New Project makes for Software questions

[bavanor]

Hello all,

 

I will be having a new project coming up here at UGA's University Architects. It will entail the 3d modeling of certain parts of campus, with still renders, both sketchy and photo realistic and then animations.

 

Currently we have all the campus done in GIS (topo taken care of). But, some buildings are done in AutoCAD or Microstation (2d only) while the majority of the buildings are just on blueprints. So, I will have to model all of the buildings into 3d.

 

At this time we are not using any 3d rendering programs. The programs we are currently using are: SketchUP, ADT 2005 (along with the rest of the autoCAD suite, INventor, landscape developer, map, etc), Arch GIS, and photoshop. ONe of my questions is what 3d rendering/animation program to go with. I have reasearched and will start to demo: 3d Max, Maya, XSI, Cinema 4D, Lightwave and modo 201. Any comments on these programs?

 

Are there certian software that will work with this type of project better? What software package is going to be albe to deal with huge terrain poly counts? What program can take topo lines all arranged in the correct z access and make a mesh out of them, imported from AutoCAD (dxf or dwg file)?

 

I have started some of this in SketchUP, but only in a rough model type of environment. It took my computer 2 days to generate the terrain with the sandbox tool from contour. Making a file that is 65 mb in size. And that is only a small part of campus. Once I start to put the buildings in as components, the file gets bigger quickly. This makes me worried about the detailed models that are to follow, and what programs will be able to handle this.

 

I will also be purchasing a new computer for this project. From reading in the hardware forum, it will probably be a dual AMD Opteron with 4gb ram, win x64 and a quadro fx 3500 video card. Hopefully this will be enough to handle the modeling of this project also.

 

So any advice from people out there will be greatly appreciated.

 

thanks in advance,

 

Aaron

[tecton3d]

to start things off: I hear that Modo handles poly-heavy scenes very well, though having never tried it myself I can't verify. There are some guys around here that have used it and hopefully they'll chime in. Of all the softare you mentioned, I know max and maya have been used for large-scale projects since they are used in the film industry but you'll have to research and develop your own way of organizing such a large amount of data. A fast computer will help and is a necessity but if you're unorganized all the power in the world won't help you.

 

on the hardware side of things: some new technology is on the horizon (1-2 months) that would prove itself worthy when working on such a huge project... primarily AMD's move to Socket F. Anyway, that's a whole 'nother thread and I'll assume you need a system ASAP

 

system I'd build:

Processors: dual Opteron 256's or 285's

RAM: 4gb RAM

HD's 1 : 2 x 150gb Raptors in Raid 0 (for OS, programs, and working files)

HD's 2: a couple of big + fat hd's for storage (300gb was the sweet spot - price/perf wise)

PSU: PC Power & Cooling TURBO-COOL 850

Vid Card: at least a quadro 3400

 

... or try http://www.boxxtech.com and send ecaracappa at boxxtech dot com an e-mail

[mahorela]

Max and Vray, in my opinion unbeatable.

[bavanor]

thanks for responding tecton3d and mahorela. Hopefully some other people will chime in, though I am sure this question gets asked a lot.

[FlytE]

Max and Vray, in my opinion unbeatable.

 

Although I use viz and not max, I second that.