What new gear goes here?
5 messages in this thread
Hi There!
So I'm one of those newby, 3DS wannabe types. I'm gathering info on "stuff" to
get to put together a machine specificly for 3DS. It will be a P5-100mhz (not
fast enough). So what are the best svga cards for this app? Or should I ask
what are the pros and cons of the top few cards? Does it really matter? Does
the video card's speed affect only the modeling screens? Is Liquid Speed the
hot setup? That is the less important issue I'm learning about, the major
important issue is rendering quality. I'm not 100% clear about the relationship
between the video card and a framebuffer card. Does the frame buffer generate
an image from data as a video card does or does it use the image -from- the
video card and then convert it to NTSC video signal. You do have to have both
cards don't you? See, I'm trying to be one of the first real anim shops here.
(Anchorage, AK) Noone is really tapping the market here yet but I expect a
flood any minute. I intend to have the best broadcast quality output and am
trying to figure out the best way to go in hardware. So far it seems the
Truevision Pro would be correct, but what else?… Beta SP is the output
format. In the mean time I've been rendering to disk on a 486DX thirrrrrrtyyy
thrrrreeeeeeee and then getting it to video via the DVI card and CineWorks. The
result is "industrial" quality video, whatever that is. (Somewhere in the VHS
SVHS Hi8 domain) Plenty good enough to learn on and for my lo buck clients for
now. Sorry this got so long, I sure would appreciate a batch of informed
ramblings though. ( besides, autodesk sent me here)
Thanks………………………………….pd of ak
//
\___/p
I'm pretty sure I have at least one customer in Anchorage who runs an animation
business. Did you check the Yellow Pages?
Hi. Well I realize that was a broad ststement but I think it's not heavily
pursued here because of the small market. Anyway I want to dive in and see what
happens. It's not all I do. Life is very seasonal here. More
later……………………………………….pat
Hi Pat,
Welcome to the world of 3d & TV! It can get pretty confusing out there
and I'm no expert by any means, but I'll relate what I've
found out since I started to put things to tape.(Only for acouple months-I'm
pretty new too.)
I'm using the Matrox Illumnator Pro framebuffer board. They run about
$3000 but offer an NTSC output of 720 x 486
resolution which I believe is the highest you can go right now. The 4meg board
will allow you to add special effects later on
with an additional board. It should be worth it!
There are 2 ways to go for displaying your work with this board.
(1) Work & render to your computer monitor
(2) Work on your monitor & render to a seperate tv monitor.
If you go for (1) then the video board will need to have a connection on
it so you can inter-connect the framebuffer to it. My
Diamond Viper board didn't so I went for (2) and I'm glad I did. I spent about
$300 & bought a 12" Sony monitor that accepts
different inputs like RGB & component. This setup allows me to see what my
final product will look like on tv. The 3ds Material Editor also allows you to
render to the framebuffer so you can get your materials just right .
As for decks, we use a Sony 3/4" or a Panasonic 1/2" SVHS. The quality
is pretty good but you should probably talk to one of the more informed sources
in these forums for a better opinion.
The only thing I can add is to read the messages & ask alot of
questions. The people in this forum are great and they can help
alot!
Hope things
work out for ya! (g)
JC
Gotcha, thanks………………………………………..apt (good
job)……………………………………………pat