Hi All,

I have a couple of questions you might have some answers to:

This is more curiosity than anything else, but does anyone know of speed benchmarks for Bryce rendering on MAC and Windows platforms?

Apple constantly claims their G4 is faster than any Pentium, and Intel makes the same claim against MAC. There's more to it than just processor speed, and these guys use Photoshop as a standard.

I was curious how Bryce performed on the two platforms, if anyone ever tested it anyway.

My second question is about 3-D software in general.

Do you find you need a bunch of programs to get things done, because no one (affordable, or available on MAC, or Windows) program can do quite everything needed?

I'm using Bryce, Poser, Amorphium (moving up to Amorphium Pro) and Strata 3-D to get things done. This is possible because of .obj and .dxf file formats being supported (thank goodness!)

While I can model quite a few things in Bryce, it is limited, but I am comfortable with scene manipulation in it, camera moves, animation, and so on, and am getting quite friendly with the terrain editor! Material/texture mapping is another adventure altogether! Thanks goodness Bryce supports PICT images!

While I have greater modeling flexibility in Strata 3-D, I find it too awkward for scene manipulation, so I make objects in that and bring them to Bryce.

I do the same thing with Poser because modeling anything like a scene in that is unbelievably cumbersome for me (Poser seems to be a very awkward program--does it have to be?) I have no trouble bringing Poser characters to Bryce, and I can even animate them there, although it is more awkward sometimes than animating in Poser (which can be awful at animating when it wants to be).

Then, for organic and oddly shaped items, there's Amorphium because it can sculpt images (getting this to work takes a huge amount of practice, but once I "got" it, it became easier).

Of course, I read about much more expensive, high-end programs (such as Electric Image's Universe, Rhino (which doesn't run on MAC, does it?) and so on.

I find it all amazingly confusing!

And, of course, without Photoshop, a lot of what I do wouldn't work because I have to post process for effects I can't seem to get otherwise. Image Ready, which comes bundled with Photoshop allows one to bring in a movie as frames and then paint on them. Awkward, but effective in the end product. Plus, I can sharpen images and change lighting effects in these programs.

Do you all run into this as well?

This isn't a complaint, just a question. I'd be interested in your comments. So many of you do such high end work, I wonder how this all works for your projects.

I hope I didn't open a can of worms. Just curious as to what others are struglging with.

Thanks!

1. It depends on system configuration. The fastest pentium on the market is faster than the fastest mac. As far as I know, but RAM is a big issue too. If you take a fast G4 with 512MB RAM it's going to be faster on complex scenes (with large filesizes) than a fast pentium with 256 MB, because the G4 can use more ram wich is obviously faster than swapping from the harddisk. 2. As for using multiple programs. It depends mostly of what you want to make. If you want to make organic forms or small plants bryce just doesn't work. I don't know anyone who uses only one app for all his/her images. Personally I use bryce, amapi and UFX or PSP most of the time. But I can use Photoshop and Corel photopaint too if I want. I try to make as much as possible in bryce itself, but I don't really mind if I have to go to Amapi or some other app.

Attached Link: http://pennypacker.net/tutorial/rendering/index.html

Well, check out this page, and render the [simple] file on your system. If you send a pic of the render report (or post it here), I'll put it on that page. I only tested it on my Mac. I made that page because of the all the talk about B5's slow render times, and I wonder how it works on a PC. I suspect that Bryce 5 is coded more efficiently for Mac OS X than Windows, if that's true, then Macs might render a B5 file faster. As for system performance, it's relative to the software and hardware. If you want raw speed, Mac will lose. While the G4 is fast, even the fastest G4 isn't as fast as the latest Pentium. Still, both are quite fast. And like Rayraz pointed out, if your system is a bit light in the RAM department, processor speed wont matter anyway. Apple uses G4 benchmarks in Photoshop because it's a popular app for one, and also because its code is streamlined for dual processors and for the G4's special AltiVec (velocity engine). Software that's optimized for the G4 is *much* faster than software that isn't. As far as apps go, there are way too many, and I hope someday it will get easier. I use Strata 3D, Bryce, UVMapper, and occasionally Poser. I'd like to try others, but the price tag is a deterrent. Pros can probably get away with only Lightwave or Maya, but keep in mind that those apps require that you do a lot of work manually where as with an app like Poser, you just turn a dial. I think everyone uses a 2D editor, I couldn't imagine texturing something without Photoshop. Oh, and what about the animators and video guys that no doubt use Premier or Final Cut Pro? There will always be different apps for different uses, like 3D will probably never merge with Photoshop type apps, nor will it likely merge with movie apps. But I would like to see an affordable 3D solution that can model, render, and texture in one app. Oh, that has plug-in architecture too.

