The Ultimate Guide to Buying a Computer for Blender

Posted on 21. Sep, 2010 by Andrew Price in Articles

Ever since I started Blender Guru I’ve had countless emails from people asking me for advice on what PC they should buy. We’ve all bought PC lemons in the past, so I can see why this would be a common question.

Now before we move on, let me start by saying that your PC is only as good as your skill. If you suck at Blender and buy $4000 computer, you will still suck. The only way to improve your work is through practice, practice and oh yeah, practice.

But now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s talk about getting one a PC specifically built for Blender…

[Click here to read this post in Persian]

Photo by fosk

Everyone has their own preferences in terms of usablity and stability, but for me the winner is Linux. In the past I’ve used blender on both Windows and Linux, and I found that Linux crashes less, handles memory better and generally runs more smoothly than a windows operating system.

However… what most people won’t tell you is that Ubuntu can be an absolute pain in the ass to set up.

If you come from a windows background (like me) then expect to be punching holes in the wall when you find out that you need to type complex commands in the terminal just to connect to a wired LAN. It really is like entering another world. Everything is done differently and tasks that would usually take 2 seconds in Windows to setup could take hours in Linux, if you don’t know what you are doing (like me). A technical savvy person may say that Linux is a piece of cake, but to me it was an absolute nightmare. Go figure.

So for that reason I actually recommend Windows 7. It’s fast, easy to use and comes with 99% less headaches than Linux.

Photo by Friedemann Wulff-Woesten

The faster your CPU, the faster your render times. This is the meat and bones of your PC and will play the greatest influence on how quickly your render will finish.

I recommend choosing a CPU with multiple cores, as this will allow blender to render more tiles simultaniously. My current CPU has 4 cores, which means blender will render 4 tiles simultaneously. This really pays off in render times.

Cores = Like having multiple CPUs and only paying for one.

Other than that there’s really no secret to choosing a CPU. Buy the fastest one that you can afford!

Photo by Heather Greene

Second on my priority list is RAM. Whilst it won’t effect your render times, RAM will set the limit on how “epic” your scene can be. Now I say the word “epic” loosely here, but really I’m talking about memory usage limits. Everytime you use a large image texture or bake a high resolution simulation you use up more RAM. When you run out or RAM, blender crashes.

Thanks for reminding me to purchase more RAM!

The more RAM you have, the more you can push your scene to it’s extremes. If you had only 2GB of RAM and created a fluid simulation, you may only be able to use a domain resolution level of 100 before blender crashed. But if you upgraded to 16GB you may be able to reach 800.

And who knows, in the future you may even reach over 9000!

If you’re a simulation junkie then I recommend splashing out and buying lots of RAM.

Photo by Fred.org

A common misconception by beginners is that you need a super duper awesome graphics card to use blender. This is false.

A good graphics card will only help you when you are navigating around the 3d viewport. It will not effect your render times! For the past 7 years I’ve used a graphics card that was at least a year older than the current leading card (I’m cheap), and my work has never suffered from it.

Unless you plan to do lots of high poly sculpting in the future, then an expensive graphics card is a waste of money.

At least as far as Blender is concerned. Crysis however...

Now when it comes to choosing a GFX card, I always recommend Nvidia. In the past many blender users (including me) have had issues with ATI cards, wherein the menu flickers or some other glitch makes itself known. So for that reason I always recommend other blender users purchase Nvidia.

But! Having said that my last laptop had an ATI card and had no issues whatsoever, so maybe those glitchy days are over? Nope! According to the comments below, the ATI issues are still very much alive. Stick with Nvidia people! :P

Side note: If you follow 3d news, you may have heard about a new, faster method for rendering that uses your GPU instead of the CPU. Unfortunately, this technology is not yet available for Blender, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s developed soon. In the meantime use an external renderer like SmallLuxGPU or Octane if you would like to take advantage of GPU rendering.

Photo by Adamcha

If you’re going to be doing lots of rendering on your PC then I’d recommend finding a PC with adaquet cooling.

My last PC suffered permanent internal damage when rendering my New York Earthquake animation, because I only used a standard PC case.  As a result, it overheated and now refuses to turn on.

But hey, at least it didn't catch fire.

