Maya on SGI

[WhiteRabbitObj]

As far as I know, no one uses SGI's anymore because they have been far outpaced by standard PCs. Yay for not having to buy super duper expensive systems anymore! I believe SGI has closed a lot of it's system building division in fact and now focuses more on high-end realtime simulation computers for the medical field. Um, I could be way off on that, it's been a long time since I even thought about SGI, but I seem to remember something along these lines.

[rocarpen]

Yeah, you wouldn't catch me buying an SGI, that's for sure. But it looks as though I'm going to be doing a project soon with an app I barely know (Maya) on a platform I've never touched (SGI).

I'm trying to minimise the surprises.

:)

[WhiteRabbitObj]

Well regardless, you will be using an IRIX/UNIX based environment so if you're familiar with that environment you won't be in for any surprises on the system end. As far as Maya goes, I don't know what software you normally use but Maya is pretty easy to use as far as I'm concerned. Of course, I have learned 3D solely on Maya so that plays into that opinon. But Maya doesn't get it's reputation for excellence from nowhere.

[somlor]

I'll think you'll find Maya on an SGI to be very responsive. Even lower end systems can chug through huge scenes that would probably kill a typical Win2k PC setup. I think the big problem with SGI is actually the overall terrible price/performance when compared to PC's, but if you get a chance to work with one they are decent systems in my experience.

[rocarpen]

I do have some limited experience with Maya, and the work I'll be doing is fairly straightforward (modeling, texturing, rendering, some simple camera moves, maybe a fly-through). I'll be sure to abuse the PLE ahead of time (if I can get the damn thing to work on my Dual 533 G4). I come from a 3DSMax and Cinema 4D background originally.

Regarding the hardware, the SGI is actually an O2, not an Octane2 (as I originally thought). Nice naming conventions, SGI.

I'll be using NURBS predominantly, something I havn't worked with much before, but which as I understand are less processor intensive than polys. Rendering duties will be spat out to a half-dozen SGI boxes. Texture creation will be on a Mac with Photoshop. Basically, this is a question of "How complex a scene can an SGI O2 with 800MB RAM handle without grinding to a halt?"

[gmask]

Last time I checked SGi was focusing on massively scalable systems .. systems with as many as 512 CPU's and capable of manipualting terabyte sized datasets like geographically information from weather satelittes etc. Their biggest clients are government and scientific.

There are still some graphic application for their machiens but as for as a 3D workstation goes they are out of the game. The only 3D applications that might still use SGI are industrial engineering and surface anaylisis and wind dynamics but I doubt that is really the case these days.

What unix has to offer is better memory performance and effeciency and overall more stability and you can get that from Linux running on a pentium or AMD cpu.

[WhiteRabbitObj]

How complex a scene can you get? Well using a well constructed set with instancing and referencing where appropriate, you should be able to pretty much make a scene however large you want. Use layers and turn elements off it it gets too intensive and then just turn them back on for rendering. Unless of course you're trying to do something like the Whomping Willow from Harry Potter, which, according to Cinefex was one insane scene that ended up being all dynamically generated on the fly or something like that because all the leaves and branches and whatnot were just too much for the computers to handle in any semblance of efficiency.

[rocarpen]

Originally posted by WhiteRabbit.obj
How complex a scene can you get? Well using a well constructed set with instancing and referencing where appropriate, you should be able to pretty much make a scene however large you want. Use layers and turn elements off it it gets too intensive and then just turn them back on for rendering. Unless of course you're trying to do something like the Whomping Willow from Harry Potter, which, according to Cinefex was one insane scene that ended up being all dynamically generated on the fly or something like that because all the leaves and branches and whatnot were just too much for the computers to handle in any semblance of efficiency.

Well said. Instancing and referencing, as well as turning layers on and off, are techniques I've become quite adept at with my pokey old Mac and Cinema 4D. Sometimes though, you really need to line up item A with item B, and you need to see both, and suddenly your system has ground to a halt just because you've turned on a few cylinders.

And the clock is ticking... ;)

NURBS newbie question: any truth to the claim that NURBS are less intensive (aka: quicker) to work with than polys?

[Shinova]

NURBS newbie question: any truth to the claim that NURBS are less intensive (aka: quicker) to work with than polys? [/B]

depends on what you're doing at the moment. In many cases one is better than the other.

If you want to make organic stuff, though, I'd personally say take subD's over nurbs.

[rocarpen]

Originally posted by Shinova
depends on what you're doing at the moment. In many cases one is better than the other.

If you want to make organic stuff, though, I'd personally say take subD's over nurbs.

Sorry - I should rephrase the question. I meant computationally intensive. For example, a cylinder comrised of polys versus a cylinder made out of a lathed NURB surface.

In terms of workflow, the project is as far from organic as you can get. Steel girders, tables, control panels, tubes, dials, etc.

[thomaspecht]

maya on octane2 is actually a very nice experience - and incredibly stable. but since it seems that you will be using it on o2: it all depends what setup the systems has - o2's were entry level systems (replaced by sgi fuel). if it involves computationally expensive tasks, i'd say you'll be using the wrong system. o2 shines at managing huge textures without slowdowns but it has always been equipped with rather weak cpu's - and it's quite old internal architecture slowed down the whole thing in addition. also it has NO hardware open-gl acceleration and there are no upgrades to the video card available.

in general - sgi's are quite fast machines though, the question is if one can justify the price (and the absence of recent versions of photoshop on that os ;) ) when compared to pc's.
my experience is that maya on sgi beats maya on windows in terms of stability and also in handling huge scenes.

