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By Alasandro - 9 Years Ago
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Hello all,
I have recently began using Iclone, CTA, and 3DXchange on a regular basis for my work. Since Iclone has become a very important part of how I make money now, I have decided to purchase/build a computer in which will be dedicated to 3D animation. (ie Reallusion programs and assets, and the entire Adobe CC collection). Today I am asking for advice on hardware, software and/or anything else you can think of that will make my job easier. If you could build your dream computer for animation (keeping your budget between 3K to 5K what would it include?
I am a Windows users and I'm going to stick with that but should I upgrade to Windows 10 or stick with Windows 7?
How much Ram should I be installing? (Is there such a thing as too much RAM?)
Best video card?
Any and all advice/suggestions would be appreciated.
Thank you!
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By Kelleytoons - 9 Years Ago
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Given how important it is to iClone, the number one thing I'd concentrate on is video card. Start out with an NVidia top card (the very least I'd start a build with is the 970, but the 980 and higher is better) and the rest of the computer specs aren't nearly as worth worrying about.
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By justaviking - 9 Years Ago
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The dream graphics card right now is probably the Nvidia GTX 980 Ti. The "Ti" has 6GB of RAM. iClone likes to use a lot of memory.
RAM? For an "ideal" rig, might as well consider 16GB as a minimum, probably go for 32GB (though on a budget you can do quite nicely with 8GB).
CPU? New Intel i7 (4790?).
Disk? Definitely SSD for the boot/software disk, I'd start at 500-ish GB today. (I'm living okay with 240GB. Would like to upgrade, but I'm saving my money for that 980 TI, so it's pretty cheap to delete temporary files once a month.) If you have a bigger budget, go for 1TB SSD. Samsung might be best, Intel is quite good. Then grab a 2 or 3TB mechanical (spinning) hard drive for mass storage.
After that you start splitting hairs... New memory format (DDR4?)... Motherboard... There are differences, but much more subtle.
Lastly, a good quality power supply. Not just "power" but quality.
Have fun!
P.S.
Operating system? You could start with Win 7. After things are running, make a full image of your C: drive. Then upgrade to Win 10 for free. If it gives you grief, restore your backup.
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By animagic - 9 Years Ago
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I have started to design a home-built PC a while ago using PC Part Picker, which is very useful to spec out systems.
The link is here: http://pcpartpicker.com/user/zuijlen/saved/#view=Vt9wrH . Total is currently around $2200, but prices are coming down.
Main highlights: CPU: i7 5820K (6 Cores) RAM: 32 GB DDR4 RAM (RAM does get used, so even 64GB might not hurt) GPU: NVidia GTX 980 Ti (6GB VRAM) For a new system I would get Windows 10 Pro. I have just updated my (underpowered) laptop with Windows 10, which was painless. The RL products start up fine. I will not update my main work PC as I feel that is a bit too risky. There may be legacy programs that will not start. EDIT: I forgot to mention drives: A 512 GB SSD as system drive for booting and software and then two 2GB hard drives (WD black) for data, such as content and rendered movies. Also, great that you actually make money using iClone. I wish I could...  |
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By Kelleytoons - 9 Years Ago
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Ani,
A bit OT but after you upgraded your laptop to Win 10 did you feel it was a good move?
Like you I am a bit wary to update my desktop as I'm pretty sure there are things that won't work (at my age just can't deal with that anymore :> . My laptop isn't as mission critical, but I'd only do it if I felt there was something significant about doing so and nothing I've read so far suggests that. I'm just curious about your take on it.
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By animagic - 9 Years Ago
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@Kelleytoons: My reason to do this is that I purchased the iClone Mocap plugin (on sale), which requires Windows 8 or 10 when you want to use the new Kinect (which I intend to get). Otherwise I wouldn't have bothered.
Programs are suddenly called "apps", which I find a horrible term. When setting it up, the system wants to track everything, but you can switch that off. I guess the desire to track everything comes from the mobile world, where the idea is to have a personal relationship with your device and many ways to enhance your experience. I just want things to work...
Other than that, it works very similar to Windows 7, and there's ways to make it even more similar. For example, I've always liked the sidebar with gadgets, and there is a third-part solution to get it back. I haven't tried all my programs yet, but iClone and related started up without issue. Windows 10 still supports DX9, so that's good when running iClone on a less powerful system.
