Hello.
I'm an IT manager trying to make the best decision regarding how to best upgrade my animation departments equipment.
Currently they are running both Macs and PC's. The Macs for Illustrator, Photoshop, After Effects, etc etc. They are running Office and Maya on the PC's. They have Flash and director for both platforms.
The ultimate question is from a cost perspective; can I consolidate them all to a single platform and ultimately save costs?
To determine that though, I realize there are lots of questions to be answered in the process. My most obvious one that I can not seem to find the answer to is: How well does Maya render on the Mac versus NT trying to assume equivalent hardware for each platform?
Any links or responses/insights you all can provide would be appreciated.
don't know about rendering but on Mac Maya is limited to the complete version plus there are no pro card available on the MAC for now
Existing Mac hardware (i.e., G4) is not at all suited to meet heavy 3d rendering demands. However, short clips and effects at broadcast resolution are within the scope of what they can do. There's really no cost-effectiveness to Macs at this point, though many 2d artists prefer them. Note also that every piece of software you mentioned will run on Windows.
also keep in mind that the Mac is easier to use, more robust and powerful on the Operating System front. I do professional OS support work for a living on XP, OS X and starting to get into Linux.
Also Apple hardware with the new G5 is out in a few short weeks and will be well worth checking out at the very least. The $3k box looks like it will kick the [censored] out of dual 3ghz Xeon's on paper. The real tests will be very soon when there are shipping boxes.
I guess my advice is not to count the Mac out just yet. It looks like Apple really got things right this time thanks for IBM engineering.
My .02
I tend to go with the artist preference on this guy. If your buying new systems the G5 is certainly comparable to any currently shipping Dell or IBM.
I tend to go with the artist preference on this guy.<<
No doubt compadre.
And about the Dell thing. We will have to wait a few more weeks to see where the chips fall. =D
I'm hopefull. =D
In other news i'm starting my own computer consulting company. W00t! Wish me luck gents. =D