Are they gone now? Good. Okay, now that the sensible people have left, it's just us lunatics. While they're off buying boring, old pre-built computers – what with all their warranties and tech support – you and I are gonna throw caution into the wind and make ours from scratch. We'll buy a bunch of shiny computer parts, throw 'em into a box, shake it around a little and blam!, we'll have home-brewed a monster animation rig.
Let's clarify some things first. There aren't too many folks building their own Macs and SGIs. So what I'm talking about here is a Windows or Linux box. Now, Linux is fun to say, but I honestly know next to nothing about it, what I'm really talking about is an Intel or AMD based Windows box.
Second clarification. What's an animation workstation? Well, garden-variety PCs are general purpose computers. When you put high-end parts in them that are geared toward a specific task, those PCs get the much cooler-sounding moniker: "workstation." In our case, that specific task set is animation – 3D, 2D, compositing and a little video editing.
Building the animation workstation is a multi-phase process:
1. Select components
2. Assemble them
3. Install an operating system
4. Install software.
Selecting Components
Animation workstations generally have state-of-the-art components compared to the basic family PC. (Although a PC built for 3D gaming will share many traits of a good workstation.) Few tasks tax a machine quite like hardcore 3D graphics and video editing do. All of the subsystems, such as storage, data transfer, CPU, RAM and graphics, work very, very hard to keep the beautiful pictures looking good and moving fast on-screen.
Here is a roundup of the parts you'll need to select. I'll even throw in some highly subjective opinions on specific parts. This is sure to spawn many angry emails, and be out-dated within minutes of press time, but what the heck.
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| Coolermaster's CM-330 will house your wares efficiently and with style. | |
Case Get a mid- to full-sized ATX tower. You want lots of room to root around in, and you may need the extra drive bays someday. Spend the extra money for a quality case, too. The cheap ones don't have rolled edges on their internal, stamped metal parts. This can make for some awful lacerations. I learned that the hard way. Bleeding all over a $250 CPU is a bad thing.
The enclosure is what you'll put all this other stuff into, so you might as well make it a good one. If you're like me, you'll end up upgrading your workstation, instead of buying a whole new computer every few years. The case is the one part you may never need to replace, because it's just the guts that will change.
Most cases come with a power supply, but you want to make sure that it's rated high enough to provide power to all of your internal components. A 350 -to- 450 watt, P4 ready or Athlon rated power supply is a necessary investment. Underpowering your system can be harmful. I use the Silencer 400 ATX from PC Power & Cooling. Other good brands are Enermax and Antec.
Monitor CRT technology is the TV-style, picture tube monitor we are most familiar with. LCD technology is the active-matrix, laptop screen broken out onto the desktop. In general, CRTs are still the best bet for animation. They are capable of higher contrast and have more resolution choices than LCD panels. LCDs are not yet up to the visual standards of CRTs, although their low power consumption, small footprint and overall sex appeal make them quite tempting. You can never have too much screen real estate. A 19" CRT is pretty good, 20"-21" is better. Sony makes a wide aspect-ratio, 24" CRT that is beautiful. Remember, the larger the screen, the bigger and heavier the monitor. Most large CRTs need a pretty deep desk to sit on. One note about LCDs: A 17" LCD is the equivalent of a 19" CRT. The quality of the monitor is a very important consideration. Most manufacturers have a "graphics professional" or "CAD" line of monitors that is worth checking out. Look for a perfectly flat screen, a dot pitch of .22mm to .25mm (this is how densely packed the pixels are), and a good overall picture. It is important either to see monitors in person or read lots of reviews from trusted sources. Monitor recommendations: IBM P260, ViewSonic PF815, Sony GDM FW900, iiyama Vision Master Pro 512.
There are a few issues to consider when choosing your monitor: CRT vs. LCD, size and quality. Oh, and of course, price.
AMD phenom vs. The Intel Core 2 Extreme: Both are fast.
CPU The choice here is between Intel and AMD lineups. They are pretty comparable; people have great success with both of them. Motherboard Other features to pay attention to: You'll want a fast front-side bus speed (this is the speed at which data shuttles around) like 100Mhz, many open RAM slots, a bunch of PCI slots (5-6 is good) for different upgrade cards, and a heavy-duty AGP Pro slot for your graphics card. Motherboard recommendations: Asus P4T-E, AOpen AK 73 Pro, Soyo SY-K7V Dragon. RAM Memory recommendations: Crucial, Rambus, Corsair, Kingston. Storage The SATA interface is just right for the job. It is capable of very fast, sustained data transfer, and is fun to say! Make sure that your motherboard can support the interface standard you want to use., Drives that spin at 7200, 10,000 or 15,000RPMs are your best choice. Anything slower will create a data bottleneck. The size of the drives can have an impact on speed as well. A couple of 18GB drives is a better choice than one 36GB drive. In order to work most efficiently, it is a good idea to have one hard drive for your operating system (9GB), one for your applications (18GB-36GB) and a larger, cheaper one for storage (40GB-80GB). Hard drive recommendations:
Since the CPU is the "brain" of your workstation, it is one of the key selections you will have to make before choosing other components. Your motherboard and RAM choices will depend largely on which CPU you get.
Based on your choice of CPU, you will now need to pick a compatible motherboard (also called the mainboard). This is determined by the motherboard's chipset and socket configuration. You can't put a P4 CPU into a motherboard built for an Athlon XP, and vice versa.
System memory (RAM) is yet another part of the CPU/motherboard choice equation. Once you've made those decisions, the RAM will pretty much pick itself for you. For an animation workstation you will want a minimum of 2Gb of RAM. 3-4 GB is even better.
The amount and speed of your hard drives will play a large role in the overall animation pipeline. When texture maps are pulled into RAM, rendered frames are stored, or video streams during playback, it is your hard drive that is working overtime. The bandwidth available for such data transfer is dependent on the interface between drive and motherboard, while the speed of the drive platters themselves is measured in revolutions per minute (RPMs).
SATA Seagate 500 Gb sata 2
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| Pros use powerful graphic cards like this Quadro Fx 5600 |
If you are planning to run any 3D animation software effectively on your workstation, you'll want to invest in a professional-level OpenGL graphics card. These are the AGP Pro slot sittin', giant heat sink wearin', 128MB of onboard RAM bearin' monsters. The faster the graphics card, the easier it is to do your work. The cards to look for are the Wildcats, FireGLs, Quadros and Oxygens. While you can spend less on a gaming card like the GeForce3 and GeForce4, you will need to jump through some hoops and workarounds to get the most out of your 3D package.
If you plan on using dual monitors, be sure to check that your graphics card can support that. It is much easier to get one card that'll drive twin displays than it is to install two graphics cards in one system.