I use only bryce and rarely photoshop franly because I am dirt poor and can't afford anything else. I actually feel that only relying on bryce has helped a lot because I can do things now I would have never thoguht possible if I had other software.

Attached Link: http://calyxa.pandromeda.com/benchmark.html

It's really a pointless comparison, and has been ever since Trident stepped up to 16-bit graphics back in the late eighties. Apples are good, maybe even phenomenal for ease-of use. They are proprietary, though, and because of this will never advance as fast as the hundreds of companies building parts for modular "PCs". Heck, my graphics card by itself is faster than a G3! Not an argument, just the facts, and when I had my Imac running next to my Pentium 2, it was quite evident that it would be the last Apple I ever owned. I'm no nuclear physicist, but I can handle simple equations quite well and there's not any way in hell a G4 can keep up with a P4, or an AMD chip... The only thing that DOES run the same speed between them is possibly older RAM, pre-PC2700 or ramdac... Here's some benchmarks that Calyxa posts, not for Bryce but for Mojoworld, which hits processors in a very similar way (for the most part). You can do the math, obviously the guys at Apple cannot. (cackles)

Attached Link: http://www.planet-3d.com/cgi-bin/bmark/bmark_simple.cgi

Here's a site with 228 benchmark tests on Bryce.

Actually Mojo is not a very good benchmark because it contains Intel and PC optimized code. There is no counterpart of alti-vec optimized code for the G4 in mojoworld. I know the lead programmer and he knows how to get every ounce of horsepower out of the PC. The Mac version is a port to something like xwindows (not written by him) and it is rather crippled. If a direct version were written for the Mac it might be a fair comparison. You might want to stop cackling now.

As far as mac/windows benchmarks go I can't answer, I have an 800mhz mac and a 400mhz windows machine. I will say that running Terragen via windows emulation under Linux renders twice as fast as running it natively in Win98 on the same machine, the UltraHLE N64 emulator was also a few fps faster on Linux in emulation mode. Windows is a huge resource hog, so it's probably not the best OS to choose to pit Intel vs G4. As far as multiple programs, I have alot. I use electric image 3d toolkit for alot of modelling, but there are also alot of times where I really need a polygon based modeller, and Blender fills that role. I have amorphium but haven't used it a huge amount, it's great for organic stuff, and for beating up objects and making them look worn and torn. I use UV Mapper to do my texture mapping because neither Electric Image nor Blender exports texture data into a file format that plays nicely with others. I use a Nendo clone called Wings3d for alot of the realtime graphics I do for video games. I'm currently looking at Bryce and Vue d'Esprit for their outdoor abilites, The EI Universe upgrade for it's rendering ability (I'm already familiar with the program and it integrates with quicktime movies very nicely), and of course Poser 5. Not sure which one I'll go with although I'm really thinking it'll be EI. Vue won't load my OBJ files correctly. Bryce's big strongpoint is that it is much easier to get Poser to work with Bryce than it is EI. I like the interface to EI better than most 3d programs I've used though. I hated Cinema4d's interface and Bryce/Vue seem better suited to layout than modelling. EI does both fairly well. I don't find poser clunky at all. In fact if you go to the product forum and look at my picture posted there, all of those objects were assembled in Poser. The individual pieces were modelled in EI, Blender and Amorphium, but they were assembled entirely in Poser. I'm sure all 3d software is really just about getting used to it though. I was rather scared of Blenders interface before I learned how to use it, now I think it is brilliant.

