nybt-forum-threads PBGV's BAT Thread

[SimFox 804]

If you use your laptop plugged all the time (into electric grid) you should simply remove the battery altogether. Not only it wouldn't overheat it it would also prevent battery capacity shrinkage.

[PBGV103 729]

I looked into removing the battery a while ago.  It seems you need apple's own tools to remove it and I would have to break a seal they placed over the screws.  I've been told that if that seal is broken it will void my warranty. 


Anyway...  since I might not be posting much here anymore, here's the last preview I made just before xmas.  I haven't worked on it since then.  All the roof materials are temporary.

[maikeli.1 12]

So you are going to give up that's it l would like to hear and see more so you are going to do any more park ave skyscrapers are you still doing 245 park ave and the others on your list you are doing good dont give up

[Amthaak 1,501]

Somebody with so much talent cannot give up! You have to think at your team...! They need you...!   And the Simtropolis batter' s community needs you too...!

[SimFox 804]

Originally posted by: PBGV103

I looked into removing the battery a while ago.  It seems you need apple's own tools to remove it and I would have to break a seal they placed over the screws.  I've been told that if that seal is broken it will void my warranty. 

quote>

and you wanna buy another computer from this company? It is insane... and it's ain't no sparta!

 

[Ion_Cannon 677]

Instead of buying a ridiculously overpriced mac, buy a PC instead. It won't cost anywhere near 5000$. If you want to know whats adequate as a 3ds rendering machine, I'm sure the other BATers could tell you the specs they have. (SimFox made some good suggestions) Maybe some have insane supercomputers, but I doubt they all do.

[Amthaak 1,501]

I have a super computer ( for 3dsmx uses) and it cost me 850 euro! (I am talking about the tower cost, you have to add the cost of monitor screen, mouse and keyboard)!

Render time for a 400Mb scene, 30 minutes! You have all details of Peninsula exporting stats in my Bat thread!

Weak points (are they...??): not portable, no logo on it...!

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

PBGV103- Looks really good. And don't give up.

Ion_Cannon- You are right, but I think PBVG103 does not want a PC.

Amthaak- I wish I had a computer like yours I would be batting like crazy.

[Hanson784 165]

Sorry to hear that Paul.

Whether you decide to stop BATing or not is your decision but I would advise giving a copy of 277 Park Ave to a NYBAT member willing to finish it, I have some time off and could finish it up for you if no one else wants to. It's more than halfway BATed and I'd hate to see it get lost or forgotten.

You would obviously be the original creator once it's uploaded to the STEX.

[SimHoTToDDy 2,939]

Originally posted by: Amthaak

I have a super computer ( for 3dsmx uses) and it cost me 850 euro! (I am talking about the tower cost, you have to add the cost of monitor screen, mouse and keyboard)!

Render time for a 400Mb scene, 30 minutes! You have all details of Peninsula exporting stats in my Bat thread!

Weak points (are they...??): not portable, no logo on it...!

quote>

The logo costs more than the parts, don't you know?

Seriously, no reason to overpay for a render machine. Get the hardware you need to do the job and take all the frilly features and expensive manure out of the equation. I managed to export Fisher body 21 on a machine bought in December 2005, the original price tag was $600 (grant it, each view took about 40 mins or so). I invested $100 for maxing my RAM and bought a $150 video card, but other than that nothing has changed. You can definitely build a rendering powerhouse for cheap these days.

I really want to see these models hit the STEX one day, so best of luck.

[PBGV103 729]

Ok... first off I'm not giving up. I just don't have the option of continuing to fry my laptop with cadd, because I need it for my classes and my parents aren't going to replace it.

Second, I looked into computers other than apple today. I will NEVER buy a sony vaio. My dad has had 3. None have lasted more than a year. Asus and voodoo offer nothing close to the mac pro. With dell I looked at the alienware line, which came closest in performance to the mac pro; however, there are some key differences:

Notes: ECC memory is memory that will correct minor errors in repetitive cpu tasks. Memory CL divided by the memory speed gives you average task speed.

