Introduction to Maya - Modeling Fundamentals Vol 1
This course will look at the fundamentals of modeling in Maya with an emphasis on creating good topology. We'll look at what makes a good model in Maya and why objects are modeled in the way they are.
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16
03-11-2006
, 06:50 PM
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Also heres a link to a thread in CG talk Called " How fast is your PC with Maya 7.0" that the guys in here appear to disable hyperthreading for a faster render time...
But I just use the "use all available processors" and increase the number of threads for mental ray to use to 2, this gets my dual core PC laptop, going at 100%
Horses for courses me thinks.
"No pressure, no diamonds" Thomas Carlyle
Last edited by gster123; 03-11-2006 at 06:53 PM.
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17
03-11-2006
, 06:56 PM
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Well that is not unexpected. Hyperthreading is just tricking the system into believing that it has two cores, the CPU doesn't actually have two cores, so its behaviour is not like a mutlicore or multiprocessor at all.
I remember when hyperthreading came out a few years ago, there were all these article in magazines saying they slowed down certain types of apps.
As for the link, well I think you forgot or am I supposed to search the forum myself?
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18
03-11-2006
, 07:05 PM
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This link shows dual cores, hyperthreading etc. (and even mentions to switch it off in the BIOS for ture switch off)
https://tomshardware.co.uk/2004/05/28...uck/index.html
Heres the link for the cgtalk thread
https://forums.cgsociety.org/showthre...light=maya+7.0
thers also a maya 8 thread. if you search for it!
"No pressure, no diamonds" Thomas Carlyle
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19
04-11-2006
, 05:37 AM
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As for 'wake up' I meant I have to wake up in the night to see if the render has stopped because I often have dead lines and though my Maya skills are not up to standard here, they are good enough for the natural histories science film (masters level) students, so I at times find my self doing animations such as germs, chromosomes and things for short docos, I guess it would be fair to say, when it comes to Maya I would be the best at uni. Everyone else wants instant 'success' as a rock star director or DOP, not realizing they are mot many jobs in that area in Australia, example, we have many drama students at uni but there are only 11 full time acting jobs available at any time in Australia, it seems an indulgent hobby for kids with a lot of passion or very rich parents. As for directors?? Well if you make a successful movie it here seems to, ironically, end your career there and then.
As for this '“What IS the best method to use on a dual core system or a single CPU system. ??” – mirek03;
I have no idea, it seems a typo because it makes no sense, have been under a lot (16 hour days) of pressure and deadlines lately (and a divorce) so anything is likely to come out of my mouth, I seem to care little about much, and have little patience for people?? But a lot of patience with the computer.
I may have ,meant 'which is the best way to use a dual processor', As Eric has mentioned one can make a dual processor into a single one. Did you know that soon there will be quad processors?? also I find the new mac system for having both windows and nac os on the same computer exciting, because I do film and for some strange reason Final Cut has becaime an industry standard here ( i think its all buisness and the best results how well one knows their program, not the program itself, but..?) Final Cut Pro only works on Mac is the piont.
I saw a tut last night about rendering, it seems shadows are expensive and if you can use the shadow cache in the attributes editor you can nearly half your render times. I might give it a go on WIP when uni finishes in a week or two, along with my boat.
Did you do the bench test for maya 7 render, anyone, from the link?? I just downloaded the file and might give it a whirl.
take it easy and life will be easy
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04-11-2006
, 01:37 PM
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I use Avid express pro for editing, when I went for a job at apple they showed me final cut pro, and i've got to say its very similar to Avid (which seems the be a standard here in my humble experiance!) or I should say Avid is very similar to final cut pro as cut pro was out first!.
I've never ran the benchmark scene as i'm still rocking with maya 6! Might upgrade to 8 via uni.
Anywho i'm sure that you'll get over the rough patch mate, have a play with the scene file and different settings using the tomshardware article that I posted, as well as the maya batch render settings for threads (as the benchmark is for mental ray), that is if you get the time as you seem a bit pushed at the mo.
Cheers
Steve
"No pressure, no diamonds" Thomas Carlyle
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04-11-2006
, 02:59 PM
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As for your link to tomshardware, well the link just took me to another 'page cannot be found' error and I don't wish to pursue it any further (too hard).
mirek03, you mentioned that you get so many warnings from Windows that its become standard. Are you absolutely sure that nothing has overheating and power problems? Its best to check just to be sure.