[rocarpen]

Pre-friggin-cisely the sort of advice I was looking for. You can't get that sort of experience from SGI.com

Many thanks GI. I havn't made a firm decision, but your advice helps illuminate the situation a great deal!

:thumbsup:

[zylphyr]

When SGI launched the fuel workstation, we got one for loan at the office, to compare with our PC set-ups. (dual 2ghz AMD, with 1g RAM & nvidia GF4 based graphic cards) Here is what i concluded after a couple of days of testing:

1. The PCs outperformed the SGIs in every test I did. And usually by a least 50%.

2. I couldn't get the SGI box to crash no matter what I did. The PC would crash if I looked hard at it for more then 30 sec...

3.The openGL accuracy (not the performance) was alot greater on the SGI box.

4. the price of the fuel workstation was about 8 times as much as the PC workstation.

Add to this the fact that you couldn't get most of the software we used on IRIX platform...I had to give the SGI box back.

[playmesumch00ns]

Originally posted by WhiteRabbit.obj
How complex a scene can you get? Well using a well constructed set with instancing and referencing where appropriate, you should be able to pretty much make a scene however large you want. Use layers and turn elements off it it gets too intensive and then just turn them back on for rendering. Unless of course you're trying to do something like the Whomping Willow from Harry Potter, which, according to Cinefex was one insane scene that ended up being all dynamically generated on the fly or something like that because all the leaves and branches and whatnot were just too much for the computers to handle in any semblance of efficiency.

A lot of the geometry was actually calculated in-scene for the willow, for dynamics purposes.

I'd love to see Maya on Windows try and handle that... hahahaha *BOOM*

[Novakog]

I don't know how well SGI systems perform generally, but Alias (who make Maya) is owned by SGI, so there will probably be some advantages/optimizations there.

[Shinova]

Originally posted by rocarpen
Sorry - I should rephrase the question. I meant computationally intensive. For example, a cylinder comrised of polys versus a cylinder made out of a lathed NURB surface.

In terms of workflow, the project is as far from organic as you can get. Steel girders, tables, control panels, tubes, dials, etc.

Polygons are much faster than nurbs. In your case, I suppose polygons would be better.

[playmesumch00ns]

Actually it's the other way around, or used to be anyway. Maya's always been faster with NURBS than it has been with poly's.

[jscheel]

My school is still using Octane2 workstations in our animation lab. It is literally driving us crazy. Last week, it could not even handle a model with 30,000 polygons. Crashes run rampant, not to mention the fact that if even one person is rendering on the server (also an SGI), every other computer runs 50% slower (takes upwards of 25 minutes just to load Maya when someone is rendering). My laptop runs Maya approx. 8 times faster when handling the same scene (realtime nad rendering).

Thankfully, we will be recieving the technology budget next year, and will be upgrading the lab. The school is giving us enough to fill the lab with SGI's again, but we want to fill it with BOXX systems, then take the rest and assemble a render farm. Not sure what's going to happend though.

[gmask]

>>>if even one person is rendering on the server (also an SGI), every other computer runs 50% slower (takes upwards of 25 minutes just to load Maya when someone is rendering).

This would happen if you where rendering on a PC and also serving software from it. Your IT people could have setup a cheap linux box to serve up software and as long as it doesn't find it's way into the renderfarm it would solve this problem.

But yeah get PC's. SGI isn't worth it

[WhiteRabbitObj]

jscheel, do you go to Eastern Tenesse State University? I had thought about going there and visited and everything but decided against it. They were big on SGIs and were really proud of their lab at the time and all.

[ryguy]

I used Maya 1 through 3.0 in Irix on an SGI. It couldn't handle complex scenes and would slow down to it's knees when rendering. At the time, my NT box was out performing with SGI.

Nothing wrong as far as stability goes with running Maya on Unix.

~Ryan

[jscheel]

whiterabbit:
NO, I have a friend who went to ETSU, but I go to Middle Tennessee State University. The people who show you around campus talk about how we use the same hardware and software a Pixar (I WISH!). But the animation instructors know that the SGI's are dead. That's why we are upgrading over the summer. I would suggest checking out MTSU if you want a full, 4 year degree. But if you do, then you have to deal with general studies, electives in other fields, etc. It's good for finding a job because you learn more than one thing, but stinks if you want to dedicate ALL of your time to CG.

[Houkah]

I used maya 1 - 1.5 on an o2, so my experience is somewhat dated. I loved the irix/unix OS for moving all my files around. Maya worked ok if you were in wireframe mode. OpenGL chugged even with low to middle density models. It was very stable tho in comparison to my PC. However my PC toasted it in every other aspect. (and back then we're talking about like a 400 mHz p2 w/ nvidia card).

[WhiteRabbitObj]

Nah, I'm already a Junior at another school. Couldn't have dealt with the south, I looked at SCAD and decided against that as well. I'm from Chicago and everything there is super-fast-paced. Everybody in the south seems to just be taking their time and never in a hurry. Probably good for them, less stress and they'll live longer, but for me, I was always like "come on!!!!!!" when I was down there. :thumbsup: But yeah, ETSU also commented that Pixar rendered Toy Story there in part or something like that and yadda yadda but I just ended up choosing another school.

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