As you can see the Dell isn't cheap and when I have a problem with the computer I prefer the 5 minute wait time to talk to apple's support in cali vs. the 30-45 minute wait time to talk to someone in india who can't speak english. In addition to that, the mac pro is much more upgradeable than the alienware and I prefer the mac pro's cpu setup over the alienware one for obvious reasons. The alienware does have dual gpu's, but I can always but a second gpu for the mac pro for $250. The alienware also has a blu-ray player instead of a second dvdrw drive, but honestly I'd never use it. If I watch blu-ray movies I either rent them through cox on-demand or my ps3, or i play them on my blu-ray player. As far as the warranty goes the alienware has a one year warranty, my parents said they'd pay $199 for the 3 year apple care warranty. Plus, the apple genius bar has never failed to help me out/fix things for me and they don't charge anything unless they have to replace a part and you're past warranty. I can also get win7 ultimate for $8 from VT and install it on bootcamp, just like I did with my macbook pro.

To me it looks like the benefits of the mac pro far outweigh the benefits of the alienware.

As far as building my own computer goes, I've never done anything besides changing out memory, so I'd probably break something.  You still get a 1 year warranty on parts, but little to no support.  So that doesn't seem like a reasonable thing for me to attempt.

That said, I need about $3000 to afford either one, so I won't be getting anything for a while.

[Jasoncw 11,949]

Well, I still think you're paying way more than you need to.  What SimFox suggested a few pages ago would do the job.  My computer works fine and cost about the same.  Amthaak's also costs about the same and works fine.

It looks like there are websites which will build custom computers for you.  I don't know about any support or warrenties or anything, but if you save a few thousand dollars, even if you have to spend money occasionally to get someone to fix your computer, I think you'd still come out ahead.

[Jack_wilds 550]

hello PBGV,

I encourage you to reconsider your game plan, as you maybe spending more than needed for something that turns over every 4-6 months or so...

look at cyberpowerinc site to build your own or see whats available via tiger-direct for packages and custom kits and mac-pc-components... the sites will help inform and educate as you determine your pc or mac... but in the end its your money, choice, decision -choose wisely as its an investment...best wishes

Happy New Year

Jack

[SimCity4IE 203]

You're paying $4500 for a pc?!

I built a super computer for €2100 last summer. It includes a 5970, i7 930 and 6GB of DDR3 RAM.

The parts are at the end of this video.

Alienware is overpriced. Stay away from Dell; and everyone knows about Apple...

[PBGV103 729]

I have 8GB DDR3 memory in my laptop and used up to 85% of it during during the export of 270 Park Avenue, so I'd need at least 8GB in my new computer. I also want a computer that is somewhat future proof. I'd assume that Intel will keep using the lga1366 sockets for the next few years and I can easily swap cpu's, gpu's, and memory in the mac pro. It supports up to 4 SATA drives and has 3 16-lane PCIe 2.0 slots. It also supports up to 8x8GB DDR3 ECC memory and any paired xeon lga1366 cpu's. I'd much rather pay $4500 for a computer that I can upgrade, that will last several years, and that I can get free, quick support for from someone who speaks english, than pay $2780 (2100 eruo) for a computer that will last 3 years if I'm lucky, isn't as upgradeable, and has pretty lights (no offense, I just don't care how the thing looks).

The other thing is, performance wise, my macbook pro would be perfectly fine for exporting 90% or more of what's on the STEX, but the buildings I've been working on and am planning on continuing to work on are pretty big. The day scene of 270 Park Avenue alone was 189MB and about 20x62x300 meters after being scaled up by 4/3. So these aren't tiny buildings.

I know you guys hate mac, but I love mac and haven't had nearly as much trouble with them as I have had with any other computer I've used, even when I'm running windows on a mac.

[Ion_Cannon 677]

Those export times seem long for 8GB of ram, at least going off other examples. Amthaaks "The Peninsula" has a larger day scene than 270 Park Avenue, and that took 3hours approx to export. The size of the building may make a difference but I don't have enough knowledge to say if that would increase the export time by 8x.

Just out of interest, how much did your macbook pro 2009 cost? That can't have been cheap either and that doesn't seem to have lasted you all that long.

Oh and if it helps, last time I wanted help with my cyberpower PC the support was all provided in english.

It's not that we hate mac (okay maybe sometimes). The fact is your BAT's are fantastic and I'm sorry to say but the donations will get you nowhere unless you find some way of advertising it. So that 4000$+ mac will take a while. The BAT's you make are good, but people aren't going to pay for them. You may be able to sell the 3ds files on a 3D models site or something though. It's also worth noting that alot of people who download bats will not be active on the forums, so they won't be aware of your situation. Myself being one of those people for a while.