'I may have ,meant 'which is the best way to use a dual processor', As Eric has mentioned one can make a dual processor into a single one. Did you know that soon there will be quad processors??' - mirek03
You can make a dual core processor into a single one? I thought that it was disabling one of the cores... And yeah, I heard about those quad core processors (is this the start of the 'core myth'?) and about those 8 core processors due in the next five years...
Hope you get this render thing sorted out...
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22
04-11-2006
, 05:21 PM
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Fair enough, if thats your opinion. I just did a little test, rendering a scene with hyperthreading and one without, there was little or no difference in the speed, so either it's only using one core in both, if i have switched a core off as in my hardware manager it came up as one CPU, switching to one logical core in the BIOS, and 2 swiching it on.Originally posted by The Architect
gster123, I have to say that the cgsociety forum really did not mention too much about how they are exactly testing thier systems so they are a bit questionable in my opinion. Anyways, hyperthreading is a not as good as Intel portrays it to be.
Thats the result i got.
If you dont what to have a look into the dual core, single switch on off etc then its up to you, also i'm a bit confused on the "the CPU doesn't actually have two cores, so its behaviour is not like a mutlicore or multiprocessor at all"
Since my CPU is dual core (looking at diagrams its 2 cores mounted on one die) it must be multi core? or have I been ripped off by some jargon and actually got a single core processor on a single die?
"No pressure, no diamonds" Thomas Carlyle
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23
05-11-2006
, 12:34 AM
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Avid Pro, I have that but let me say firstly that Avis WAS the industry standard here as it was everywhere. Many high level people here (most actually) still use it and personally I think it better. BUT thats probably because I cut my teeth on pinnacle, then premier and they are all similar. In thelong run, its not how big it is its how you use it. EVERY editing site is similar, its cut paste and colour correct..? Am i wrong? Maybe thats a bit simplified but..?
WHY the uni has turned to Macs I don't know, I feel they didn't get the proper advice or they saw the future and the future was Macs?? ( dare I say my humble opinion). example; They were thinking of starting animation (2 weeks ago) and were going to get 3D Max, I gave them a few names around town of they best animators and told them to get 'advice' before moving forward on that, considering it was for film and not for gaming. You know where I am heading with this so I will move on...
Anyway, it seems FCP is all the rage here now, not just the uni but many production houses are using it to the point where it is safe to say it is ahead in use than Avid, but like all 'facts' i should research this more before stating it in black and white.
Up until 4 years ago, the uni used Avid..?? So you figure it, its a mystery to me, maybe they got a good deal on Macs or as I said I suspect one of the 'shining star students' suggested it, this is what happened with the 3D Max story, and they swallowed it??,in again my humble opinion, a high powered salesmen, Larry Jordon, who projected all this amazing time saving features on FCP, the up shot is I came home and did all the exact same things in Premier 1.5. So I know what you mean be editing systems being similar, especially Avid and FCP, there's barely a difference (in my humble experience too) , they even have the same looking colour corrector windows, ect.
The trouble is It is huge and when I put it on )Avid) it looked incredible but I couldn't capture from the camera. So I took it off and am using premier again.
Is there something I need to know when capturing, I just used it like I did in premier, I got sound but no vision.., But I was using a single CCP camera, not 3 CCP or HD, this shouldn't make a difference, should it?? Can you suggest where I might be going wrong, maybe having both premier and AViD on the same system??
The rendering, yes I think there is something basically wrong the the system, but how to track it down, is there a bench mark software that will test the power supply, heating, etc. Would the INTERNET cause trouble?? You know, if an update for the virus software came in, would that stop it?
As far as CPUs, I seem to be be putting my foot deeper in it alll the time, I meant, or how I read it, was that Steve said the dual CPU (laptop) is using only 'one of its dual cores' and you can make it use both so the computer will use 100% of the CPU rather than 50% as was my dual core laptop, I hope this is starting o make sense?
take it easy and life will be easy
Last edited by mirek03; 05-11-2006 at 12:36 AM.
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24
05-11-2006
, 11:35 AM
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Oops! My bad, I meant to say: 'The CPU doesn't acutally have 2 processors in one package (IC), so its behaviour is not like a multiprocessor system at all.'
Since Maya has been optimised for multiprocessor systems, having a single core processor with hyperthreading tricking the OS into thinking it has two cpus is not how a SMP system would behave (its charactaristics) so Maya will not perform at its best on hyperthreading computers.
mirek03, as for your benchmark question, I would recommend SiSandra (theres a free version on download.com), however you should tread cautiously as running tests and benchmarks can cause your hardware to be damaged permanantly fail if you have overheating and power issues.
