I just might get a PC eventually, after all!
Ron Knights
Posts: 2,077
I'll tell you right from the start that I'll always prefer Macintosh computers for what they do. Macs fail in two areas: You can't upgrade or build a Mac to include a powerful video card, etc. You can't get a Macbook with a 17" screen. I want the ability to put together fantastic art scenes in DAZ Studio and render them in a reasonable amount of time. Also, I've been working on my Family Tree. I'd really love one honking 17" PC Notebook so I can sit on my easy chair and do the Family Tree. (Oh yeah, and take my work with me wherever I go.)
I just might be able to come up with the cash for a new PC. I just switched my wireless carrier from StraightTalk to TracFone. I'll save $500 a year! I don't use my iPhone all that often. I got a $125 a year data plan. I was paying $50 a month on StraightTalk. Now I just need to manage my money better so I'll actually have the money to spend!
Oh, but before I do that, I told my Dad I want an XBone OneS for my birthday! I'm into multimedia, and wouldn't mind trying to play some games again too.
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Pc's can range a good deal in price, so you may end up doing pretty well after saving up your cash. The only thing you'll likley miss from your Mac is the ease of use. But you're right, video card scalability is important. Best of luck.
I have a notebook that I use to do my doodles on (as well as a powerful desktop) so that I can sit in the living room in comfort as well (have a rather nasty case of spinal stenosis). I also got myself one of those "hospital table" type things to put the laptop on - a 17" laptop like mine is rather unwieldy and also gets hot when rendering and not something I want sitting on my lap ;). If you can afford it after your PC purchase, it might be a good idea to spend an extra 50 bucks and get one of these small, rolling tables :). I've had this one for a few years and it's done very well for me :).
Laurie
I might get this table before I get the PCs. It has plenty of room, and I can even use it in bed.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01KUQ2OT8/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=2BUWT41HITR65&coliid=I1UOB54M3HC4RP&psc=1
BTW, if you have a tablet and decent in home wifi, you can stream a desktop to another laptop or tablet with a variety of apps. This shouldn't use any data from a data plan since it is streaming off the in home network. There are several free apps that can stream.
So you could stream Daz from your rendering PC to your favorite device, even your Mac, or whatever you use in bed. I do it all the time. Well, not to bed, but often to my couch with a laptop on my...lap. I sometimes use the mobile version of the streamer to check up my render progress from my phone. I've built entire scenes while streaming Daz to my laptop. I do that when the TV is tied up (since the TV is my desktop monitor.)
...I find it interesting that Mac was once the favoured platform by those involved in the creative arts while PCs were seen as being somewhat clunky and "pedestrian". As a matter of fact some of the leading graphics software today like Illustrator, Photoshop, and Fractal Design Painter (the latter now owned by Corel) was originally only available on the Mac.
Wait, how do you do that? I LOVE my Mac and that will always be my main computer but I do want to get a PC to render Daz, preferably something upgradable so I can add more RAM and NVIDIA cards as I can afford them. But I don't have room for another desk and actually prefer to work from my bed, not because of medical reasons but because I like to be comfortable and my bedroom window has a much better view LOL.
My fantasy would be to get a PC and stick it somewhere off to the side then set up scenes on a Surface or something, something similar to a large iPad where I could lean back in bed, set up my scene by tapping directly on the screen, then having the PC render it. Is that at all possible???
Splashtop Streamer works very well. Before I had a TV in my bedroom I used to stream Netflix from my main PC to my ipad with this ;). Set up the part that streams on the PC you want to send from and the receiver software on the phone/tablet/laptop/whatever you want to stream TO. Works over the home network for free. You have full control of the remote computer from the device you stream to with a special interface. It's super easy to set up and run.
Well, there is a free Netflix app, you can watch directly on your iPad anyway... My bedroom TV just died, and I'm watching everything on my iPad through apps, even live TV... (And sounds amazing with good headphones, I may not go back to regular TV!)
But anyway, you're saying I can use DS or even Photoshop right on my iPad? I will have to check that out! Although the screen is pretty small and not sure which is cheaper, an iPad Pro or a Surface, not that I can afford either at this point and I still need a PC with an NVIDIA card...
I am still trying to figure out if the external GPU boxes like the BizonBox will actually allow me to use an NVidia card purely for rendering. I haven't found anyone with hardware similar to mine who has done this. I may end up springing for a PC purely for rendering myself. I am not giving up my iMac; too many years of stuff on it, including self-written scripts and the like.
I use both Teamviewer and Splashtop, both have android apps to use your phone or tablet with as well (which I've not done)
The big difference between the 2 directly relating to DazStudio is that Teamviewer almost always has a nice crisp stream but you can't use any sliders that don't have limits and you can't drag the perspective box to rotate and pan the current view around. When you try, the slightest movement by the mouse gets registered as rediculously huge movements.
With Splashtop, the DS interface works perfectly as it should but if you have a lot going on your PC such as a large render, then the streamed display gets fuzzy and pixelated.
This was about five years ago. I used to stream not only Netflix (was an ipad v1), but also played video right from my hard drive and from other TV web sites. Before there were so many apps for things than there is now ;). You can run software remotely with it tho. LOL.
Laurie
I believe Poser might have started as a Macintosh app?! I have two desktop Macs & one outdated Macbook. I don't need to stream control (whatever you call it) to another device. Those external graphics card boxes are really risky, and might not be very effective. The boxes will only handle certain sized cards. Awhile ago, there was a thread here at DAZ about one guy's ordeal, trying to find a card that fit. I've also heard the external boxes are not very efficient. You'll always get much more power by using an internal card.
