[geeks] This Litle Green Monster...

[Joshua Boyd]

On Fri, Jan 23, 2004 at 10:55:25AM -0500, Kevin wrote:

> Moved to a 486DX266 with 24 megs of RAM and 3DStudio V.2.  Then when
> i finally quit doing 3D as a job in 1998, my machine was an HP dual
> Pentium Pro 200 with 128 megs of RAM and the Perception with a 4 gig
> Cheetah.

My first exposure to 3DS was on a Sun IPX with a weitek chip and a SunPC
sbus card.  It was version 3.  Would do modelling on that machine, then
zap the files over the network to a SS10 with dual SM41 (I think) and a
ZX card running Sense8's WTK.
 
> I understood why people said you needed top notch stuff back then,
> but i don't believe that that still holds true today.

I understand why it held true back then for awhile as well, somewhat.

However, I don't think it has really been all that true since 1993ish,
or whenever it was that 486s with math-coprocessors (so DXs and DX2s,
not SXs) and/or Macs with math-coprocessors because affordable.
Granted, things have gotten better, but Lightwave was certainly quite
usable on a 486 with coprocessor.  Not to mention 3DS pre-Max.  Of
course, that puts us at 1995ish.  Granted, you needed a bit more ram
than the average person might have, but my recall is that in late-1995
or early 1996, that extra ram only cost me $160 (went from 8 megs to 24
megs.  I tried to go to 16, but my machine wouldn't take 8 meg simms,
and for some reason I decided a single 16meg piece was a better deal
than 2 4 meg pieces).

Of course, all along, the software tended to be a fairly major cost.
Although, Lightwave used to be only $1500, and animation master was
always far cheaper still.

So, maybe it wasn't until 1995ish that that really was true about not
needed the very best you could afford.

Of course, if one can stick out learning blender, one can easily use a
1996/1997 era machine to turn out really high quality stuff (though for
sanity, one would want a newer machine when it comes to doing renders).