   The thing is, you probably don't need a 4000$+ mac to do what you want. You could get something suitable for under half the price, and other comments by members seem to confirm this. Even if your still set on getting a mac and thus not able to export anything, haven't others offered to export for you? Witholding your BAT's isn't going to raise you the money you need for the mac anyway.

Sorry if this seems preachy (It probably is) just seems a shame to see your talent go to waste.

   

[Sgt Pepper 864]

He's not wasting his talent.

Shame how computers can be a hassle. I've dealt with this 2002 Windows XP I've had for a loong time. It used to be so slow but its fine and faster now. Maybe not as fast as it should, but not slow. My Desktop(2002 XP) has(or is...) Intel® Pentium® 4 CPU 2.40GHz 2.30 GHz, 768 MB of RAM...I'm a little jealous seeing everyone here has around 6-8GB or RAM. My laptop has 4GB of RAM...only problem is keeping it cool... :/

If you want Paul, I could, if or once I get 3ds. MAX, export your models for you on my Laptop. If that could suffice.

[PBGV103 729]

There's nothing wrong with my macbook pro (yet). It's just the guys at the apple genius bar said I could damage it severely in the long term with those incredibly long exports and high temps. Laptops are meant to be portable word processors, not rendering farms. It really doesn't matter if you get a HP, an Apple, or a custom laptop, they will never have the power or durability of a nice desktop. Also I know most people just download mass quantities of BATs from the STEX and never read the forums so I tried getting people to go to my blog by posting a link on my last upload to the STEX. One of the moderators proceeded to remove the file and then threaten to kick me off the site for posting the link to my blog where people could donate.

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

Yes, you are right PBGV103 you need a desktop for rendering buildings. My little netbook get hot once I turn it on and I thats a problem I'm facing everyday, and my desktop before it died go really hot when I did some renderings in 3ds max and some times my desktop computer would cut off because it was so hott. We all need something thats not going to heat up and die on us. A gaming PC is a ways great because it good for geting rid of heat, but every time I do a costum building I always end up with a price of 2,000 to 4,000 dallors and I know that type of money is not going to fall in my and yet your laps.

[SimHoTToDDy 2,939]

Then why don't you just get a cheap desktop that can crank out exports (you really only need a good CPU and a 32bit amount of RAM) and save the laptop you already have for what it was meant to do?

8GB of ram won't help anything render any faster, MAX rarely needs more than the regular 2GB (which can be fixed by flipping the 3GB switch). The same could be said for most of the features you seem to need.

No offense, but you are being unrealistic. You are trying to support a hobby. If, for example, I loved to drive and travel the country by car. My Ford pinto wasn't cutting it, so I needed a new car. Instead of picking out something that would get the job done yet still be reliable and a good long term investment without costing more than $5000, I pick out an über Bugatti, the car or my dreams, which can fulfill my every want and desire! Only problem, it costs 1.7 million dollars. Pinto is in the shop, and I only have $5k, guess I don't get to travel and enjoy what I love. I should probably go sit on the street corner and start shaking a tin can.

Get the analogy?

I don't mean to be rude, but I hate to see you get so stressed out about this. Just get something you can afford! Trust me, it is a lot less stressful! You don't need to pay more than a grand to get something than can do way more than what you need it to do (and then some), so don't! If my five year old $700 clunker can do what I ask, you can get something realistic for WAY less than $4500.

Get what you need, not what you want.

[PBGV103 729]

Hahaha I'm not so stressed out. I'm just doing the research necessary and taking things seriously.

By the way, if max rarely needs more than 2GB to render, then why was it using 4.1GB and the Win7 OS using 2.2GB the last time it was exporting 270 Park Avenue? This is 64bit 3ds max we're talking about and on autodesk's site they recommend a minimum of 8GB of memory for scenes in max 2011 64bit that have around 10,000 objects. 270 Park Avenue had over 20,000 object so following their logic I should have at least 16GB of ram.

Ohhh and where do I start with cars? I LOVE cars. I got my uncle's 87' 300zx after he passed away. It only has 65K miles on it now, but I still pay the car's value in repairs every two years. Last year it was $6K to fix the suspension and then just regular maintenance. Cars are hardly ever an investment and computers aren't either, unless getting a better computer gets makes you more money at your job. The only time you'll ever make money by buying a car is if you buy a super rare and expensive car that will appreciate in value in the long run.

