Please Help : 2 iMac's linked up for display & Processing

You can't combine the power, but you should be able to connect them both with a mini displayport cable and then hit cmd + F2 on your old mac to enable target display mode.

 

you will need a Thunderbolt cable to do target display mode on Mid-2011 and newer iMacs.


24" iMacs do not support that. only 2009-2010 27-inch iMacs with displayport, Mid-2011 and Late 2012 21-inch and 27-inch iMacs with thunderbolt support target display mode

 

The "using both processors" thing that you refer to is possible, and is built into most modern 3D programs.

It's not as simple as hooking them together with a cord and having them both contribute, though. Not sure which 3D app you use, but basically, you have to have a machine that acts as a server, and one that acts as a client. The server machine can also act as a client simultaneously.

For animation, each machine is assigned its own frames by the server to render, then it uploads those frames to the server machine, which, depending on your settings, assembles them into a video file upon completion of the entire sequence. This is complicated by things like global illumination and dynamics, which need to be simulated and cached on a single machine before starting the distributed render.

For stills, you can have each work on pre-defined tiles of the image, then put all the tiles together in Photoshop.

It's really not worth it to go through the hassle of this unless you're working with a scene that will take multiple days to render without splitting it up. Just starting out as you mentioned, it'll probably be a while before you're taking on things that require that much power anyway.

I usually only do it if I estimate total render time on my fastest machine alone to be greater than 16-24 hours.

 

I've never tried it myself as I don't have a 2nd computer but I found this program, Synergy, recently. It allows you to move your mouse and keyboard from one computer to the other seamlessly, or at least that's what it claims, could be helpful. Something to look into anyway. It's free too.


http://synergy-foss.org/