Jump To: Software Hardware

Here I will discuss some software items used in conjunction with 3D programs and my experiences with them. I know there are others out there, but I have not had the opportunity to try them out.

Painter 6.0 [Commercial]
URL: http://www.metacreations.com/products/painter6/
Price: about $332.95
Upgrade from 5.5 to 6.0: $170.95
Since version 5.5, Painter & I have become very good partners in 3D creation. It is in my opinion, the most powerful illustration tool and is exceptional for creating image-based textures that do not require model geometry. An example of this is the grass in the USAGIBOT rendering/animation done in LightWave 3D. Version 6.0 has excellent capabilities to create "Seamless" or repeating images for ground cover, walls & floors, spaceship exteriors; almost anything which can be made from multiples of similar shape & scale. It also has so many different brushes, paper textures, and painting styles that you can illustrate just about anything you want in 3D or for use in 3D. And with the use of Photoshop-style layers & Plug-INs, it is more compatible with most users. I can't rave enough about this program and its complete support for the Wacom Intuos tablet, pens, mouse, & airbrush.

To my dismay, Painter's sister program Painter 3D (originally Fractal Detailer) has not been upgraded since version 1.0, which was barely an equivalent to Painter 5.0. Painter 3D allowed users to apply most all of the tools, techniques, and texturing methods of Painter to 3D Models in Real Time update. It was fairly accurate at mapping, and allowed me to rotate a model as I was painting on it. Does it sound too good to be true? It was.

MeshPaint 3D 1.6 [Commercial]
URL: http://www.texturetools.com/products.shtml
Price: about $69.00
For many LightWave 3D users, this was the only 3D texturing-painting program that worked directly with LWO. LightWave Object files. MeshPaint 3D is yet another "other" platform program ported to the Mac and seemed to work in a quirky manner on my Powermac 7500/150 & is very unstable on my Beige G3/300. It's Interface is what I would consider to be less than desirable and is not very intuitive at all. Now, there is a new program called TrU-V which is an analytical texture mapping solution that works with MeshPaint 3D or independently, but I have not seen a Mac version of it in existence. I have only seen Intel-machine base versions of MeshPaint & TrU-V currently available.
My advice is to NOT acquire this program, as there is no more Mac support for it.

TypeCreator [Shareware/Freeware]
URL: http://download.desk.ne.jp/Mac/1/00055/1362.html
This wonderful utility can Batch change a file(s) Type and Creator much like that of ResEdit, but can remember various file types & multiple creator associated with them. The Program is a Japanese version only at the moment, but the Interface Is mostly in English.

Simple Edit 3.5.1 [Shareware/Freeware]
URL: http://www.evatac.com
A simple replacement for Simpletext for editing LW Preference files and other Simpletext based documents.

A few concerns & reviews for the serious 3D user.

RAM
Get as much RAM as you can afford and always shoot for large chip density such as: 128, 256, 512 MB sets. I have experienced many errors in the past with 3D software, and more than 90% of them it were due to not having enough RAM.

[Note: Your CPU speed also is a very large factor in 3D rendering performance, since it has to calculate all objects and scenes, lighting, etc.-Mike]

Hard Drives & SCSI Cards
Unfortunately, 3D design & rendering is geared towards fast hardware in general. When I was more naive about the way computers worked, I thought that just getting lots of of RAM & a video card would make 130,000 polygon Open GL previews a real-time consideration. Luckily for me (I think) SCSI never worked reliably on my new Beige G3 and I was forced to buy a SCSI card. I ended up with an Orange Micro 940 UW which gave me 15 SCSI IDs & also ordered a pair of Quantum 7200 RPM Hard Drives. To my delight, I discovered 3D preview & rendering performance I had never expected and was soon rendering scenes & animations with 100s of thousands of polygons instead of thousands. My 5400 RPM IDE had very poor performance in comparison.

A word of warning to HD shoppers; never buy SCA Drives unless you are planning to buy a RAID or similar HD configuration. I made this mistake and had to buy an adapter to supply power & standard pin connection to the rear of the drive, which just barely fits into the HD slots in the 7500 & Desktop Beige G3 computers. I should have known that the one out of two identical drives was $30.00 cheaper because I would have to spend $28.00 for the adapter to use it with a standard SCSI Interface.

Orange Micro 940 UW PCI SCSI Card
Price: about $120.00
URL: http://www.orangemicro.com/
Reliable on Beige G3 and earlier PCI Macs. Includes cables & requires no software. Check Orange Micro for G4 compatibility.

Quantum 7200 RPM Atlas IV Hard Drive 9.1 Gigabytes
Price: about $311.95
URL: http://www.quantum.com/
UltraWide SCSI 3 Interface HD that fits in 3.5 " slots. This drive was quite a bit cheaper than its Seagate counterpart and has made saving animation frames much faster.

