Maya 4.5 Fundamentals

Because of the relatively high cost of the Maya software, you might have the impression that some sort of super-computing PC is required to run Maya. On the contrary, virtually any modern PC from any discount supermart will suffice, with the exception of the video card, as you'll learn in the next section.

3D Video Cards

Your Maya experience will be much better if you start with one of the better 3D video cards, and eventually you'll probably need to buy a professional 3D video card to use Maya. See the compatibility guide that AliasWavefront keeps updated at its web site, or navigate from Aliaswavefront.com to Maya Support and search for "Qualified Hardware."

In general, 3D Labs, nVidia, and ATI cards targeted to professional users are going to be most compatible. Check with the maker to find out its specific driver modes. If it offers a driver mode specifically designed for Maya, it will almost certainly work well for you. Many offer taskbar mode switching, as shown in Figure I.7. A key feature to look for is "overlay planes"; without it, all the interactive paint functions will be painfully slow. You'll probably need to budget a few hundred dollars at minimum for your video card. See http://www.pricewatch.com to price these pro-level 3D video cards from hundreds of retailers.

A few tips on video cards: Be sure to visit the web page of your card's manufacturer often to find the latest drivers. After installing the drivers, in Windows , you can right-click on the desktop and choose Properties. In the Display Properties dialog box that opens, select the Settings tab, where you set resolution and color depth. Click the Advanced button to display the customization settings for your video card, so you can test that its OpenGL 3D acceleration is functioning correctly. This is also where you find program-specific settings, with a preset for Maya. Test your card at 1024x768 or less at first; some cards have trouble when set to high resolutions . Acceleration is usually designed for a specific color depth: 15/16-bit (32,000 color) or 24/32-bit (16 million color). Most newer cards are 24-bit (also known as Truecolor), but some less expensive cards accelerate only in 15-bit mode.

A Three-Button Mouse

A minor expense is a three-button mouse. Most computers have at most a two- button mouse with a scroll wheel between the buttons . The scroll wheel button can substitute for the middle mouse button, but it may become awkward after the frequent use that Maya makes of this button. Using Maya is much more natural with a three-button mouse, like that shown in in Figure I.8.

Some mouse drivers have caused problems, such as not recognizing the middle mouse button in a mode compatible with Maya, or not recognizing a button release when two mouse buttons are used at the same time. These functions are too fundamental to Maya to work around, so download newer or different drivers for your mouse if this problem happens. If it persists, buy a new mouse.

Tablets

Another recommended hardware purchase is a tablet. All the paint tools in MayaArtisan, 3D Paint, Paint Weights, Paint Effects, and so onare pressure enabled. A tablet gives you much greater control over the results because you can make your paint strokes change along their length based on stylus pressure. Typically, brush size or opacity is made to vary based on stroke pressure, but any variable you see in Maya that appears twice with a (U) and (L) after the parameter name can vary between these upper and lower limits based on stylus pressure. If you're using a mouse, it simply uses the upper value for all parts of all strokesa fairly ham-fisted way to do business! A tablet can cost from $100 to $4,000, but Wacom's Graphire 4x5 and Intuos 6x8 lines are $100 and $300, respectively, and yield excellent results. It's worth the investment if you plan to make use of Maya's paint tools.

Minimum Requirements

Maya 4.5 for Windows officially requires the following:

Pentium II, III, 4, and AMD Althon processors, 600 MHz or faster.

128MB of RAM (256 strongly recommended).

CD-ROM drive.

Hardware-accelerated OpenGL graphics card: mid- to high-performance overlay plane capability recommended.

About 400MB of disk space for a full installation.

Windows 2000 Professional with Service Pack 2 or later, or Windows XP Professional.

Netscape 4 or higher or Internet Explorer 4 or higher to view online documentation.

Optionally, a sound card.

Maya 4.5 for Macintosh requires:

G4 chipset (450, 500, 533, 633, 733, 800, 867, and so forth).

Specified ATI or NVida graphics card.

Three-button USB mouse (such as Contour Design UniMouse).

Mac OS X 10.1.5 or 10.2. Mac OS X must be installed on its own disk partition. Do not install Mac OS X on the same partition as Mac OS 9.

Local Mac OS extended-formatted drives .

Minimum 512MB of memory.

At this writing, requirements for Maya 4.5 for Linux and IRIX have not been announced.

Regardless of the OS you are using, most animators consider it essential to have a scanner, a ZIP drive, a CD burner , Internet access, and possibly a video capture and output device. If your budget at the beginning is tight, you can add these items as needed in your work.

