RE: Anyone know Director MX 2004?
 

Thanks for the reply. I'm hoping there's a way to code my buttons in Director, but the problem is that my menu comes in as one object, not seperate pieces, so the only way to do it that I can think of would be to put invisible click zones under each area of the menu and code those.


Yeah, I do 3D modeling and animation, and some virtual reality stuff (VRML). I use max 7/8 for just about everything, and combustion 4 for G-buffer post-compositing, geometry painting, and some particle work, since it interfaces so well with max. I've been trying to get into Maya a little bit just so I can put it on my resume, since everyone still seems to think it's the tits, but it's so slow and basically retarded after working with max for so long (I started on R4). Plus, Autodesk just bought Alias, so it'll be interesting to see where that goes... hopefully we'll see some nice plugin integration in max 9.

Other than that, I use a whole slew of Adobe programs (Premiere Pro 2, Photoshop CS2, Audition 2, Encore 2, etc.) and cleaner XL to do other finishing and editing work. I've worked with Poser a little, but for generating riggable characters, it falls a little flat in my opinion, so I didn't find much use for it. Basically, I'm looking to get a job at an animation or post- house, and I think I might be able to get an apprenticeship at ILM the summer after my junior year, so we'll see how that goes.

A bit off-topic, I know, but it's my topic, so to hell with that.:D Any help is still greatly appreciated though.

RE: Anyone know Director MX 2004?
 

I used to do post-production work too, but more on the video end. I would work in premiere (the assiest program I've used in years and after-effects, one of the coolest).

I prefer Maya, simply because the interface is stoopid simple. 3DS and Lightwave are just too interface heavy. BTW, if you go to ILM. you may want to brush up on Maya and your Mac or Linux computer skillz. I'm betting you work exclusively on a peecee since you use 3DS.

BTW, I used to wanna work for an animation house, but the life is horrible sometimes.

Many animation houses would hire TONS of new animators for a new title or movie project and then lay them off when the project was done. It may be different at ILM and Pixar, but it's pretty normal everywhere else. Make sure you save money once you start working.

RE: Anyone know Director MX 2004?
 

Yeah, I know a few people (and professors) who did/do work in the industry, so I've got an idea of what to expect. We've also done some insane projects in school, and I actually like the lifestyle. We just finished an animated short, studio quality, in 6 weeks with 12 people going from storyboard to final product. It's being presented this wednesday.

As for Mac skills... Haha. I wouldn't consider any job that forces me to work slower and less intelligently. There are plenty of places that either use max exclusively or a combination of the two though, so I'm sure I'll be able to find something. I'm really not worried. There are plenty of other job opportunities along those lines. I'm not really looking for a job at ILM, though; just an apprenticeship. And I know they pretty much let their employees choose their software platform these days; it's not all Nazi Mayans like WETA.

Maya seems like a program that tried to branch out in too many directions at once, to be honest. I prefer the max interface simply because everything is logically categorized (like the material editor) and modifiers and stuff are all right there in the stack. For me, Maya is just a pain in the ass because in order to do the simplest things, I have to go hunting through thirteen context and sub-menus. The only way I've been able to come close to being productive with it is by completely remapping the keyboard to the max interface and learning all the fancy codewords they use... and I still suck it up pretty good.

As for Premiere, have you tried the later releases of Pro? 2.0 is leaps and bounds ahead of what the program once was. It now supports GPU-accelerated rendering and full-res HD editing, and I've never had it crash on me. After Effects is pretty nice, but combustion is a much more powerful program, and it can fully implement After Effects plugins, so there's no point in going back for me.

Oh, and I realize this is pretty much all opinion and that everyone prefers something different, so please don't take any of this stuff as any kind of attack. :D

RE: Anyone know Director MX 2004?
 

none taken.

btw, I've used Premiere Pro. works a little better but it's still inefficient. Final Cut Pro works much better. lol.

RE: Anyone know Director MX 2004?
 

Ah, the ubiquitous Apple ignorance...;) Just kiddin'. It's all preference. But if by better you mean slower, then it sure does. Frankly, I have no idea what all the fuss is about... maybe I'm missing something critical somewhere. I've never been able to get the program to do what I want it to in a reasonable amount of time, and when a dual 2.0 G5 is dropping frames during capture and taking 4 months to render 10 minutes of uncompressed RGB, there's definitely a problem somewhere. But then again, that's kind of my ongoing relationship with Macs... can't live with 'em, can't convince anyone else to live without 'em.:D

But to those who can actually use them, more power to ya'.

RE: Anyone know Director MX 2004?
 