The Mac vs. PC debate is a long and old debate. I say who cares. I use Both. My main system is a Mac G4 DP450 with 1GB ram. I also own a PC P3 800 with 512MB RAM I can say this for games, there is no comparison. The PC will eat a mac all the time. Graphics and video is another story. My mac will spin circles around most PC's, yes even P4's when it comes to Digital Video, burning DVD's, Photoshop, Carrrara, and Bryce. I believe that Bryce was originally written for the Mac, but I could be wrong. As for Macs not being expandable this is just not true. Yeah you can't go buy another Motherboard and CPU (well at least I cant) but you can upgrade all sorts of other stuff like the AGP card, the RAM, The HD's, and some other stuff via FireWire, USB and PCI. It is not as upgradeable as a PC, but who cares. It works, and is far more stable. I can count how many times my system has crashed on 1 finger, in the last year and a half. It simply never crashes. My PC... well that is another story. PC's are great for games, Macs are great for everything else! -Paul

Friends don't let friends drive macs. And some folks don't do windoze. Who cares. Use what you have, use what the company has. Both have their +'s and -'s.

shadowdragonlord, I should have you know that your GPU may be faster than some G3 processors, but keep in mind that there are many different G3s out there. Also here's a neat /. article about AGP being largely wasted by today's "glitzy" video cards. http://slashdot.org/articles/02/08/19/1310216.shtml?tid=137 And a note about proprietary bits: There isn't a whole lot of proprietary bits left in Macs. Though a free market competition does yield faster boxes, that's for sure, don't be confused into thinking that Macs are all proprietary. They use PC133 and now DDR RAM, the same optical drives, the same PCI and AGP support, the same ATA, and SCSI. The processors (G3 and G4) are a collaborative work between Apple, Motorolla, and IBM. As for the fastest Mac or PC? it's a PC. No question. But, ignoring the rest of the Mac experience, isn't it a little weird how a G4 can run close to 1GHz without a cooling fan, and an AMD or Pentium can cook food at the same clock speed? Isn't it also odd how a G4 chip blows away the performance of an Intel or AMD at the same clock speed? Not that it matters, because G4s are only at 1.25 GHz right now, but it makes me wonder about processor architecture and where these chipsets are headed in the future. I see I've let the zealot in me surface. Sorry about that.

I hope everybody realizes that we are talking about 2 significantly different processors here. A Pentium is a cisc processor. The Mac is a Risc processor. The mac is a real number cruncher and can do certain things much faster than a pentium at the same clockspeed. The pentium uses advanced systems like SSE and SSE2 to speed things up. There is a significantly different philosofy behind the pentium than the Mac. AMD chips are again differnt. They have cisc input, but they convert it to work with the core of the processor wich is actually a risc core. The conversion seems to be efficient enough to make this interesting structure faster at a lower clockspeed than the pentium. A 1,5 GHz athlon palomino is definitely much faster than a 1,5 GHz Pentium 4. The fastest Pentium/AMD systems are still faster than mac systems, but if you could use a G4 at 2 GHz like a pentium 4 can easily do these days it's definitely going to beat all AMD's and Pentiums available at this moment on all fields.

I was reading about quantum computers the other day. Apparently useable versions are not that far off. Says that just one of them could perform an operation in 1 second that all the computers in the world would not yet have completed even if they'd started processing at the dawn of the known universe, 13 billion years ago. I wonder what it would do on overclocking...? ;)

Ooops, forgot to comment on the thread. 1) I have no idea about Macs other than what I'm told. Which is, great for graphics, naff for everything else. Again, I say that I don't know, so I don't have an opinion. When I bought this PC 8 months ago (-ish) it was the fastest single-CPU box available. Three months later it, er, wasn't. So why fuss over a few MHz here and there? 2) I use Poser4 and a very old version of Cinema 4D for all my modelling. C4D allows you to create all sorts of complex models (if you have the patience) but also has a great tool called "magnet" that allows you to mould any object like a piece of putty, even Poser models. I do post in Photopaint 9. Occasionally I might do some text or regular shape-type-things in Illustrator10, although the failings of Illustrator10 (knock knock Adobe, ever heard of ease of use????) make me not what to even try Photoshop.

