Best hardware for 3D animation?

[ajikan]

so.. I'm taking this 3D animation course, and they use those huge G5 (or G4, forgot..) Macs and those new iMacs as their computer for in class use.
and I want to build an Intel one myself so I can work on projects at home, but still on a powerful computer.

So what are the most important things to upgrade for a new computer build for 3d animating?
video card, CPU, RAM, etc...
would dual core CPUs help?
the program I'm using is called Maya (by Alias), btw.

thanks!
edit: forgot to include budget >__<
around $1000 max
I've already tried putting together a list, with things like Pentium D 920, 6800GT, 1GB DDR667 RAM, dvd burner, antec case w/ smartpower, asus 955x mobo. it all adds up to just around 1000. I was also considering getting used parts, to lower the price a bit.

hard drive.. I was planning on getting either a 200GB SATA2 or a 74G raptor with a 200GB (possibly external) drive

cooling, will the Zalman CNPS 9500 be sufficient? and a Zalman VF-700 for the GPU, and some fans for the HDDs.

mostly using it for editting/making 3d animation movies.. +modeling and rendering, and creating the final movie in the end.
any suggestions?

 

[Revolution09]

i'm personally building one right now, from what I've researched I believe RAM is a big factor, and a Dual Core processor is great as well.
i'm sure someone can expand on this, and maybe correct me if i'm wrong

 

[Matthias99]

video card, CPU, RAM, etc...
would dual core CPUs help?

Depends what you mean by '3D animation'. While you're previewing things in 3D, what you're mostly using is the video card. NVIDIA and ATI both make 'professional' OpenGL accelerator cards (the Quadro and FireGL lines, respectively) that are designed to be really fast at running OpenGL rendering programs like MAYA, 3DSMAX, etc. They're not cheap compared to the 'gaming' cards.

When you're actually rendering final scenes (which you'll need to do unless you are just doing things like making models/animations for a video game engine), the grunt work is being done by the CPU. You need as much CPU power as you can get, and it'll still be painfully slow unless you are working with very simple scenes at low resolutions. Dual core will definitely help.

RAM usage may be high; depends on how complex the scenes are and what program you are using. More polygons and more/bigger textures = more RAM.

 

[TankGuys]

Yep, as others have mentioned, it depends on how intense the animations are that you're encoding.

If you're CREATING the video, a high power dual core (Or even a dual socket, with 2 dual core chips) would definitely be what you want, with a large amount of RAM. If your main focus is actual rendering of 3D animations, you'd likely want to look at a high end workstation/server grade system.

Maya is multi-thread capable, so it's definitely worth going dual core/CPU. What's your budget?

 

[1N0V471V]

BUDGET?

 

[Howard]

Originally posted by: 1N0V471V
BUDGET?

 

[dmw16]

If you are building a system make sure it is well cooled. With your system running full-tilt-boogey for hours on end you dont want it freezing up.

 

[zagood]

You're also going to need tons of HD storage. Uncompressed 3d animations are huge.

-z

 

[stardrek]

Here is what the Univ. of Utah would recommend:

MINIMUM (estimated cost under $500 used, check your local want-ads or online auction sites like http://www.ebay.com)
Processor: 2GHz Pentium 4 (or comparable)
RAM: 512MB
Hard Disk: 20GB drive
Removable Disk: CD-RW/DVD combo drive
Video: 64MB GeForce4 and 17" CRT monitor
Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition
Network: 10/100BaseTX Ethernet

RECOMMENDED (estimated cost $800-1300 new, example: Dell Dimension 9100)
Processor: 3GHz Pentium 4 (or comparable)
RAM: 1GB
Hard Disk: 40GB 7200rpm SATA
Removable Disk: CD-RW/DVD combo drive
Video: 128MB FireGL V3100 and 17" LCD monitor
Operating System: Windows XP Professional
Network: 100BaseTX Ethernet

IDEAL (estimated cost $2000-4000 new, example: Dell Precision 470)
Processor: Dual-processor Xeon 3.6GHz (or comparable)
RAM: 2GB or more
Hard Disk: 2x250GB 7200rpm SATA with RAID 0 configuration (striped)
Removable Disk: DVD+/-RW drive
Video: 128MB Quadro FX 1400 and dual 20" LCD monitors
Media: Firewire (IEEE1394), Sound Blaster Live! audio and powered speakers
Operating System: Windows XP Professional
Network: 100/1000BaseT Ethernet

http://www.arch.utah.edu/cap05/u-cap.pl...am_computerinfo.htm#Suggested_Hardware