Fujitsu DynaMO 640SE 640MB External Drive
URL: http://www.fcpa.com/product/prd_product_frame.html
Price: $350.00
Data has never been lost on my account from this drive and it has been very helpful for those continuing projects (like a portfolio for instance) which are too small or too incomplete to warrant burning a full 650 or 700 MB CD-R, and are too vital to be left to Zip Disks or your HD. It only took 3 Zip Disk failures for me to decide to convert everything to either Optical or CD-R. The DynaMO 640SE also supports 128 MB and 230 MB, as well as 640 MB disks. For those of you who are interested in larger file storage, Fujitsu has recently introduced the DynaMO 640/1300 FE which works with 128, 230, 540, 640 Megabyte, & 1.3 Gigabyte Optical Disks and is available in SCSI & FireWire interfaces. There are also drives for internal IDE & SCSI interfaces.

I would also like to recommend the Olympus SYS.230 Optical Drive which I have used for over 5 years now and have had much success with, but I'm not sure it is still being marketed in the U.S. It takes 128 MB & 230 MB disks.

Monitors
Any monitor of 17"/16" viable area and a suggested 19" viewable area or greater and a refresh rate of 60Hz or higher is a must for someone who is going to stare at a 3D screen for more than 6 hours at a time. For many years, I used my trusty 17" / 16 viewable area Apple 1705 Display (which is still alive & well today) with form•z & LightWave 3D 5.0, but it became a little small when I became a power user; displaying most all of the form•z tools. Fortunately, LightWave Modeler has a feature which allows you to drag the center divider of your 4 views to focus on one specifically at any time. Whatever you do, do not buy one of those Bubble-Sphere displays that make you view the world as if you were a fish. If you see a 21" Monitor for $200.00, it is probably rounder than my behind.

Sony W900 Trinitron CRT Monitor
URL: http://www.ita.sel.sony.com/products/displays/wide/gdmw900.html
Price: about $2200.00
The monitor I use currently is a Sony W900 24"/22.5" viable Wide Aspect Ratio Display. This monitor has a depth & footprint which is about equal to that of a 21" monitor, but has a 16:9 aspect ratio like that of wide movie screens you seen in a theater. The correct Bit Depth is 1600 x 1024 @76 Hz for the 16:9 proportion and this displays icons and documents (not to mention DVD movies) at just the right size for recognition. Higher Bit Depth is not always a plus when you can't tell what you are looking at! I can not describe what and increase in productivity I had when using this monitor. Being able to do & see multiple things at a time has made 3D work much more rewarding and instantaneous than ever before. It has BNC & VGA connections, and comes with a monitor cable & Mac adapter. It also supports ColorSync and multiple screen geometry & 3 adjustable presets for brightness/contrast adjustments. I often use a low brightness/contrast preset in times like now when I am just editing points & lines, writing a letter, viewing non-graphic web sites, or editing HTML. Yes, I could have acquired a g4/400 instead of the W900, but then I wouldn't be able to write this article today while looking at www.XLR8YOURMAC.com, and I would be longing for a $4000.00 Cinema Display.

Video Cards
If you have a newer Mac with a built in Rage Pro or Rage 128 chip with a 19" or less monitor, QuickDraw 3D & Open GL rendering should not be dragging too badly. The most important factors for video cards are the type of chip used, the chip speed (RAMDAC), and the amount of RAM on the card. For more information on these, you can check the www.XLR8YOURMAC.com web site. When searching for a video card, make sure it supports your specific needs like QuickDraw 3D & Open GL, NUBUS or PCI or AGP slots, and the resolution(s)-Bit Depth(s) you plan to use it with. Remember that once you install a video card into a Mac, you automatically have the ability to use a 2 monitors; one for your original monitor port & one for your new card.

MacPicasso 540 & 3D Overdrive 8MB PCI Card
URL: http://www.villagetronic.com/
Price: Current Pricing Unknown
Based on the Voodoo series chipsets, this was one of the first and only cards available for the Mac platform. The most unique feature of this product was the ability to expand the 2D Mac Picasso card with the addition of the 3D Overdrive, Paloma TV, and Pablo Video modules. It worked great with the PowerMac 7500/150 and increased my productivity greatly. This card has a reputation of not working well with G3 or higher machines, and I can attest to that greatly. Support from VillageTronic in Germany has also become less responsive since its increase in popularity. There are newer versions of this card using Voodoo 2000 chip sets with 16 MB RAM, but they are not so easy to come by these days and are very expensive. Please look at the reviews of these cards before considering a purchase.

