CompuServe Messages

Tom, I don't think too many of us have big rendering environments. And, unfortunately, we all wait for renderings. I have four machines that do nothing but 3D Studio work; one P75 with OS/2 Warp for modeling (I use OS/2 Warp because it allows me run 3DS in the background while using design programs in the foreground). The P75 does almost all the "leg" work (2D & 3D Modeling, Lofting, previewing, everything before rendering). The other machines are used for various other tasks (mainly AutoCAD), but are set up to do slave-renderings when I have to render. They are all DEC P60's with small hard drives (keeps purchase cost down) and decent graphics cards. They were about $2000.00 each; the P75 was about $4500 with all the RAM, the frame buffer, etc… With this setup, my rendering is done about 2.5 -3.5x faster (the P60's are a little slower than the P75); for example, it took my P75 366 hours to do 6300 frames alone. With the P60s running as well, it took about 110 hours (there was some interruption, but the time is pretty accurate.) The P60s have made me money; a client is much happier to get something before he/she expects it. I don't think any of us have a bunch of machines laying around waiting to do renderings (I wish!) A good friend of mine (who is my 3D Studio dealer) uses a P66 for most of his work and renders to it and to a SGI machine (he has a version of the 3D Studio renderer for SGI). With that configuration, he can crank out rendering at about the same speed I do. But my configuration, without software and VTR costs, was under $11,000. His configuration was about $17,000. For my use, the DECs work fine… And you can do lots of little things to speed up things; like faster video cards, EDO RAM, faster hard drives, 100MBps or Fiber network cable, etc… Every second you save adds up quickly (as you probably know). Hope this helps… -Brad