People buy nice cars because they want nice things. My mom is about to buy a Mercedes-Benz S550 sometime this week. She'll be lucky if it's worth half its current value in 2-3 years. My main issue with just buying a "whatever" desktop that may suit my current needs is I'd feel like I was wasting my money. Like I said before, I'd much rather wait and spend $4500 on a mac pro that will serve me for years to come, than get a cheap computer now to serve my immediate desires.

There are buildings in manhattan that are much larger than even 270 Park Avenue. What happens when I try to make something like the MetLife/GCT complex? or the Rockefeller Center? or the Time Warner Center? Will a single 4 core cpu, cheap gpu, 4GB of memory, and a slow hard drive be enough to handle that? You may say you think it can, but can you prove it can? And if I buy a computer for $1K and it can't handle what I ask of it, then what do I do? I'll be out of money and out of options at that point.

Anyway, when I do buy a computer, I'm going to buy one that I can say I'm happy with and have no regrets getting.

[SimHoTToDDy 2,939]

20k? GOOD LORD! You should never need that much RAM since you should never need that many objects! Not for a non-commercial, non-production level scene. You are talented in making things look amazing, but you still have A LOT to learn about scene management.

That is your problem! You need to use fewer objects! 2000 is a lot even for a large building like you are making! Remember, one object with a million polies far easier to process than a million objects with one poly each.

I can guarantee you that if you simplified your model down to a realistic number of objects and adjust your materials, your current hardware would have no issue whatsoever exporting that model.

You don't need monstrous hardware if you are smart with what you are trying to do! Any schmuck can make a scene that obliterates their computer, just try making frosted transparent glass with weird IoR and some caustics to boot. Can you add all of those effects? With ease! Do you need them? Of course not! If you are smart with the scene and trim down the superfluous options and effects you can get the "whatever" hardware to to some very impressive things. "Whatever" is in the eye of the beholder. You may look at my discount PC and be appalled, but I was able to export Fisher Body 21, which is of comparable size to your buildings (albeit horizontal), with much less trouble then you seem to be having (filesize was only 26MB, 333k polies). I did not need more than 3GB of RAM, I didn't need more than my crappy antique AMD duel core processor.

It is not what you have, but what you do with it!!!

Try simplifying geometry to get rid of excess objects. Try using the "highlights + FG only" button on your materials. You may yet get these on the STEX and it will save you $4500.

[Hanson784 165]

You are a fantastic modeler but SimHottoDDy is right, you need to learn to reduce the number of objects when you're modeling. I made the Solow Building and a number of other large Midtown skyscrpaers back when I had my old and slow VPR Matrix PC with Windows XP on it. I rendered my creations, even if it took 10 hours to render them.

I'm not saying you don't need a new computer but I think it would be wise to learn a 3D modeling method that reduces the number of objects in your scene (having too many objects can slow down just about any computer) and looking at computers at slightly lower prices.

I'm browsing for a PC desktop right now as my old one crashed a few months ago. I'm temporarily using a Macbook Pro for my SimCity stuff and have found good computers for around $3,000 or even a bit lower.

[PBGV103 729]

Here's the object number breakdown of 277 Park Avenue so far.

Windows: 7094

Steel mullions: 293

Other mullions and dark facade between floors: 3584

Lighter facade blocks: 682

Entrance columns: 7

Roof tops: 7

Ground plane: 1

Total: 11668

Basically windows and mullions are the reason the object count is so high. If I get rid of the mullions then I lose detail. If I make multiple windows single objects then I either get really weird effects with the bump maps/reflections or I spend a ton of time making specific bump maps for every wall of every individual BAT I make. So I either spend days measuring and making bit maps for every single BAT or it will look terrible or I keep it as is and have 24 hour exports.

[Jasoncw 11,949]

The mullions can all be attached into the same object, or into a small number of objects for convenience.

For the windows, instead of using a planar uvw map, and having each pane be it's own object with its own uvw map, attach them, and use the "face" uvw map type (rather than planar).  This stretches the bitmap over each polygon automatically, and if each pane of glass is one polygon then you're good to go.  The Gardener Center Glass entry in my blog explains it more indepth.

At this point if you wanted, your building could literally only be a handful of objects.  One for each material would be easy enough or you could break it up into different parts to make it easier to work on.

