what hardware requirements for a laptop to work on 3d projects?

If affordability is key, I operate Maya on 512MB of ram and the GeForce 4 MX (the one that's built into the motherboard vs. being a separate card you can purchase). It gets the job done so everything's at least functional but it doesn't have the DirectX 9.0c-era stuff like when pixel shading got big, and for hardware rendering and such it appears to be just the ground floor.

I run Maya and Lightwave on a 3-year-old Toshiba Sattellite 17-inch laptop with a 3 gigahertz processor, 2 gigs of RAM, and a GeForce video card. Runs fine so far, but the scenes I work on are pretty light in terms of geometry.

I think the answer to this question in regards to 3d is almost always "as much as you can afford."

I believe that gfx cards are somewhat limited on laptops, although Nvidia does make a Quadro notebook version. I'd say 2GB of RAM at the minimum and get as much video RAM as you can find.

Hi there,
Just a small question. Hope this is the right forum.
I am about to buy a laptop but have difficulties desciding which one. I want to be able to use maya and 3ds max on it because I want to practise 3d animation more. I use flash and photoshop a lot.
I have been told that I should go for at least 1 GB of RAM and have a powerful graphic card as well. Nvidia GE force or ATi. Most of the laptops I see in the shops use Nvidia GeForce Go 7200 but on the maya website they say that Nvidia Quatro are better. Can anyone please comment?
thanks very much,
Boris

I would recommend at least 2GB of RAM, 3GB would be the best. The CPU should be a dual-core processor and the video card(since you want to use maya) should be a Quadro or a GeForce 7 series video card with at least 256MB of RAM. Just my own personal opinion but I find that if your trying to make a laptop mirror a desktop workstation that the laptop becomes ridiculously more expensive for less power.

Just my own personal opinion but I find that if your trying to make a laptop mirror a desktop workstation that the laptop becomes ridiculously more expensive for less power.

Yeah, but it impresses the hell outta people on an airplane when you're working on you shot at 30,000 feet... :D

dont forget to look at the software packages and their required and recommended hardware.

Does anyone know if Maya runs on windows vista? I had a look on their side and it said that it hadn't been tested yet.

Some people have gotten it work on Vista but Autodesk hasn't officially announced support for Vista since its OpenGL (Used by Maya) isn't really all that good yet.

as for 10 second club. last i saw from them they had an update up about how they got hacked or something. So they took everything down to add security and make the place better. Hasnt been back since...

I have a 17" monitor on my laptop and I still end up moving things around a lot in Maya. The more screen real estate you have, the better.

Among most of the non-super-bleeding-edge-high-tech monitors, I think the difference between 15 and 17 is a short-term sacrifice in cost that has long-term benefits in your ability to engage with your work.

Oh, and on 1024x768 I can see everything I need to (though I trust anyone who says more screen would only help).

More screen would only help. :D

Aloha,
the Ape

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