ATI Nexus Rage 128 32MB PCI Card
URL: http://www.atitech.com/
Price: about $250.00
Originally, my Beige G3/300 came equipped with a Rage Pro & 8 MB of VRAM for use with its hardware DVD decoder. At the time, I thought this was pretty cool, but the addition of a few more polygons in 3D and a bigger monitor changed everything. So, I figured that Apple had been responsible in their choice of hardware and ended up with the Nexus 32 MB card. To say the least, I was wrong. I soon learned of the evil ATI Menu Config. which caused numerous rendering and system errors until a few versions later of the ATI software; not to mention that ATI extensions have a major redraw conflict with Macromedia Flash 3 & 4. The 32 MB of VRAM does help though, and it does speed up QD3D & Open GL rendering with support for 1600x1024 Bit Depth. I would not give this card more than a slightly better than average rating. My buying advice is to religiously read the reviews & posts on www.XLR8YOURMAC.COM and wait as long as possible since times are changing for the Mac platform right now and Formac has just announced a new version of the ProFormance 3.

[Note: Reviews of the MP540/3D0, Rage128 Orion and Formac Proformance3 Graphics cards (and others) are listed at the graphics/video articles page.-Mike]

Magnetic Optical Drives
There is a point in everyone's career when you discover something so sophisticated, reliable, and easy to use that you want to share it with everyone you know. For me, its Magnetic Optical Drives & Media. My first encounter with these drives and disks that resemble a double-thickness floppy diskette, was when I went to Europe to study under an exchange program. Thinking that I'll impress all my fellow students with my fancy translucent Syquest Disk, I came to class with my 88MB cartridge; only to receive weird stares from everyone and to be later informed by a friend that they only used "Optical Disks" in the computer lab and gave up Syquest long ago with the rest of Europe & Asia. Of course, being a naive American I defended my fat, bulky Syquest; only to drop it on the floor accidentally minutes later. The world seemed to end at that moment, until I realized that I had backed up my work as a formality on the optical disk I was forced to purchase earlier that day. Since then, I saw numerous Optical Disks dropped and tossed around without any data loss or corruption of any kind. I have even heard stories of someone spilling orange juice on their optical disk & washing it off (disassembled) with soap and water to restore it to its full capacity & vital data. Are you convinced yet? I'm not trying to sell a "Golden" solution for rewritable media; I' m selling a "Platinum" one.

TrackBalls & Tablets
My experience with trackballs has been very positive, and has helped me to reduce strain for the occasional 14 hour day in front of the Mac. Cordless tablets & accessories are no longer a luxury for the graphically elite, with the introduction of the Graphire and other solutions under $200.00; and can be an invaluable asset to creating textures in Photoshop & Painter. If you can save up and get an Intuos 6"x9" tablet with mouse, do it.

Wacom Intuos Tablets & Accessories.
Price: Varies with Tablet Size & Accessories
URL: http://www.wacom.com/index.shtml
The Intuos Tablet, Mouse, & Pens have become my peripheral of choice for 3D creation, texture making, and rendering touch up. There have been numerous raves about the Intuos pens, but I enjoy the ball-less, cord-less, weight-less mouse and its 15 button capability very much. Like other Wacom products, the mouse is lightweight, but not flimsy like some other types of mice out there. You will however, have to replace the special underside pads every couple of months or so which are about $9.95 for a pack of 3. It does beat cleaning mouse balls & rollers though.

I have posted a review of the Intuos Tablet, Airbrush, & Mouse previously on the www.XLR8YOURMAC.com Upgrades forum and if you missed it, click on the tablet.

Digital Cameras
Ahh yes, the fabled Mega-Pixel Monsters of our day & age. Hand held and lean on the film, but not so slim in price. They have arrived, and they do work wonders for many; myself included. For the 3D world, the 2.1 MegaPixel or higher cameras do a pretty decent job of documenting reference sites/locations & objects which you may have to model or use in Medium to Low Resolution renderings & animation. They are often much better than standard analog cameras at auto-exposure in dark conditions, and can usually take acceptable macro (close up & detailed) pictures of small objects like flowers and miniatures. Film is expensive and there is no fully adopted media for it; i.e. flash / compact flash cards, microdrives, super disk, etc.

Olympus 2500L SLR Digital Camera
Price: about $1200.00 w/ 4 Nickel-Hydride Batteries & Charger
URL: http://www.olympusamerica.com/p.asp?s=12&p=16
This camera has an optional dedicated flash and multiple add-on lenses which can enhance its standard performance to some degree. It accepts both Compact Flash & Smart Media Cards and is a fully auto focus Single Lens Reflex camera. Pictures are captured as JPEGs or Uncompressed TIFFs at a 1712x1368 pixel size & 2.5 Megapixel density which is just high res. enough for an 11"x 17" print out. The Batteries are about $30.00 for a set of 4, but the 2500L does not use its LCD screen for primary focusing which saves quite a bit of power compared to LCD dependent models.

[For reviews of CPU upgrades, SCSI or IDE hard drives and controllers, video cards and more see the sidebar links and topic areas at the main www.xlr8yourmac.com page.-Mike]

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