The other thing to do is to avoid doing glossy reflections as much as possible.  If you're still using the autodesk materials, I'd redo them with the arch & design material so that you have more control.  This way you can specifically tweak it for your needs. 

[PBGV103 729]

At one point I tried making all the windows a single plane and dividing the plane into separate faces, but when I applied the UV map to the faces, it wouldn't randomize the material sub-maps. That gave each face the same bump map and the same blinds since they're part of the material. I also tried one of those auto-blinds scripts but since I guess it's follows a very simple formula because the blinds were always made in the same pattern. The only autodesk material I still use is the satin finish chrome. It's looks perfect imo for what I'm using it for.

[SimFox 804]

Originally posted by: PBGV103

quote>

Oh My! Going from Apple to Alienware is really getting from BAD to WORSE rip off!

At least with Apple you get design, and it's marketing department (which rules everything in that company) make an effort of selecting obscure components (like ESS memory) to further confuse consumer and make price comparison difficult if not impossible, Alienware, on the other hand, has an audacity to picks regular, most common off-the-shelf components and slap an enormous margin for the dubious pleasure of having their badge on your system.

Lets just take a look at that list. Total price of components on it amount to 1900€ (German prices with include VAT!) Price in you american papers is listed with no sales tax of any kind, am I right? Let's assume I am. So converting German Prices to $ and clearing off the VAT the grand total comes to 2230$. Now compare this to the 4343.99$ Alienware wants for that rig! Truly Alien overload like!

And Apple support! Don't make me laugh! The only thing they are capable and interested in is feeding you and other customer the marketing crap and forcing them to buy useless extras at hugely inflated prices. Just look at the specs of the system they are trying to feed you! It is full of either totally useless components (I think "dual x18 DVDRW speaks for itself! - My mom could be impressed by such. Anyone knowledgeble about computers would laugh. But that 's the point Companies like Apple and Alienware DON'T want you to be knowledgeble. They very much prefer the bunch of idiots whom they can endless milk.

Alienware rig also have ATI cross fire setup. May I ask what it has to do with rendering? Particularly for the BAT?

All-in-all both setups are total waste of money and about the worse bang for the buck you cold possible get.

But perhaps you just wanna have "branded" computer, just for teh brand sake. I'm afraid all of your arguments don't really hold any water if you remove this desire. You just wanna flashy toy! Well in that case you need to pay for it! Armany T-shirt serves same basic function like an no-name crap you get in your supermarket yet it cost 10-20 times more. You want an Armany of a computer. That 250$ for second ATI 5770 that normally retails for little over 100$ is classic example of how your "caring" people in Apple customer support want to help you. Another 3year "apple care" should be called Apple rip-off for 199$!!! If you buy components I've listed earlier they ALL come with at least 3 year warranty, some with 5 year warranty! So how about Apple? Do they put some hand picked extra crappy components into their system if they could only give you a 1 year warranty, or they simply trying to rip you off - you can chose either, and either will be NO GOOD!

I've given you a list of components that will get you a powerful rendering computer for about 1000$. And made of first rate components (normally better than found in those Branded machines). You just don't even want to consider it. You just want a flashy name on your machine. Sorry but that t is the only conclusion I can draw from reading all these explanations - biodegradability of a MAC computer, assumptions of a lifespan of a socket, insistence on SSD drives etc, etc, etc.

[PBGV103 729]

I suppose you think I should get something like this?

But what do I do when autodesk requires more memory than my motherboard/cpu supports or dual hex or 8-core cpu's when max 2014 comes out?

[gutterclub 2,729]

I think this thread is starting to get silly. Computers, your seemingly financial woes and your desire to have a mac aside, people have offered to assistance to both render things for you and offered assistance in terms of modelling and offered assistance on a suitable machine to use with Max which you turn down..even your last post uses 2014 as an excuse. So basically, I'm just intrigued as to where this thread can now go and why you do not seem to want to share these amazing creations you have made..

I don't want to come across as rude, I'm just super keen to see your models in my Cities

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

PBGV103- Great price, and I think you is still ok even when 3ds Max 2014 comes out. You have more than enough of RAM, 12 GB of RAM wow I hope I can get a computer with that much RAM. The CPU is 3.06 that fast and it a Quad-Core you are still good, this computer sould last you ten years if you let it, but most of all the price is great.

What website you went to, to building your own computer, I would love to try it out.