# Motion Graphics and 3D Work...



## ultimus (Feb 11, 2010)

Hey, fellow Mac users.
-  I just ordered a $1600 iMac with the ATI Radeon at default configuration - 4 GBs of RAM, 1 TB storage, etc... just wondering how that'll hold up on some motion graphics and 3d work (with programs like Adobe After Effects, Autodesk 3Ds Max, Photoshop, the usual). I'm just curious on the subject .


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## ElDiabloConCaca (Feb 11, 2010)

Can you be more specific?

I can do "motion graphics" and "3d work" on an old 266MHz G3 machine... what, precisely, do you mean by "hold up?"  What's your pain tolerance?  How fast are you expecting it to be?  What, precisely, do you want to know?

The programs you listed will run "fine" on that machine.  What, exactly, "fine" means is up to anyone to define, and anything produced in Photoshop on the machine you described can also be done on a 10-year-old computer as well: a faster machine does not make the user more skilled at their art, or, what a user can do with a computer depends on how skilled the user is, not how fast the machine is.


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## Qion (Feb 11, 2010)

...I'd like to second what ElDiablo said. A lot of my work is done in the programs you listed, so I'll be happy to contribute to this discussion once you specify what you'd like to know.


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## ultimus (Feb 12, 2010)

Heh, sorry for not being specific earlier. So let me rephrase - I was wondering how fast everything could be done, like in After Effects, how fast it could RAM preview, in 3Ds Max, how fast it could render, and so on and so forth. Like, for example - say, a HD After Effects project, takes 20 minutes to render on a 5 year old Compaq Presario PC. Could the render time be shortened by a good amount on the iMac and still be able to surf the web without seeing the rainbow wheel much? I don't know too much about the Mac OS X's anatomy... Thanx for replying.


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## ElDiabloConCaca (Feb 13, 2010)

Exactly how fast something can render would depend, again, on exactly what you're rendering.  Obviously, a simply sphere with no lighting effects, etc. would render fast, while a complex street scene with multiple lighting sources and NURBS and splines and all those buzz-words would take much longer to render.

I think it's a safe bet to say that the iMac in question would run circles around a 5-year-old Compaq computer in every way conceivable.  I believe it to be possible to render and surf seamlessly and without beachballing if enough RAM is installed in the computer (and the iMacs can take... what... up to 16GB or something?).


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## ultimus (Feb 13, 2010)

Yep... It should be definitely faster than my old Compaq. When it arrives, I'll run a test render on one of my old projects. I would like to see those 3 second renders in action   Thx for all the advice, ElDiablo.


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