Re: How does it compare?

So triangles aren't as bad as one tutorial made them out to be? It seemed like those areas didn't react as well to being coverted to sculpt mode.

After some of the stuff I've been browsing today, I'm starting to wonder if the thing that separates the Pixars and Dreamworks from the common individual is render power. I went to check out the sight for a render service used by another short clip. And that's where the high cost starts showing up. Is a single Mac Pro not enough to render out finished files, or would I just have to get used to not using the computer for several days straight while it chugs out dozens to hundereds of hours of rendering time? One guy posted a simple 10 second water physics test and said it took 350 hours to render. No wonder the feature films take about 4 years to produce with a whole staff.

The idea of having an outside service do the work is appealing, but their prices help to explain why CGI has always been considered highly expensive. One of their package prices was $10,000! I sometimes wonder if the Mac Pro the general public can buy isn't the same as what the industry uses. I thought I would have some serious horsepower with a nearly $5000 Mac, but it's a bit discouraging to see how huge a task getting the end result is. I hope I'm overreacting and it's not as bad as it sounds.