Standard cases are suited more for air conditioned office environments, not prolonged rendering sessions in your stuffy bedroom. Take note :)

I’d recommend choosing a gaming case as these generally have better cooling than standard cases.

Photo by Stuart Bryant

In terms of speed within blender, you aren’t going to see any noticeable difference by purchasing a faster hard drive. So let’s focus on stability instead…

The last thing you want is for your hard drive to fail, right? Well unfortunately hard drive failure is a sad fact of life so the best thing you can do is be prepared and create a backup.

And what’s the easiest way to do that you ask? Set up a RAID array.

A RAID array. It’s a system configuration that uses two physical hard drives to mirror each other, so that if one fails you always have a backup. All you need to do is purchase two identical hard drives and set it up in the BIOS settings. I highly recommend that you do this before the inevitable happens! ;)

Since so many people have asked what my specific PC specs are, I’ve created this short video revealing exactly what hardware I use. Check it!

My specs are:

OS: Windows 7 64 BitCPU: Intel i7 950 3.06GhzRAM: 12GB Kingston 2000Mhz DDR3GFX Card: Gigabyte Nvidia GTX 470 1280MBHDD: 2 x 1TB Western Digital Sata 3 (RAID 1 array)Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-X58ACase: Antec ‘Nine Hundred’ 750WMonitor: 21? Benq WidescreenKeyboard: Logitech G15Mouse: Microsoft basic optical mouse

If you’re still unsure PC components to purchase, then check out the Blender Render Benchmark. This is a website dedicated to benchmarking PCs with Blender, showing you exactly what rigs give the fastest render times. In fact, I probably could have just started the post with this website and saved myself the trouble of writing it. Oh well :P

Here’s the site again: Blender Render Benchmark – Bookmark it.

Thanks for reading! :) If you enjoyed this post you might also enjoy 5 Worthwhile Purchases for 3d Artists.

Tags: guide, hardware

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Two Simple But Helpful Changes in Blender 2.5

Here are two helpful changes the Blender developers have made to Blender 2.5.

We can now remove presets for the Render Dimensions:

And, we can remove Cloth presets:

Also, the "File Exists" popup (you know the one that was easy to miss?) is no longer a part of the workflow. When saving a new file, if the typed filename matches an existing file in the same folder the filename field is tinted red. The tooltip for the field informs you of the meaning of the red tinting. If you save under these conditions, the existing file is simply overwritten.

Since I'm keeping a close watch for these types of changes, I'll be sure to do a quick post to let you know when interesting things develop.

Bye!

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News: Watch the 2010 Blender Conference via Live Streaming

Check out the 2010 Blender Conference via live streaming!

Hopefully, there will be videos made available for the earlier presentations and the presentations given in other rooms.

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News: Blender 2.55 Beta is available for download!

Blender 2.55 Beta is about to be officially released from the Blender Foundation! Release notes will be available at the time of the official release.

You can download it, here...

technorati tags: Blender3D, 3D, graphics, Blender tutorials

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News: Status of the BlenderNewbies Blender 2.5 Training DVD's

I expect the DVD (actually it's 2 DVD's) to be completed by the end of the month (October). It's been a long and bumpy road, but I can finally see light at the end of the tunnel.

The interesting thing is that there will be far more tutorials on the DVD's than there are on the blogsite (and that took me four years to accumulate!).

If you're interested in purchasing the DVD's, be sure to take advantage of the pre-order discount.

Thanks for your patience!

Kernon

technorati tags: Blender3D, 3D, graphics, Blender tutorials

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Blender 2.55 Tip: Hiding the Console Window

There's a very simple, but nice new feature in Blender 2.55 that allows you to hide the Console window that appears when Blender first loads (for Windows users). Yay! It still loads, but at least you can toggle it off, now.

The Console Window is a great tool for debugging Blender and also seeing any error messages that get spit out from different functions. But, if you don't need it, it tends to get in the way.

Here's how to control it:

technorati tags: Blender3D, 3D, graphics, Blender tutorials

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Blender 2.5 Tip: How to Setup Keymaps to Change Transform Manipulator Modes

This time-saving tip will allow you to setup hotkeys to change the mode of the Transform Manipulator (translate, rotate, scale).

