an i7 or wait a few months to see if the i9's come out? Decisions, decisions lol...
Well from looking at my future semesters to finish this term, Maya and 3DS Max seem like they'll be used fairly even. Can both of those run on Windows.
See I started by going to the campus but then hit money and family trouble so came back for a term off now just finishing it online and I can't remember if they all ran on Windows, I do recall using the "Mac" lab often but it could be on Windows too.
The school I went for computer animation uses both mac an pc. All the software you will need runs on windows except for 2 pro apps: Final Cut and Shake. Shake was put in a drawer somewhere in cupertino never to be look at again, and FCP just use Premiere, it does the same thing. Shake has been replaced in the DCC community by Toxik. Maya runs perfect on W and Mac, I have it at home running on (just because this is a mac site I'll put it first) a MBP 2.8 with 4 gigs, 9600 NVidia and 500 gig HDD - on my main workstation, an old Alienware Are51 Dual Xeon 3.6 (O.C. 4.5) 4 gigs ram, raptor HDD, dual Quadro FX3400 - and in an old Sony Vaio P4 2.8 2.5 gigs of ram, 7,200 rpm HDD and 128 MB Quadro FX1100 - and Vaio laptop Core2Duo 2 gig RAM, I think 7400 nvidia go 256 RAM. I also run Max 2010 in the windows machines with ZBrush and MudBox and Toxik and the complete Adobe suite. The P4 struggles with zbrush and doesn't want to run MudBox 2010 other than that it does a good job at modeling and basic animation. All win7. I've been using windows since 3.11 and never really got into problems because of the OS. I had some minor adware infections, never an actual virus (these account for less than 3% of "virus" infections on pc's). The problems I had have been with 3rd party software or hardware related (hdd crash). Only once got a BSOD and in the mac field these tend to freeze more on me.
The guy that said that Maya is more unstable on mac doesn't know what he was saying, after Alias departed from SGI they went first to the mac and then released a windows and linux versions. Autodesk bought Alias in 2005 and it actually released their first maya on 2008. Works fine on mac and windows, altough there's no 64 bit maya for OS X.
If you can wait for new intel CPU's, maybe you can get a better machine or a cheapest one with the now current chips. Get your software from a place like studica, they have very good prices on maya/max for students and you can later upgrade to a commercial edition.
BTW about multithreaded in rendering, u usually don't actually use your machine for render unless there's not budget or is a short animation. Either u have a render farm or rent one. Machines in render farms are usually blade computers with multiple CPU's, lot of RAM and no or integrated graphics cards since they're not necessary for rendering.
About me, I'm graduated in Architecture, Digital Arts and Computer Animation. Been using max for like 10 years and Maya for like 6.
The guy that said that Maya is more unstable on mac doesn't know what he was saying, after Alias departed from SGI they went first to the mac and then released a windows and linux versions. Autodesk bought Alias in 2005 and it actually released their first maya on 2008. Works fine on mac and windows, altough there's no 64 bit maya for OS X.
If you can wait for new intel CPU's, maybe you can get a better machine or a cheapest one with the now current chips. Get your software from a place like studica, they have very good prices on maya/max for students and you can later upgrade to a commercial edition.
BTW about multithreaded in rendering, u usually don't actually use your machine for render unless there's not budget or is a short animation. Either u have a render farm or rent one. Machines in render farms are usually blade computers with multiple CPU's, lot of RAM and no or integrated graphics cards since they're not necessary for rendering.
About me, I'm graduated in Architecture, Digital Arts and Computer Animation. Been using max for like 10 years and Maya for like 6.
Yeah, I know all about those when I was in my first term physically at the school and my friend was in her 8th term oops she was starting her final project.
She mentioned the render farm. The school I went too had one in the basement of the school but you couldn't go there unescorted lol oops.
The thing is since I'm finishing it online, I may have no choice but to use my machine.. so I kinda need power and what would be better two QUADS on a server board like 2 Xeon's or one of the i9s when they come out I heard they're gonna be six and 8 core models.
What I'm wondering is will a singly CHIP with 8 cores perform about the same little better little less than 2 CHIPS that have 4?
Is there any way to logically guesstimate as to what possible statistics will be or not really?
Oh well I'll be buying the machine in about 2-3 months so I'll have to wait and see.
Well, still unsure.
Even upon more research and more friends who graduated before me say they use Macs a lot and have a separate Windows box for the Windows only/specific apps but they use the Mac for practically everything, like 84-90% of what they do.
I'm leaning towards a Mac but.... like I said still unsure. Do to school, bills and other facets of life I don't have too much time to "learn" or take courses on Macs. But I'm an incredibly fast learner with tech and the very first time I used a Mac years ago I picked up everything like "that." I'm sure I still have the same ability and it'll mostly be re-educating myself not learning for the first time.
Just because I am technical and can solve windows' issues doesn't mean I want to spend hours in the registry, or dealing with malware/viruses.
Recently I got some horrible crap and had to run a 7 pass DoD HDD Erasure method; what the US government uses to erase stuff sensitive to the national security, to "fix" all the crap I had on there and didn't feel like spending all the time repairing the registry and damage viruses did.