I've almost always worked with dual AMD boxxes but they never worked as fast as our company's dual G5. In fact we had quad processor servers that weren't as fast as our G5, of course they were quad Dells (and don't get me started on Dells)... lol.

and as far as dropping frames. Premiere was dropping frames so bad for us, we just gave up on it. We would rather use iMovie to do capture than Premiere - and did on occassion. lol.

btw, i vaguely remember seeing a PCworld test (or some other peecee magazine) showing the Quad g5s had the best benchtest marks they had ever received. I highly suggest you take a gander at some of those, considering swapped out their render farm linux boxes for them.

and as far as living with macs or peecees. I could nevAr pay out money for a peecee. seriously. but most people aren't like me. lol.

RE: Anyone know Director MX 2004?
 

Compared to the cost of buying a dual G5 (they aren't actually quads like Apple says), you could build yourself a decent renderfarm. And when you factor in the cost of progressing technology and upgrades, a PC based setup will pretty much always be more cost-effective if you need to run a wide array of applications.

Plus, for 3D pipelines, PCs just work better. Backburner is incredibly sophisticated and works with combustion as well as max and all its 3rd party renderers (VRay, finalrender, Brazil, etc.), so you can make rendering assignments based on the performance benchmark of each of your render nodes. Then you can take your renderings directly off the farm into combustion with G-buffer data built in, do all your post- work in half the time, export right into premiere and away you go. Once you've got it down, nothing can really go wrong. And these days, a dual A-64 X2 system will outstrip a dual G5 without breaking a sweat. Macs don't have the bus speed or the memory address ability to handle the same kind of work anymore. And from what I've seen, most of the problems people have with PCs tend to be problems using and optimizing Windows, not problems with the system itself.

And even more off topic, have you ever heard of Project Offset? www.projectoffset.com
Check out some of the videos. In order to create something like that, you definitely need a PC. ;)

RE: Anyone know Director MX 2004?
 

don't believe the hype. quad g5s have four cpus that render faster than intel chips everyday of the week.

and as far as price, build comparably specd pcs and macs and the macs are always cheaper. go to dell and build one yourself.

we had IT guys that would always want to custom build but they quickly realized that after building what they wanted, their computers were in the 4k to 6k range and they were still slower than the lonely dual g5 we had. lol.

and when they tried piecing the parts together from catalogs, the end products were hilarious. they were always on the phone with tech support trying to figure out why their motherboards and other parts weren't playing nice together. Tyan makes great parts until you actually have to get support. lol.

btw, NBC finally figured it out, you can too: http://www.apple.com/hotnews/articles/2006/02/olympics/ ;)

RE: Anyone know Director MX 2004?
 

Nah, they're not quad processors. Just check out Apple's website. Of course, they WORD it in such a clever way that most people WILL believe the hype, but they're just two dual-core CPUs. Sure, they have four logical cores, but the systems have neither the bus nor the architecture to actually use them at anywhere close to 5GHz a pop.

Build a PC from Dell??!? To quote the brilliant Don Cheadle, "You've gone right out of your tree my son." Dell sucks. I think that's something we can both agree on.:D Try out something like ibuypower or any wholesale retailer (especially if it's a big company/school/what have you), and you're coming in several thousand below the infamous Apple price benchmark per system. Plus, here's the clincher: You can't upgrade Macs worth crap. Now, compare the cost of replacing a whole bunch of Macs every few years with the cost of upgrading a component or three in your PCs, and you're bankrupt.

Of course two dual-core G5's are going to be faster than single core, cripplingly-bottlenecked P4's. That's a no-brainer. Which makes me wonder why Apple's buying Intel CPUs, effectively eliminating any edge they had in the CPU department. No more of that "A-1.4-GHz-Mac-is-as-fast-as-a-2.4-GHz-Pentium" malarky.

No, the performance trophy is still firmly seated in the AMD camp. You want to see dual core's working REAL magic? How about two A64 X2's, each running at 2.8 GHz per core with seperate 2.2 GHz front side buses, 16 gigs of RAM, and dual ATI FireGL cards.:D $20,000 won't even get you near that kind of performance in Apple-town.

And if I wanted to do broadcast graphics, I'd use a Flame system.

RE: Anyone know Director MX 2004?
 

i had the dual AMDs 2.8s at my last job, nuthing "but the best" for us there...

they weren't all that they were cracked up to be. in fact, they crashed like crazy. and forget the ATI cards. we had wildcats.

and who said you can't upgrade Macs? you can upgrade every part on a Mac INCLUDING CPUs and motherboards. and yes, you can even add 16 gigs of memory if you want.

and the average lifespan on a mac is over 6 years. the average lifespan on a peecee is under 2 years.
but the best thing about it is you can work real time HD without it CRASHING... ;).

btw, apple decided to go with Intel not for the desktop chips, but rather the laptop chips. apple wants to make money, and laptops make a lot more money than desktops. and as far as architechture, G5 chips could run circles around Intels anyday as long as they were single core. but it's a dual core world now. and guess who's getting them first? lol.

*macs are just like subarus: everybody hates them until they actually drive one. lol*