'Would the INTERNET cause trouble?? You know, if an update for the virus software came in, would that stop it?' - mirek03.
I wouldn't know. It depends on the hardware and software that you use and how its configured. As for stopping automatic updates for antivirus, there should be an option to turn it off in the settings of your antivirus program.
'As far as CPUs, I seem to be be putting my foot deeper in it alll the time, I meant, or how I read it, was that Steve said the dual CPU (laptop) is using only 'one of its dual cores' and you can make it use both so the computer will use 100% of the CPU rather than 50% as was my dual core laptop, I hope this is starting o make sense?' - mirek03
Well mirek03, as for the stuff about your dual core laptop reporting 50% load, I wouldn't know how Windows would report your CPU load if one core is disabled. I think that if one of the two cores was disabled, Windows would see a single core processor, not half a processor and therefore have a 100% max load. But then, not actually owning a dual core computer myself, I may be wrong.
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25
05-11-2006
, 08:53 PM
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thanks for that, the trouble is I dont trust computer salesmen and I wonder how many in the trade can sort out 3D apps and hardware, not many in Adelaide, but then again, I haven't looked yet?
take it easy and life will be easy
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26
06-11-2006
, 11:23 AM
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Bit off the topic but as for capturing woth Avid, I had that problem, it might be that your deck is/was not proporly configured, if thats the cast just set it up manualy with a generic device (PAL in my case but you might be on NTSC being in Oz)
Or the other thing that I found is that Avid seems to default on the first capture (as it saves the settings after) to the video channel only, it must think that the audio is coming in via a different route, to change this in the capture menu its the top next to the highlighted V1 channel, switch on ahte audio channels 1 and 2 (for left and right) and that should do it, as I cant see why there would be a problem with having Avid and Premier on the same system (as it is at my uni).
Are you capturing via a firewire connection? If its usb then this might be why, but having never captured via usb i dont know.
Sometimes when a company goes from PC to mac it might be who is the decision maker, I have a friend who works in CAD architecture and one company he worked for switched from PC to mac due to the fact that the guy holding the purse strings came from a graphics design standpoint and had used Macs all the time and felt them to be better suited to the job, also they got a good deal, but this caused problems with the avaialbility of software for what the company was using it for at the time, (there was less options). But thats just one case in probably many.
As you say, and I agree, its not the software/hardware that makes it its how you use it, as all in all they do the same things, all be it in a slightly different way.
Cheers
"No pressure, no diamonds" Thomas Carlyle
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27
06-11-2006
, 07:38 PM
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Makes you wonder what makes the world go 'round, someone knows someone who knows where to get a good deal who can completely reassure said friend THIS is the way to go, and don't forget, I can give you such a sweet deal, blah blah.
As for AVID, when you say 'deck' I hope you don't mean AVID needs a capture deck ($2000)? I have a capture card with fire wire, another with s-video and composite, etc, but not a deck. Where do I stand on this?? You mean to tell me you OWN one of these?? Maybe I can get one on e-bay?? Interestingly, i was just about to install it again until I read your post, i have already copied it to 'temps.'
Is this the case or can I simply use fire wire? I'd dig to use AVID, looks very pretty
compared to Adobe's drab interface, but AE 7 looks a little brighter.Yours, waiting with baited breathe (hope it doesn't smell that way).
oh, by the way, we down under walk in the bright light of out superiors and hence use PAL too, its America and such early satalite 'provinces' of America, such as, I suspect, Germany and Japan, that use NTSC.
I guess IRAQ will be using it when they err, settle down..?what was your render time on that guys test rebder?? I'm just about to try it. I thought you used mata 6?? Did you use yout own scene?
cheers mate
take it easy and life will be easy
Last edited by mirek03; 06-11-2006 at 07:41 PM.
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28
07-11-2006
, 05:34 AM
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As for Avid, I was refering to the deck as the camera that I use (many models etc) as its the terminology for it in the old avid world! If you want theres some great free tutorials for avid free DV, there in flash format but there great for getting the basics down, think there on Avids website, a google for Avid free DV tutorials shoud get them for ya!
Dont bin it its a superb editing software, (then I am biast though! LOL)
Cheers
"No pressure, no diamonds" Thomas Carlyle
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29
07-11-2006
, 03:17 PM
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how you off for RTAS s' (that;s digi for VST or DX), use them much, no doubt you're a muso, most here are.
take it easy and life will be easy
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