I am preparing to buy one of the new Mac pro 8-cores with "nehalem" processors -  2 x 2.66 - with  the ATI Radeon 4870 graphics card. I am doing work with big renders in vue then post production on large files in photoshop (for bill board sized artwork). Render times on my old G5 have been prohibitive, including times for saving files.

Does anyone know if this is a good machine for Vue infinite (I am a Mac user and don't want to swop to PC). And will I get better performance if I run Bootcamp/Vista business with a windows version of vue infinite?

I have also asked this question on the Mac forum but I'm looking for feedback specifically on Vue issues. Any advice gratefully received.

Best

John

Hi,

Check out my sig and you will see that I too am working on a Mac Pro platform. I use Poser Pro, Vue 7 Infinite and Photoshop CS4 "Extended" in my work flow. All of the current versions run just fine and very well on my Mac Pro. There are a few known issues with Vue 7 that have been worked out mostly that were Mac related, so be sure to download the latest service update for Vue 7 when you buy it. Also, there is still an import issue related to relative paths and Poser Pro along with a couple of issues involving dynamic hair and dynamic cloths for import. Otherwise, it works just fine and they seem to try and update issues on a decent basis.

You said "And will I get better performance if I run Bootcamp/Vista business with a windows version of vue infinite?"

Not that I know of, but some programs have a slightly better speed on the Windows platform. For example, Cinema 4D is a little better on Windows compared to the Mac version. However, it's not like it is night and day and the very slight increase is not worth the hassle to me to have to save my files to an external drive and re-boot back and forth to and from OS X and Windows. It's not like one is junk or else they would never hear the end of it. It's up to you, but I don't duel-boot for the hassle reasons.

Keep in mind, a LOT of memory is needed. Even though Vue is still a 32bit app, I find it helps a LOT in other areas and of course Photoshop CS4 does have a 64bit version. When doing the type of work we do for 3D art, I would start at 8GB and prefer 10-16GB range. It makes a noticable difference in my work having the memory. Buy a bigger hard drive and get the cheapest one on the Mac Pro, I did and installing a new drive is a piece of cake. Get "SuperDuper" to make a clone of the boot drive and copy from the small drive to the large one in drive bay #2, then swap them and format the small one to use for storage if you want.

BTW, I also HIGHLY recommend a Drobo for your data too, it's great to have the piece of mind.

Hope that helps.

 jeff i haven't noticed any relative path issues with poser imports since the latest vue 7 on my mac
love esther

Quote -  jeff i haven't noticed any relative path issues with poser imports since the latest vue 7 on my mac
love esther

I have been having much success there too as long as I setup my pose scene inside Poser Pro and save as a ".pz3" then import into Vue 7. However, I have been in talks with them over at e-on and they say the issues are caused by relative paths and Poser but are still working on fixing this with Smith Micro. It seems like some of those issues have been resolved, at least part of them. I'm sure a bug fix will appear in their patch area when they are convinced it is worked out.

Happy rendering.