System Recommendations

We've outlined our unofficial recommendations for PC hardware in this section. It's not "blank check" advice; these tips are based on experience and current prices in relation to Maya software.

• Processor Get a dual-processor system if you can afford it. On the PC, Athlons have only recently offered dual-processor motherboards, but Pentium systems have been multiprocessor for years . Dual CPUs make your system much more robust at multitasking, if you want to let Maya render while you browse the web, work in Photoshop, or even start a new session of Maya on the same machine! Maya's batch rendering mode can use the number of processors that you tell it to, so you can let Maya work with one when it's in the background, and set it to use both when you won't be sitting at the computer (nearly doubling rendering power).

• RAM 512MB is typical for most users because the price of RAM remains relatively low. For Macintosh, 512MB is the minimum. If you'll be working with huge models, you might opt to get 1GB or more, if your motherboard supports it. RAM acts as a bottleneck if your needs exceed what you have installed, but doesn't help if you have more than necessary. Simply watch your physical RAM use and if it often runs low, buy more RAM. In Windows, check the Performance tab in Task Manager to view the available physical RAM. Usually it won't go to zero even when you have far too little RAM. Instead, you'll see it drop to 10MB or lower and then vary up and down. Also, you'll notice the hard drive light flashing constantly and a fidgety response from your computer when it is RAM-malnourished. This is because RAM needs will be met by paging memory to the hard drive, a progressively sluggish function.

• Video card Don't use a video gameoriented card; buy a professional CAD and 3D video card. Also, consider the geometry and texture RAM available on the 3D video card. If you use big scenes or make lots of large textures visible in your Maya shaded viewports, you could overrun the video card's available RAM. If you do that, your shaded views will become extremely slow to interact with. If you're certain you will be using large scene files, choose a video card with an abundance of RAM. Typical pro 3D video cards have 64MB or more of fast onboard RAM.

  note

  The "3D acceleration" afforded by a fast 3D video card applies to one function only: interacting with shaded views. All computational functions of Maya including rendering are dependent on the CPU only. If you don't use interactive painting in Maya and prefer to work in wireframe modes, you may need only the most basic video card.

• Network card Although AliasWavefront will still offer the hardware lock, it's advisable to get a network card for your Maya authorization. Because network cards have unique internal ID numbers , they can be used in lieu of a hardware lock, also known as a dongle . The reasons for using the network card include the hardware lock's possible exposure to damage and theft, the $150 charge from AW to get a hardware lock, and the potential for parallel port trouble when the dongle is put between the device (usually a printer) and the parallel port. Most PCs are now equipped with a network card, but you can buy one for $20 or less; any PCI Ethernet 100BaseT card will do. The one benefit of having a hardware lock is that it's easier to use Maya on multiple machines; you can simply take the hardware lock with you wherever you go. Note that AW also offers a "floating" license option for an additional charge when you want to allow the license to work on any one machine in a large LAN.

Where to Weight Your Computer Budget

If your budget is on the low end, prioritize as follows :

1. First, choose the best video card possible. Check this book's web site for more up-to-date advice on card choice; 3D video technology changes rapidly . Consult the officially approved video card list at AliasWavefront's web site. Then check prices and hardware evaluations to narrow your selection.

2. For this book's tutorials, in Windows, 256MB should be enough RAM to create and render all the projects. If you have 128MB of RAM, upgrade to 256. For Macintosh, the 512MB minimum is sufficient.

3. Next, get a tablet. They are relatively inexpensive and enable you to really take off with 3D Paint and Paint Effects.

4. Last, consider replacing your CPU; making a major leap on CPUs usually requires a complete new system. Simply raising a Pentium 3 500MHz to a Pentium 3 700MHz is not going to make a big difference. Older motherboards might not support the fastest clock rates; for example, your old P3-500 motherboard may not allow you to switch it to 1000MHz. Check before you buy a new CPU! In general, it's better to buy a complete new integrated computer than to try to upgrade because of the inevitable hardware incompatibilities when you push new hardware to work with older hardware and firmware.

A luxury item for animators to consider is a second monitor. This usually means replacing the entire 3D video card with a new video card that supports dual monitors, preferably with full 3D acceleration on at least one of the two monitors . Adding a second monitor gives you the ability to move any of Maya's floating palettes and windows to the second screen where they don't obscure your 3D views of the scene and can stay open all the time. Almost every Maya panel or menu can be "torn off" to float. Note that on the Macintosh, Maya's Paint FX feature can cause problems on dual-display systems.