If you have a spare non-critical laptop or PC, you could just try it.
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By Alasandro - 9 Years Ago
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Thank you for all the good advice. I used the information given to do a little research and it looks like I'll be able to make the highest upgrade possible for less than 3k. I'll let you all know how it turns out. 
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By Alasandro - 9 Years Ago
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sw00000p You are absolutely correct! Quiet as it is kept... I did have the opportunity to work with Dreamworks several years ago during the making of the movie Kung Fu Panda and I have personally seen the "Farms" at work. At Dreamworks they use a proprietary system built by IBM and it was AWESOME to see a room filled with processing units in cabinets on platforms humming around the clock. That experience was what led me to eventually finding Iclone. It fit my budget and allowed me to create marketing material that stood out from the others. I figured people here would understand that I was simply talking about a desktop unit. So yes, I agree a more accurate title would have been Ultimate (Happy Medium) PC for iClone"
In the future I plan on building a system that will maybe cost me around 10K. My desire to up grade to the best system possible will never die so I am working hard to one day get there. Maybe in another year, while allowing my current work to pay for the upgrades. For the work I do now my current system works ok so upgrading as I grow is my goal here.
By the way, what is the model number of the NVidia card that you speak of. I'd like to do some research on that and see if there might be a possibility of getting it sooner than later. The idea of having a card that will simulate one million polygons in real time damn near gives me an orgasm!
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By justaviking - 9 Years Ago
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LOL.
I think it was safe to assume Alasandro was talking about component for a high-end "home" computer.
Anyone trying to build a server farm would probably not be seeking advise on this forum.
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By justaviking - 9 Years Ago
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I suddenly remembered a demonstration I saw at a trade show. The company did ultra-realistic, extremely high-resolution renderings (mostly of car interiors) in real time. You could zoom in and see the stitching and threads in the fabric, and the texture on the leather-wrapped gear shift. They even had patented scanning technology that allowed them to scan anisotropic(?) material properties, like brushed metal where the light behaves differently depending on the orientation of the material.
I'm going to have to look them up again so I can give a link. It was custom-built stuff, utilizing an array of high-end Nvidia cards, I'm pretty sure.
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By wendyluvscatz - 9 Years Ago
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The lucky bastard with the 4 Titans in the second video!!!
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By Rampa - 9 Years Ago
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Multi-card setups do not benefit iClone.
Workstation cards do not benefit iClone.
Really powerful CPU's do not benefit iClone.
SSD's might help you load stuff faster, but will not really benefit iClone beyond that. They can be nice for faster disk though.
For a good iClone workstation, What you need is a decent CPU. That means an i5 or better. But you should choose a high end i7 if you can afford such.
For top performance, a really high-end Nvidia GTX gaming card. A 980 Ti or Titan X would be your best bet right now. Lots of VRAM is good.
Get as much system RAM as makes you comfortable. It's pretty cheap.
iClone has a DirectX gaming engine, so double-precision workstation cards have no benefit. If your also doing CAD work, then consider it.
You can export some parts of your iClone projects as FBX to use in external rendering engines, but you cannot export everything. Trees cannot be exported. Soft-cloth physics cannot be exported. And probably a few other things as well.
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By animagic - 9 Years Ago
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If you also want to do video editing (which the OP seems to be doing) a better CPU will also be beneficial. What I suggested was based on that. I would always recommend an i7 over an i5 especially as you will usually have several graphics-related programs open at the same time.
There is no pixel shading setting in iClone 6, unless you run it under DX9.
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By Alasandro - 9 Years Ago
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Thank you all. I am learning quite a bit here combined with research I'm doing on my own. I will be sure to post my final setup before purchase. It will be interesting to read the conversation regarding the pros and cons. Maybe even influence some modification.
