Microsoft Surface? Could this handle my workflow?

[Tim Saunders]

I am starting a new job soon and am being asked about my hardware requirements. One thing unique about this job is my opportunity to work between 2 separate offices. So, my thought is to have a decent rendering farm, or at least a solid workstation (or combination of both) handle the bulk of my high resolution still renderings, and potentially have a Surface Laptop for my day to day modeling.

 

I work on architectural projects, modeling mainly large commercial buildings. Most of the work, however is with religious buildings that have highly detailed architectural moldings, ceilings with carved details, painted and gold leaf stencil and hand painted linework, swirls, florals and other details on the walls and ceilings. The scenes will have highly detailed furniture, chandeliers, windows, mirrors and the related framework. I mainly render high res (not crazy high res, just like 4000 pixels wide) stills. Not hardly any animations.

 

Software I use:

3ds Max - for modeling and scene set up

V-ray - for rendering withing max

Photoshop - for post editing, as well as photo overlays with renderings

Zbrush - for modeling highly detailed custom furniture

Revit - mainly occasionally opening, saving and exporting

 

I'm really interested in using the Surface for Zbrush modeling.

[Jose Negrete]

Hi Tim,

 

I would really consider getting a more powerful lightweight laptop instead. We had some of our coworkers get dell 2-in-1s similar to the surface and they were having a hard time with revit models. They weren't doing any archviz work but I imagine it wouldn't be the best experience with 3ds max.

 

This MSI is 4.25 lbs.

https://us.msi.com/Laptop/GS65-Stealth-9SX

[Tim Saunders]

Hi Tim,

 

I would really consider getting a more powerful lightweight laptop instead. We had some of our coworkers get dell 2-in-1s similar to the surface and they were having a hard time with revit models. They weren't doing any archviz work but I imagine it wouldn't be the best experience with 3ds max.

 

This MSI is 4.25 lbs.

https://us.msi.com/Laptop/GS65-Stealth-9SX

 

I think the key here is the Surface has a touch screen pen display. I'm doubtful any lap top will be able to run everything I do with ease, including zbrush modeling with the touch screen display, but the Surfaces are gaining popularity, so I just thought I would ask if anyone has ever put the newer Surfaces to the test.

[Jose Negrete]

Gotcha. for what it's worth, I think Dell has an XPS w/ touch + stylus display but I haven't tried one. Good luck w/ the search.

[John Dollus]

If you just get a tablet, you could sculpt equally on the 'home base' desktop as well as your mobile platform. The medium sized wacom works great for this and packs just as well as a book. Why cripple your processing power for pressure sensitivity? The benefit of a Surface is being able to work while mobile for lightweight graphic apps (airport, train, plein aire work etc) but it lacks robust hardware demanded of pretty much everything beyond SketchUp.

[Francisco Penaloza]

I have experience with all the machines named here. Personally I have a surface book First get, and even though I really like this machine for every day task, it is not a work station, even when I work in light shaders in substance designer the fan runs constantly and I need to be plugged, otherwise the battery and discrete video chip won't run this application.

I do very light modeling with MODO in the surface (simple AR characters or furniture), and it work fine but with 2 levels of subdivisions it get slow really quick.

I guess to do sketch and very simple modeling it would be OK, but slow, but for anything that you mentioned it would be money no well invested.

 

 

I also worked with the Surface Studio, really nice machine but again the internals and not powerful enough, maybe for painting and any 2D work is OK, but anything 3D demanding it won't cut it. While rendering in MODO it got really hot. Why I mentioned MODO here because this app is lighter and more efficient than 3D MAX, this later has lots of screen problem in the surface book, maybe drivers I don't know.

 

 

 

As John mentioned I would rather recommend the new Wacom one with a good laptop, take a look at the new Razer 15 Quadro edition. As a company we are choosing this or the Lenovo with RTX 5000 instead of our Dells or MSI the later all fail after a year, half of them failed between moth of usage.

Raze seems to have better quality control, the chassis is all aluminum so it help with the heat, and using an external drawing tablet is better than a wobbly screen attached to a laptop. Lenovo and Dell has laptops that fold and you can use as tablet, but with heavy usage they get really hot and the CPU throttle, so you lose performance.

 

 

For today standard on CGI I would not recommend any laptop that can't handle a RTX 2070 minimum and 32 Gb of ram anything under that will be slow as molasses with production files.

[Tim Saunders]

I have experience with all the machines named here. Personally I have a surface book First get, and even though I really like this machine for every day task, it is not a work station, even when I work in light shaders in substance designer the fan runs constantly and I need to be plugged, otherwise the battery and discrete video chip won't run this application.

I do very light modeling with MODO in the surface (simple AR characters or furniture), and it work fine but with 2 levels of subdivisions it get slow really quick.

I guess to do sketch and very simple modeling it would be OK, but slow, but for anything that you mentioned it would be money no well invested.

 

 

I also worked with the Surface Studio, really nice machine but again the internals and not powerful enough, maybe for painting and any 2D work is OK, but anything 3D demanding it won't cut it. While rendering in MODO it got really hot. Why I mentioned MODO here because this app is lighter and more efficient than 3D MAX, this later has lots of screen problem in the surface book, maybe drivers I don't know.

 

 

 

As John mentioned I would rather recommend the new Wacom one with a good laptop, take a look at the new Razer 15 Quadro edition. As a company we are choosing this or the Lenovo with RTX 5000 instead of our Dells or MSI the later all fail after a year, half of them failed between moth of usage.

Raze seems to have better quality control, the chassis is all aluminum so it help with the heat, and using an external drawing tablet is better than a wobbly screen attached to a laptop. Lenovo and Dell has laptops that fold and you can use as tablet, but with heavy usage they get really hot and the CPU throttle, so you lose performance.

 

 

For today standard on CGI I would not recommend any laptop that can't handle a RTX 2070 minimum and 32 Gb of ram anything under that will be slow as molasses with production files.

 

This is very useful info. I appreciate it.