I use Splatop myself. For in home streaming, it is free. I like it a lot, enough to buy the sub for use outside the home. So I can use Daz on my desktop 100 miles away if I have a good connection. Word!
I highly recommend using a mouse when you still can, for those fine adjustments. Can you hook a mouse to an ipad? I know most Android devices can take a mouse, even wireless ones. A 1080p device (or similar) is better for the video quality, but any device that can stream is capable of this. I even streamed Daz to a $50 Amazon Fire tablet and used a mouse. It felt surreal.
So yes, your fantasy is totally possible!
Ron, Ostadan, external GPUs can work, Daz tested some, but often the housing for these things cost more than a high end GPU...and they don't include one! You could actually buy a whole desktop for the cost of these GPU enclosures, which is absurd. Plus they can be REALLY dangerous if you aren't careful, Daz also fried their external GPU test, LOL. So if Daz's own people had issues, I can't say I'd recommend it. There's a reason why it is hard to find people using these enclosures, its just better to build a proper machine for this.
Outrider42, thanks for the info. I had looked at the external GPU and didn't like what I saw.
Tim Cook said we might expect new iMacs and even Mac Pros this year, but I have not seen a Mac bundled with an Nvida since Apple had that massive recall with MacBook Pros. All that aside, I work on Macs, I support Macs in a graphics art department, I'm over on the Mac forums wayyyyyy to much and I make my living with Macs., however I do the bulk of my projects on a PC.'
...but I do render on a Mac.
Yup. Around 1994 or '95. Bryce was even earlier. Around '91 or thereabouts. It was a while before it was available for Wintel.
My 2015 iMac does have an Nvida option, but it isn't one of the cards which is meant when people start recing Nvida cards. It's a laptop card (since an iMac is essentially a souped up laptop with a ginormous screen). I think they've shifted their specs to some other maker now.
The Mac is still slightly more prevelent in graphics fields, but the margin is ever shrinking, and it never has been the case for 3D. Early versions of historic programs notwithstanding.
If I did nothing but 3D I might be be considering a switch, because there are a lot of very useful utilities which simply do not run on a Mac.. But most of my work is straight graphics, and after 27 years I'm going to be a hard sell. The times I've had to use Wintel for classes has only further confirmed that, yeah, I can *do* it. But I don't *like* it.
Splashtop sounds like the ticket for me...I have a pc with a 980 ti in the bedroom and adding a 1080 ti soon...if i can control it with my laptop I will save myself quite a bit of custom deskmaking!
The first commercial version of Bryce was shipped in 1994. Bryce 2 was shipped in 1996 and was also ported to the windoze platform, although it wasn't till 1997 and Bryce2.1 before we got a stable PC, it was also in 1997 the the combined companies first became known as Metacreations.version.
BTW before Bryce 1 shipped, at one stage during the development, possibly as an alpha, or maybe even pre-alpha Bryce was made availalbe for the Amiga.
Poser was first released in 1995, publisher at that time was Fractal desigh (for both Poser 1 and 2. When Metacreations was formed Poser was redesigned and then shipped as Poser 3 with an interface designed by Phil Clevenger in 1997.
I had an earlyu version of Poser on a floppy disc, not sure if it was v1 or v2 but it was quite a bit different to P3, but did work on a PC, so if Poser was originally Mac only it was transferred to windoze before Bryce was.
So I was curious and decided to give this a whirl. It works really well. It is easy to set up (even though I dit it wrong the first time). The stream was nice and steady unlike Steam which is always choppy. I really only ran into two issues. When navigating through my content library an artifact would appear in the workspace. It was roughly the same shape, size and position as the workspace view dropdown list. The second more annoying issue (not very) is that when you click hold and drag in the workspace, for example, on the view cube(?), while it seems like the mouse point is staying in place, its actually moving around the screen on the host computer. This means you can only click hold and drag until the mouse for the host computer hits the edge of its screen. This can also cause the mouse to lose focus on the control computer. Not a big deal. I like it, im gonna use it.
I bought Fractal Designs Poser 1 many years ago. It was on floppies. I fiddled with it, but never figured it out. Then around 1999, I discovered Poser 4, and the online communities. Ever since then I've been a bumbling amateur.
I always prefer a PC, as it allows for greater versatility and power.
Mine has two Xenon processors and I can update it with suitable video cards when I get the money and the chance. Likewise for RAM.
I chose the components simply for processing power. I likie Iray, but I am also fond of Lux.
I knew I probably would not outgrow this computer, and it could take upgrades/additions.
I use a laptop simply for browsing, news, things like that.
...looking to go that route myself dual 8 core Sandy Bridge E5 2690s, 128 GB quad channel DDR3 1600 memory, GPU later when all the dust of the current "GPU Race" settles down a bit. Maybe will be able to score a couple standard 1080s for less.
While I like Lux for the ability to render outside of Daz in background so I can work on something new, it is still too glacial as the high speed mode sacrifices quality. Also R4 seemed to get worse instead of better with subsequent patches so I uninstalled it.
There is/was a kickstarter for.. maybe that? It was a bunch of months ago..anyway, an external gpu box for macs. I messaged the developer and they said that it would do that.
I'll try to find the message/email/whatever it was I used to talk to them to find out about :D
Where I know it from.