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By TonyTiger - 9 Years Ago
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If you have the money,go for the Alienware Area 51 R2,I love mine,thing is built like a tank.You can customize it how ever you like and get a totally badass machine for around 3-4 grand.I got the I-7 5960 8 core with triple GTX 980S and 32 gigs of DDR 4 and absolutely love it.I could of saved a little money building myself but after pricing it out,I was only gonna save about 500 so I decided to go with Alienware and I absolutely love it-Runs Iclone with everything maxed out and doesn't break a sweat.Plus if something does go bad I have Dell to fall back on.Just my 2 cents
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By TonyTiger - 9 Years Ago
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Plus the 1.5 kilowatt power supply doesn't hurt either
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By TonyTiger - 9 Years Ago
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Love it
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By fpacheco1960 - 9 Years Ago
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I believe in getting the "Most Bang for the Buck". So when my home-built i5 desktop was showing it's age, I was considering upgrading to a current i7 system, when I came across a interesting deal I couldn't pass up. A 2008 Mac Pro Tower with (2) 4 core 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon CPU's for $160.00. I upgraded it with 26 gigs of Ram, 500 GB stripped SSD RAID, 4 TB Data drive, a Nvidia GTX 680 GPU flashed with a Mac boot ROM. OS X Yosemite on the Striped RAID, Windows 7 on a single Toshiba 256 GB SSD. I spent around $800.00 total and I am very happy with the performance. It rivals most i7 based systems.
Upgrades I am considering are a High End Nvidia GPU, and larger SSDs. I found some software for creating a render farm using Mac Pro Towers, and the local vendor has 15 more Macs available, I might offer him $1500.00 for the lot.
These Mac Pro Towers are tanks, made from thick aluminium and weigh 57 lbs empty! and the fans very rarely ever spin up to max.
I think I got a pretty good deal, and the price to performance can't be beat. IMHO...
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By mark - 9 Years Ago
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..yeah... if you can bump up that NVIDIA a bit it should be a super system!!!
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By pmaina - 9 Years Ago
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rampa (11/12/2015)
Multi-card setups do not benefit iClone. Workstation cards do not benefit iClone. Really powerful CPU's do not benefit iClone. SSD's might help you load stuff faster, but will not really benefit iClone beyond that. They can be nice for faster disk though. For a good iClone workstation, What you need is a decent CPU. That means an i5 or better. But you should choose a high end i7 if you can afford such. For top performance, a really high-end Nvidia GTX gaming card. A 980 Ti or Titan X would be your best bet right now. Lots of VRAM is good. Get as much system RAM as makes you comfortable. It's pretty cheap. iClone has a DirectX gaming engine, so double-precision workstation cards have no benefit. If your also doing CAD work, then consider it. You can export some parts of your iClone projects as FBX to use in external rendering engines, but you cannot export everything. Trees cannot be exported. Soft-cloth physics cannot be exported. And probably a few other things as well.
Best answer IMO. Why buy computing horsepower that iClone doesnt use? Wait for proper implementation of hardware accelerated rendering.
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By rgreenidge - 9 Years Ago
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I agree with Rampa. Also having all of that doesn't mean anything and it's a problem I ran into since iC3. This is a 64 bit program, but with limitations on how big your project file can be. I use lots of avatars, props, and backgrounds, and have run into problems where the project size was just too big and I had to split things up. I will come on here later to post how I found, and what I've found that caused problems including this week, and how I got around it. I haven't seen every demo and looked at very little postings of others, but most of them have been with 1-4 avatars in the same scene the most. Most of my scenes have no less than active 15 avatars in it. I went from a 2 GB to a 8 GB video card, and it improved nothing, and gave me the same exact problem. Plus unless I read it wrong, four GB of that video card memory is a waste (R9-290X), unless you are using two 4K monitors.
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By animagic - 9 Years Ago
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I would like to amend this a bit. 4GB in a video card is NOT a waste. This is for the NVidia GTX series, I don't know about AMD. I work with large projects and the VRAM does get used. I also disagree with the statement about the CPU. It does matter, as I found out from an earlier to a later generation i7. Anyway, given the budget of the OP, we're not looking to build a budget computer.
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By pmaina - 9 Years Ago
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animagic (11/20/2015)
I would like to amend this a bit. 4GB in a video card is NOT a waste. This is for the NVidia GTX series, I don't know about AMD. I work with large projects and the VRAM does get used. I also disagree with the statement about the CPU. It does matter, as I found out from an earlier to a later generation i7. Anyway, given the budget of the OP, we're not looking to build a budget computer.
Interesting... Would you mind sharing, please, some rough benchmarking data, say, between an i5 (or older Quad Core) v/s earlier i7 v/s Later i7? Secondly did you see any marked difference in performance between different spec Nvidia GTX graphics cards & can you quantify it somewhat? Thanks!
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