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Naive User has PC specs question...

Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2008 1:36 pm
by bobahendrix
Hi all,

I'm looking to buy a new PC; currently I run Anime Studio on a laptop, and it's not really capable of efficiently rendering scenes.
So my question to you is this:
What are the most important specs I should look for in a PC to render scenes at light speed (or just sub-light, I mean, I do have a budget here)...

Thanks,
Boba

Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2008 2:12 pm
by mkelley
I'm really surprised your present PC doesn't perform adequately for you -- I run AS on a really old laptop (circa pre 2000 -- running Win NT) and it works just fine.

Rendering in 2D isn't very taxing IF you are using vector art -- trying to push around lots of pixels with bitmaps is always going to be slower on any PC. But just about any PC sold today will be as fast as you're going to render in AS (given it isn't multithreaded) as long as you have adequate memory (just make sure you have 2GB and you ought to be fine).

The real key with AS is not in rendering anyway -- I mean, we do an entire half hour show and it only takes about that time to render. But that's the smallest amount of time we spend on the animation -- weeks are spent in getting it right. The main thing you want is a machine fast enough so you can scrub in more or less realtime and develop your animation. You can always render while you take a break (that's the very last step anyway).

Thanks

Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2008 6:37 pm
by bobahendrix
Thanks for the tips! I'm actually working with Poser, Shade, and Anime Studio, so, you're right, the Anime Studio doesn't take too long, but some of the other projects seem to render forever.
thanks again,
boba

Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2008 9:06 pm
by mkelley
Rendering in Poser can use as fast a CPU as you can afford -- I don't think it's multithreaded either, though, so it doesn't matter in that regard. And none of those programs are available in 64bit... yet. But I wouldn't hold my breath, so it's not something I'd worry about either.

So any nice fast CPU with 2GB memory and a nice display card should serve your needs for quite some time.