Did they take in account that there might be other advanced civilizations in the universe that have already developed quantum computers centuries ago? :)

Another point about graphics cards and AGP: they only matter for realtime preview and manipulation of the objects in your scene. The final render still depends TOTALLY on the processor and for us to get realtime results like we do in renders would probably take a graphics card running at 50ghz or more - you won't see that any time soon. So it is back to the processor and the environment you like to work in. The key also is in letting dual or multi-processor boxes do their thing in the apps we like to use. Bryce still doesn't support dual processors (without lightning) on one box. Vue D'esprit does and I sincerely hope Bryce does soon too. My Vue renders are significantly faster when both processors are being used and suddenly I am using 189 percent of my CPUs on a render. Putting almost 2ghz on a task is very nice (as our Pentium friends already know) but putting two different processors on a task in even better. Multi-threading is where it's at. The wave of the future is not only faster processors, but more of them (and apps built to take advantage of this).

Well, I certainly got a lot of information from my question! Thanks everyone, I always learn from you! It seems to me that the advertising hype of the computer makers is just that, and in the long run, it's the machine one is most comfortable with. I've used MAC since it came out and have so much invested in software that switching to Windows is economically impossible. And, I find Windows very intimidating anyway (as many MAC users do). I run Virtual PC on my single processor G4 (which was near the top of the line last year, -- no longer--but it works very well, so I am not complaining--except it is very loud--the fans are a problem). Virtual PC lets me learn about Windows (and crash it a lot), and try some Windows only programs on it (admittedly, it is slow, but I expected that). One shareware program in particular was interesting. I tried it on an HP laptop running an AMD processor, and it wouldn't display properly. The menus did't show up at all. When I tried the same program on the Virtual PC, it ran just fine. Not sure why that happened. I forgot to mention among the many useful products, Adobe Premier, which is wonderful. Most of the products from Adobe are top notch, and I'd be lost without them. Cleaner 5 is also an excellent product for video compression. Premier comes with a lite version of that program, but it is almost useless compared to the adjustability of the full version. Now, to add some sparkle to the debate, what do you all think of flat panel displays compared to CRTs? I have a friend who has an IMAC G4 with the 15" flat panel. The machine is very cute and attractive, runs fast, but sometimes has trouble restarting the panel. (I've heard from others who use flat panels that they run into this problem too, on Windows and MACs). The display is certainly crisp (I've seen some very fuzzy CRTs in my time), but there is definite "ghosting" when one moves the cursor. The panel can't seem to flip the pixels as fast as a CRT can shoot an electron beam (obviously!), so the result is some degree of latency. I've read that a real graphics professional won't touch a flat panel because they can't get the color definition they can on a CRT. Even at millions of colors, apparently the flat panels haven't got the image quality (I read this on CNET- www.cnet.com). I use a 17" CRT (with 16" viewable, don't you love how the size of a thing is NOT the size of a thing in the computer world?) and don't mind the desktop space usage. So, what are your takes on this issue? Flats and CRTs? Will we see an end to CRTs and will it cost us in terms of quality?

I've always gone with CRT - Diamond Pro - 19". I'd love a 21" but I just can't afford it. My dad has a similar PC set-up with flat panel. The display is very similar for standard Windows, but I do prefer mine for graphics apps (obviously). From what I've seen, the colour control on the CRT is way beyond that on a flat panel.

I would love to switch everything to flat panel, but right now it is really only cost. It used to be color calibration, but now Colorcal (pantone) has a device (the spyder) that calibrates both CRTs and flat panels so that is no longer an issue. Good flat panels are far superior in crispness to CRTs. Apple only makes very good ones for graphics pros. For my main workstation I have dual montiors - a Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 21 and a nice flat Apple Studio 17 display as my 'palette monitor.' Latency in not an issue on the flat (no ghosting) since the Apple ADC cable is all digital there is no conversion of the signal to analog. Someday I might retire the Mitsu 21(room heater) for another cool 17 Studio flat. Right now the hybrid solution works for me.

I'd like an LCD for home because it's easier on the eyes, but when color is important, I'll keep my CRT. LCD color is good, and its improving, but it's big sell right now is only its brightness. Brightness is great, but the bottom line is that a CRT can display more colors than an LCD, and when color accuracy is important I'll stay on the safe side and keep my LaCie. I work in the print design industry by day where color accuracy is the difference between love and hate, and I can too clearly imagine the horror if I were to switch to LCD. Color is absolutely critical to me, and I don't know how I'd ever go back to lesser color accuracy. Not that LCD is all bad, I've seen the displays, and they're good, but CRT still has a wider color gamut.

