3D modeling- need a new card.

for osme reason oc didnt notify me of a response.

i have now gotten brazil, I FRIGGEN LOVE IT.

i just leanred how to turn a 2D scene into a 3D environment (for my video SPFX).

I think im gonna score a 3rd party 5900 and have it softmoded. ATM i cannot complain about render times too much. Brazil is definently below realtime, yet i still kick the crap outta single CPU machines with 2.4ghz. What does that mean? i wanna score some fast XPs, mod em to MPs. MORE RAM definently.

my problem is just that the veiwport work causes crashes like crazy.

cerberus, what other progs you use? id try cinema4d and maya, but neither run on here (they both crash upon startup) Is there a render client for brazil that runs under linux/bsd? its too bad windows doesnt have a text only version that can run the brazil client. there would be more resources.

god i wish 3dsmax was for mac, im moving to mac in a year or so after these few movies i do.

Im a huge fan of the Brazil rendering system for 3dsmax. i also use some finalrender plugins for particle lighting and some materials. look at some of my stuff here- http://perfekt-defekt.deviantart.com/gallery/
(it goes on for a few pages)

those are friggen awsome. i was thinking of signing up at devart..i dont really have anything to show off...YET...i was starting my own site of just basic video tutorials..i was hoping my bro would contribute his 3d knowledge.

aphex tom, have you ever tried putting a 3d object into a 2d image? so that it all interacts and such? reason is, we wanted to do it with video...you use a shadow/matte as the material, which allows the basic geometry scene to basically be transparent. i just wanted to know how well it worked with moving objects so we could do full out matrix trails and a rotating camera.

Only certian programs take advantage of the GPU depending on the make of the GPU and the compatibility of the software using it for rendering purposes for the final image. View port is related to GPU/CPU time which for complex objects and things can get rather loaded down quickly. But have to agree the nVidia cards are the best that come in that field for OpenGL viewport rendering at least. ATI & nVidia are pretty close on the direct3d ones if not mistaken, but not as stable as OpenGL.

I know I want to get back into the whole 3D thing. I use to be a big player with it back in Max4/5 days. Havn't really played with it much since don't have access to it anymore and if I did buy it, I'd have to quit my addiction to MMO's quickly, which I still got a couple months before I'll be forced to give up anyways with commitments and such.

Aphex tom maybe you can help me out.

Im trying to do this: http://www.3dcafe.com/asp/tutorials/max/integrating/integrating.asp

in brazil, but it simply doesnt work, as in the matte/shadow bitmap i use does not receive shadows. if i set it to anything else it does....any ideas?

ok, for some unknown reason, maya just crashes when i open it. anyway to confirm its the card?

i was thinking of getting a second hand matrox parhelia

I personally would recommend the quadro 700. I just got one and it performs very nicely in 3ds max. I've also had the quadro 750 gl, and softmodded the ati 9600 into a fireGL. The 700 works better then both of my other cards. So, if you have the money, mine was around 500, it should be a good card for you.

Hey MadSkillzMan!

I'm just an enthusiast/novice with Maya but I'll gladly share some of the experiences
I've had with the few cards I used.

First 'hardcore card' I ever bought and was Parhelia (had a friend back then working
in the Matrox engineer lab and got me one for less then 1/2 the retail price).

Only running dual monitor so I never took advantage of the triple head. For what I
did which was 2D graphics, it was great but also overkill. It was the 256MB version
and I got it for less then the 128MB version.

That card, despite the 'official Matrox drivers for 3D/CAD' did not cut it when I started
to learn Maya PLE. Lots of issues in the viewport and massive slow downs.

I ended up dumping it on eBay and got what I still think was the best 3D/Maya budget
card, a Ti-4600. Never had any issues with it, great card for its value.

Then I started to play games a little more so I got a 5900U for cheap off a friend who
wanted a 9800XT badly. I had one minor Maya issue with it and it was some of the
polys loosing their assigned colors when I moved a viewport onto monitor #2.

Just recently, I sold a bunch of old stuff I had to put together a new budget dually
mainly dedicated for Maya. I found a BFG 6800U OC for the same price has a GT so I
took it. That card runs great minus the usual issues of running Maya on 2 screens.

I know there's no 3D MAX anywhere in there (yet!) but I would say unless your sure
the Parhelia will play nice with MAX, don't get it.

Hope it helps!

Well I ran tests for someone else the other day. My X800 card does about 4FPS in a single viewport with 750,000 polys on scene. With 4 viewports up its 3 in the wireframe ones and 2 with the poly one.

Truely graphic cards won't help with the extreme size of some scenes at all. You just have to make sure you have adaptive settings set on objects so it doesn't kill viewport rendering time. If you want faster put the objects to boxes or hide them when your not working on them.

ATI released a newer card recently for the graphics market and actually there high end cards where doing extremely well, even better then the nVidia cards. But of course they probley cost 600-700 easy and probley more. Heres a Tomshardware review of it.

http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20050223/index.html
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2335&p=5
It does stack up nicely with other cards but truely you don't see those type of numbers working with huge scene files.

Also as someone mentioned before about GPU/CPU rendering. Since GPU's don't help unless its a spesific task, mainly with the DirectX textures features video cards can help rendering time, but with actual rendering check this out.
http://www.art-render.com/comparisons.ihtml?step=2&startnum=3&maxvalue=3&groupid=5
If you want a true boost in rendering time this is your answer. Imagine just a few computers, and a couple of these cards. They cost alot but think about how much a load of computers cost to run a renderfarm and the power/heat that they use/put out.

Edit Added More Links

Also if looking for tutorials on doing things, and if you neeed help check out www.3d-palace.com

Great site, has free video tutorials on how to make things. Also a great member base to help out with those tricks and such that you can't seem to nail correctly.

thanks guys,

see i was only leaning towards matrox, because i do video editing alot more, and combustion and premiere like matrox cards