Min and Mid range config for modeling?

[newman]

Depends on the app.. a more powerful CPU (something in the top segment of the opteron or Athlon X2 lines) combined with a high end quadro might do the trick...

[thinkpozzitive]

Well if that's really the minimum, then what do you use when dealing with a rather complex scene where the total amount of polys is more that 5-6 mil and you also have to animate it?

[newman]

It's by no means the minimum. What you do in high poly situations is use tricks so you don't display the polys you don't currently need; it's a good idea to do this no matter how powerful your system is. For example, when applying mesh smooth in max, there's two values: viewport and render, so you can have a minimal ammount of polys in your viewport but it will still look good when rendered. You can also hide things you don't really need at the moment. Also, when animating complex scenes, a lot of things are actually animated/rendered separately and then brought together in post production (combustion, after effects... you get the idea). I'm pretty sure that Pixar, Dreamworks and such studios have access to top-notch hardware, but they still use these methods... you can never have too much processing power ;)

[CGTalk Moderation]

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.