{there's not any way in hell a G4 can keep up with a P4, or an AMD chip...} er, actually, in tests I have done, a G4 running at the same clock speed as an AMD Athlon works at roughly the same speed in Bryce rendering. However - a G4 can outpace a P3 or P4 running at a higher clock speed. In Photoshop, a G4 can totally outperform a P4 running at about 2 times it's clock speed. The biggest, and most irritating factor for mac users with Bryce, is that Corel didn't optimise the renderer for Altivec processing, as it would leave all P4's and AMD's standing at all their current clock speeds. Also, as has been pointed out - graphics cards don't do a thing for rendering - just OpenGL previews, but nevertheless, there are hardly any greater alternatives open to PC users that are not available on the Mac anyway. :) As for software - no mechanic can fix every aspect of a car with only a wrench or screwdriver, therefore, the more tools the better, they are ALL needed at some time or another! ;)

I have heard that a TFT screen is better than CRT screens. They are not only more compact, they are able to show colors that are invisible on a CRT and I have been told that sometimes that can deliver some surprises when printing. Does anyone know if I'm correct about that? I use a CRT myself (Iyama vision master 17), but that's mainly because CRT's are less expensive than TFT's.

Tuttle, I read about those quantum puters. Theory is that the processing accelerates the speed of light by 300 times and pushes so much that time becomes an issue. I wonder how they are going to solve the problem of windoze crashing before the kernal actually becomes unstable? I agree with risc processor capability and that's why I'm such an AMD fan. Their stock has a future. As for us guys who are on the old Ross Perot computers with the voo doo stick agent, we have to wait for more realistic technology like hyper eeprom hard drives, etc, that run at ram speed. My old clunker is limited by a hard drive and MB bottleneck.

{They are not only more compact, they are able to show colors that are invisible on a CRT and I have been told that sometimes that can deliver some surprises when printing.} I doubt that! - TFT that I have seen do not offer the full colour/brightness qualities of a decent CRT, and far from reliable for colour specific tasks. I would think the 'surprise' factor is stated as a negative, rather than a positive, since I want to know that anything I prepare for printing looks pretty much as is on screen.

I heard the story about the colors from a die-hard photo manipulator, but even they could be wrong. But even some other specialists (At 3DWorld mag for instance) say that TFT's are better than CRT's. But ofcoarse if you configure and calibrate your monitor correctly the print looks just like on the screen.

Aye, Rayraz... I use a color correction software called Colorific, it came with my PCI graphics card. It does exactly what it says it will, makes my printer look identical to my screen image! It's quite powerful, and easily plugs right into Photoshop (which coincidentally I NEVER use for printing!). But the silliness about TFT's vs. CRT's is just that... Your eyes don't operate in 24-bit color, as humans we only see 3 colors and our brains do all the "postwork". I love LCD panels as much as the next geek, but I've never seen one that could touch my Sony 420... If only I could find another one to match it for a dual-monitor setup! As for the Mac vs. PC debate, it's like Affleck says, "The internet has given America a voice and apprently everyone's using that voice to bitch about movies." We are, we create. That is all!

I don't think it matters how fast a CPU is. it's not about megahertz any more(hasn't been for a while now), but about how much work can be accomplished in each clock cycle. AMD and macintosh processors are more efficient than intel, so get more work done per clock cycle. that's why a 1.5ghz AMD XP(1800+) does almost the same amount of work as a P4 2.0 Ghz. on CRT vs LCD, I would say CRT's are better on the wallet and on picture quality. I have two 17" CRTs and they both work great, as comapred to what I've seen for LCDs in stores. as for apps used, I use bryce for scene composition, and for most of my work, I use 3DS MAX for some modelling, and Photoshop mainly for converting from a bitmap to a jpeg(you get no artifacts this way).

big_hoovie: With fast I don't mean the MHz but the Mips, Flops etc. When I talk about the speed of a processor I mean the pure calculating power.