Even if Windows can run and use those apps just as good, I'm getting so frustrated with all the issues and downsides MS leaves or just doesn't care to correct.
All that is making me want to switch, but I just wanted to be sure if the OS and apps coded for OS X somehow work more seamless and better than on Windows and wanted some advice from anyone in the media field would help. Doesn't have to be animators specifically. If you do Graphics work/design that would also help give me some more info. I have issues with even basic video encoding tasks in Windows often, heck trying to make an ISO of a DVD for back-up things froze and explorer crashes now and then.
All this "Windoze" crap is leaning me more towards a Mac for that and to keep a Windows box just for the Windows crap if/when needed. Which, given the world and how widely it's used, it seems is likely. Almost seems like you'll always need Windows for something now and again.
Even upon more research and more friends who graduated before me say they use Macs a lot and have a separate Windows box for the Windows only/specific apps but they use the Mac for practically everything, like 84-90% of what they do.
I'm leaning towards a Mac but.... like I said still unsure. Do to school, bills and other facets of life I don't have too much time to "learn" or take courses on Macs. But I'm an incredibly fast learner with tech and the very first time I used a Mac years ago I picked up everything like "that." I'm sure I still have the same ability and it'll mostly be re-educating myself not learning for the first time.
Just because I am technical and can solve windows' issues doesn't mean I want to spend hours in the registry, or dealing with malware/viruses.
Recently I got some horrible crap and had to run a 7 pass DoD HDD Erasure method; what the US government uses to erase stuff sensitive to the national security, to "fix" all the crap I had on there and didn't feel like spending all the time repairing the registry and damage viruses did.
Even if Windows can run and use those apps just as good, I'm getting so frustrated with all the issues and downsides MS leaves or just doesn't care to correct.
All that is making me want to switch, but I just wanted to be sure if the OS and apps coded for OS X somehow work more seamless and better than on Windows and wanted some advice from anyone in the media field would help. Doesn't have to be animators specifically. If you do Graphics work/design that would also help give me some more info. I have issues with even basic video encoding tasks in Windows often, heck trying to make an ISO of a DVD for back-up things froze and explorer crashes now and then.
All this "Windoze" crap is leaning me more towards a Mac for that and to keep a Windows box just for the Windows crap if/when needed. Which, given the world and how widely it's used, it seems is likely. Almost seems like you'll always need Windows for something now and again.
Interesting thread. I actually am in the same boat. I wanted to use Vue and After Effects as well as the rest of CS4 and was wondering if an iMac (maxed out, 2tb, 16 gb ram, 27inch, etc) would be a good choice for that. I just wanted confirmation of whether it will provide fast renders or should I go with a Mac Pro for better results?
Also when are the next iMacs coming out? Im debating whether to wait or not, because of usb 3.0/ firewire 3200 which is slowly rolling out and should be part of the next update I would assume.
Also when are the next iMacs coming out? Im debating whether to wait or not, because of usb 3.0/ firewire 3200 which is slowly rolling out and should be part of the next update I would assume.
At least 4+ months to the next iMac revision. Unfoturnately USB 3 seems unlikely.
Getting a 27" i7 iMac today with all those options is kinda crazy. Add $250 for a 2TB drive, and $900 for 16 gigs of ram. Ouch. thats now over $3000.
If the new base MacPro can outperform the i7 and still stays the silly $2500 -- you could add another $700 and get a nice 24" screen and go to 12 or so gigs of ram... id lean towards a MP if $3000 is in my future...
That reads a lot like second or third hand Hackintosh experience. In fact, you can install a completely unmodified OS X Snow Leopard (which is what is actually called a "vanilla" OS X) on a PC that meets the technical requirements - I've done it, so I know for certain that you do NOT need to download one of those customized OS X images.
Setting up a Hackintosh has become extremely easy (as long as your hardware is very close to an Apple computer): Install one of the many EFIs and then boot into the OS X installation DVD.
You -might- need to install additional kernel extensions or drivers, but that is not illegal at all. Or since when has writing software become illegal?
Also, Apple's EULA restrictions, especially those concerning the "only on an Apple labeled computer", are probably null and void, if not illegal, in many countries outside the United States. And even in the United States we are still waiting for the final judgment if Apple can impose such restrictions on the end user. If there still is a judge in the US that has some common sense left in him or her, he or she will tell Apple where to put that EULA clause.
Performance of a Hackintosh: My Dell XPS M1530 Hackintosh performed as fast and reliable as a regular 15" MacBook Pro - Aperture, Logic Studio, Photoshop CS3 and even VMWare Fusion didn't "see" any difference to a "real" MacBook Pro and certainly did not behave any differently on that machine. The only issue that I had on that notebook was that sleep mode did not work - something you certainly won't worry about on a desktop computer.
Anyway, I'm back to Windows on this machine because it is my work notebook (I'm a network admin) and for a number of reasons OS X Snow Leopard totally sucked as a client in our Windows Server 2008/Ubuntu Server office network. But again, it wasn't the Hackintosh that was the problem, just OS X as a platform.
For those living in Europe/Germany who want a working Hackintosh ouf of the box, visit www.pearc.de. They're already in business for more than a year now, and Apple still hasn't sued them. Could have something to do with the different laws in Europe, now, couldn't it?