Here's how:

This is the Transform Manipulator when enabled.

These are the button controls for enabling the manipulator and changing its mode. They're located on the Header Bar of the 3D View window.

Before setting up new hotkeys, be sure to start a New scene to load your Blender startup file. This is important because if you want to save these changes as new default settings, you'll want to save them to your startup file.

Now, load the User Preferences dialog from the File menu.

Go to the Input tab.

Locate and open the 3D View, 3D View (Global) section.

Click the Edit button for the 3D View section.

Note that the button's caption changes to Restore. You can use this to restore the factory default keymaps.

Now, scroll down to the bottom of this section until you see the Add New button. Click it to add a new keymap panel.

Open the panel to access its interface.

In the field highlighted, type view3d.enable_manipulator. This is the name of the operator that will get called when the assigned input (keystroke, mouse click, etc.) is performed.

In order to avoid conflicts with existing hotkeys, I decided to create a new modifier key (common modifier keys are Ctrl, Shift, Alt, etc.). Blender can create a modifier key from any regular key that you specify. So, let's setup the new modifier key by clicking the blank button at the right side of the interface.

After clicking the button, it's caption reads "Press a key".

Simply press a key to have it assigned as the modifier key for this particular keymap. I pressed the ESC-key, but you can assign this to a key of your choice.

Now, do the same with the button shown below. This is where you assign the main part of the keystroke.

I chose to assign this to the Number 1 key. At this point, the full keystroke is ESC-1.

Now we just need to assign the desired mode of the manipulator. I've selected the Translate mode to be assigned to the ESC-1 keystroke. That's it! You can immediately test this by going to the 3d view. The new keymap will work in both the Object and Edit modes.
Note that this won't enable the manipulator if it's disabled, so make sure it's already enabled (Ctrl-Spacebar).

Now do the same for the remaining two modes. Start by pressing the Add New button located just below the keymap panel just completed.

Repeat the process for the Rotate and Scale modes.

Welcome to new efficiency bliss! If you like your new setup, be sure to save it to your startup blend file by clicking the Save As Default button at the bottom of the Preferences dialog (or you can press Ctrl-U).

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News: Blender 2.5 DVD status

Well, I've missed my goal and I'm not happy about it. Technical difficulties. But, development continues and the dvd's will be completed much sooner than later.

Here's an update on the way the content is structured.

I really appreciate everyone's patience. Thank you.

Please consider pre-ordering as it does help, thanks.

Kernon

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News: Download Blender Conference 2010 Resources (Papers, Presentations, Videos)

This is the list of confirmed speakers and presenters on the 2010 Blender Conference. If a title has a link, it provides a link to the paper, a download or website of speaker.

Some of the resources are not available, yet. But, they seem to be getting added as they become available.

Download the resources...

technorati tags: Blender3D, 3D, graphics, Blender tutorials

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My Current Blender Defaults and Theme

This is the current setup and theme that I'm using with Blender 2.54. Only the default screen layout is themed. I tend to theme things as needed, so it's just a start.

I like the increased contrast and, for me, it's much easier to scan through the properties to find what I need.

To check it out, simply load the bn254_startup.blend file. You can tweak the settings as desired, and then press Ctrl-U to make the setup your new defaults.

Download the blend file.

EDIT: Previous file was an older version. Replaced with latest version that matches the screenshot.

technorati tags: Blender3D, 3D, graphics, Blender tutorials

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News: Blender 2.55 Beta Officially Released (with Bug Fix List)

Well, it's been officially released, and there's quite a long Bug Fix list included.

Official Blender 2.55 Beta Release...
Bug Fix List...

technorati tags: Blender3D, 3D, graphics, Blender tutorials

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So You Want to be a Blender Developer, But Where Do You Start?

First of all, I can't give you any first-hand advice on how to start down the road to being a Blender developer. I think it's more important to get that advice directly from the source.

Campbell Barton (one of the lead Blender developers, aka ideasman42) has provided a really nice overview of how you might approach this goal. Being self-taught, his advice is very practical and efficient.

This is one of the great things about Blender being Open Source Software, you can get involved and make some kind of difference in so many ways.

Check out the forum thread at blenderartists.org.

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