BVI

I generally go with the philosophy of purchase the best you can afford at that point in time - don't skimp on the pc, that little extra you spend now will prolong your PC's life by months and years. I would think you should focus on: RAM - as much as possible, 32 gigs will do you well - make sure that your Mobo has 4 slots, if you go for 16, then get 2x8 and you can always add some more later. CPU - best you can buy, coreI7 (skip the cheap i5's)- see what you can afford. PSU - this is something I've learnt the hard way, always get a big ass power supply, 700+ Even if the Mobo can run on less it pays to get a larger one in the long run. HD - Solid state is a bit of a pain due to the size of the drives but if you are intent on getting one, then get a huge drive for your data and then load the OS onto the solid state. GFX CARD - If you are using software that renders in the GPU then go ahead and get a higher end card, but if you are not then look at a Card with the Max Vram you can get - it will speed up the viewport etc.

Rumour has it that they are bringing out the XDUGEF function VERY soon. But seriously, you might want to check out sketchup (http://www.sketchup.com/intl/en/download/gsu.html) to get an idea on how 3D works from a conceptual stand point. If you like it, maybe try out Blender as a next step.

Its very similar to Windows 7 but the new metro start screen is very annoying. The first thing I did was bring back the old start button - http://www.stardock.com/products/start8/ One issue though with Max is that windows UAC blocks access to network mapped drives in the Max file browser, it was a pain to get sorted, in the end a registry hack got it functioning properly. Other than that its pretty solid.

Wow, thats really expensive! I use a local SA company and they give me a great rate (about $500USD) for proper chopper (no RC) photographs. I suspect you may be able to get a similar rate - what you need to do is piggy back on their day trips. Lots of these guys rent the chopper per hour and if your site is within city limits you can negotatiate a portion of the time to visit your site - ask around, they may faciliate this.

The light glows from the car headlights, breaks, rear lights etc never look good when you comp in a photo and then bring down the transparency - Better to do these as PS effect combined with a photo. Shane Gee did a nice tutorial here: http://i167.photobucket.com/albums/u143/FreeAgent84/Headlightstreakstuto.jpg Also, pull up your contrast and up the down the brightness to get more definition on the image. What I found with most projects is that the scene should be about 50% of the image, by that I mean that you should add lots of detail to the environment as your would the building. You can add loads more people walking around - more planting on the sidewalk, a few cars driving around etc. Your curb detail needs work - it's right in the foreground. Also, the sky image is very low res and the background plate is at an odd angle. Every commercial image that you do should be a place you would like to hang out and visit.

You should plan before hand, don't just randomly do something in Max , you should have a goal and then you could break the process into smaller, more manageable tasks that will give you results quicker. Or drink more.

We haven't found this at all, especially from Revit. Max 2013 has really improved its import process, less flipped faces from sketchup and Revit and a much cleaner import. If the model is well constructed in Revit then its not a problem to get it into Max if you know what you are doing.

We don't use rebus for stills, but for animation we do a quick low res render of every nth frame, that way we can check for blatent errors. We have found Rebus support to be fantastic. I've emailed them at 2am and they have replied to us within a few minutes. Rebus's plugin also avoids 99.99 % of the reference errors, or missing textures etc. We havent had any problems after 10,000's of rendered frames.

I second rail clone. Its an awesome plugin.

Rebusfarm.net is the only way to go. Rebus is a little more expensive but they have 24 hour support and the gather plugin for max is brilliant. What we do these days is offset the cost directly to the client, so if an animation costs 1000 Euro, we state it as a line item on the quote. Im even happy to send the Rebus invoice to the client if need be. The client is also then aware of the re-render fee. We can render 3 minutes of animation at HD in a few hours on Rebus which would take weeks in-house.

well done. Visually they are fanastic!

Those are amazing. Do you have links to higher res versions? Nice find!

I think your question can be answered by another simple question, how much cash are you willing to spend? My recommendation would be to purchase the highest spec PC you can afford at this point in time. You dont want to have to replace it in a year and should at least get 2-3 years out of the beast for a decent return on your investment. Also, check the ram banks on the motherboard, sometimes the cheaper ones (even with the high end chipset) only have 2 ram slots, which is useless for 3D purposes.

We use Rebus and the service is top notch. Here is a word of warning, build download time into your schedule. The actual render time is negligable compared to the time it takes to grab all the frames.

Also, ditch the umbrella or give it a more upmarket finish, the candy stripe always looks cheap against such a modern house.