#Particle FX
Pawel,
Well, depressing news :(. The 9 minutes to 1 minute render time was due to an
inefficient network! When I copied the files to the hard drive on the Compaq
486 DX2/66 with 32 megs of RAM, the times reduced to 3:58 per frame! When
copied to the PowerMac 8100, the times increased to 3:00 per frame! (It turns
out that when the files were on the network (Novel), A:M wasn't finding one of
the figures that was catching all of the shadows! Could have been pilot error,
could have been Novel, … ).
So, as much as I would love to see more Mac users, I probably would look at a
couple of Pentiums, or when (if?) the NT version of A:M is released, possibly
the DECs with multiple processors.
On the other hand, if you really want one, (to run Cosa After Effects, Bryce,
and other cool Mac only software!) a 4 to 3 render time could justify it (kind
of). BUT, this brings up the networking issue, how are your computers tied
together now?
Had to be honest!
Jim Jonah
p.s. …. Hours later…. Well, now I'm totally confused, the PC renders times
are creeping up again (7-8 minutes per frame). Obviously the computers at my
day job are not stable enough to use as a basis, sorry!!!!