New Tech for Next Year?

Hello!
I am currently a freshman in the Virtual Technology and Design department at my University, and I was hoping to get advice on what technology I should upgrade to next year. I used Blender for about 3 years, and probably will again in the future. At my University, we use Maya mostly, along with 3DSMax and ZBrush. I’m currently using a cheap Wacom Intuos (the kind with the two buttons in both the top right and top left corner, no screen) that I bought off of Amazon for around $60. My computer is a Dell XPS 15 with an i7-6700HQ 2.60GHz processor/GeForce 960M GPU/16GB of RAM. I plan n continuing in this field of virtual design so that I might go on to hopefully work at a movie company or gaming company of some sort. I know that I’m eventually going to need upgrades however. I set myself with a $1500 budget for some sort of upgrade for the upcoming year (hopefully it’ll last me the next three years, but you know how technology gets), and I am not sure what I should be purchasing with it.

$1500 is enough for a pretty decent desktop computer, which the extra computing power would be great (and my Dell has caused me no end of problems. $1500 is also enough for a decent Surface Pro 4, which could be used in place of my current Wacom Intuos, and wouldn’t require me to carry around a tablet AND a computer (The main problem is that I’m pretty sure the GPU is poor quality, which would mean all rendering would have to be brought back to my laptop). $1500 is also enough for a decent Wacom Cintiq, assuming that they put the 13 inch tablet back in stock again soon. It would be annoying to have to carry around both the giant drawing tablet and my computer, but I’d have the added advantages of Wacom’s supposed higher accuracy when using the tablet, and the processing power of my laptop. There may be even more devices out there that I don’t even know about that I may be considering, and so I came here to get your guys’ input, as no other online community comes close to fitting this question, and no other community has been so friendly and helpful in the past. Thank you in advance for your answers and input!

What will your main use for the computer be? (simulation, GPU rendering, sculpting)

I’m not completely sure yet. I’ve done a bit of sculpting, but I wasn’t the biggest fan of it, since I’m not really an artsy person. I’m more of a technical precision type person. I’ll probably be doing a fair amount of rendering for sure, as well as some character design. The next class is called “advanced character design and lighting.”

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If you are using blender (and I’m not sure about Maya) I would definitely recommend getting a Nvidia graphics card (GTX 1080 or maybe even ti) for rendering with CUDA. I would recommend an AMD FX CPU (Intel is better but if you are on a budget and doing mostly rendering it may leave you more money for the GPU).

If you aren’t a particularly artsy person, a cintiq or tablet isn’t really going to help that much.

And your hardware isn’t really that bad. You’re only looking at stepping up 1 generation of hardware, which will only get you a ~10% performance increase.

I know it’s not a sexy answer, but saving your money for a year or two would be a better use of it. Or, depending on how your university education is being financed, dumping that money into your student loans will pay off much MUCH more.

The best bang for your buck would probably be to back up all your files and do a clean reinstall of windows (not the dell version, dell’s extra crap is obnoxious and most likely the source of your problems). It will feel like a brand new computer and you will get a significant performance boost, while sidestepping a lot of the annoying dell garbage. Or if you are feeling bold, you could try dual booting linux and you’ll get a 20% performance increase just in OS/compiler efficiency.

I guarantee you that your hardware isn’t holding you back. Focus on learning and practicing good technique. Better hardware won’t make you a better artist, but learning to work with the hardware you have will.

Hmm…okay, I certainly will have to take this advice to heart! I wish I could get that clean reinstall of windows to work, but so far, I haven’t had any luck with that, even though I’ve tried a few times with the “Media Installation Tool.” This summer, when I don’t have to risk losing things that I need for class the next day, I’ll put some time into figuring it out.

“I guarantee you that your hardware isn’t holding you back. Focus on learning and practicing good technique. Better hardware won’t make you a better artist, but learning to work with the hardware you have will.”

I’m glad to hear that it’s not my hardware that’s holding me back, but that’s also a scary thought as well. :wink: do you have any advice for learning and practicing good technique? I don’t really get to spend a lot of time 1 on 1 with my professors, and they blaze through everything at top speed. I’ve thought about getting a Lynda membership for a couple months and going through as many Maya, Blender, and ZBrush tutorials as I can, if that would help…Any advice is greatly appreciated! I want so bad to be good at Graphic Design, but I am so far behind in terms of art skills compared to my classmates that my technical experience is the only thing keeping me from getting cut from the program.

EDIT: When you say dual booting Linux, how would that boost performance exactly? And would I still be able to use Windows? I do like to play games as well… :stuck_out_tongue:

Linux tends to use less CPU power to run than Windows, meaning there’s more available for blender to use. As for your second question, “dual booting” means you can have multiple operating systems on one computer and you choose the OS you want from a list each time you boot the computer, meaning switching the OS is as simple as a reboot. If you want you could burn a LiveCD or LiveUSB of the Linux distribution of your choice (I would recommend Linux Mint) and try it out to see if you like it.

Happy Easter!

The best advice I can give you is to make as much art as you can.

Use tutorials and timelapses of other’s work sparingly, that can really be a trap. You need to learn how to solve your own problems, and having your hand held through the whole process doesn’t develop those problem solving skills.

Take something you love and combine it with blender. If you love Rally racing, make a rally car. if you love the eiffel tower, make a model of it. If you love WWII games, make a tank or a gun. if you love video games, model your favorite character. Take the passion you already have and add it to the passion you are building for the art.

In the real world, you are not always going to get projects that you are passionate about. You’re going to have to make some crappy product box look good, or find yet another way to advertise soda. It’s pretty boring out here in the real world sometimes, so you have to build that passion before you get mired down in the day to day grind.

Stick with it, make something that you can be proud of, and try your best to improve with every project.

I’ll second the recommendation of saving now and spending later (and practice, practice, practice! in the meantime). With an older GPU and Max/Maya you may run into some problems between newer program, OS, and driver releases as time goes by. Oh, and be sure to keep your educational-license content in a separate location so you stay in compliance with licensing terms.

I’ll also recommend you look for regular employment first rather than independent contract work. The employer will be responsible for hardware and software, plus you’ll be exposed to a lot of real-world stuff that isn’t covered in class.