Hello everyone,

I'm a new user, and I have been introduced to the wonderful world of Houdini after taking a procedural modeling and animation course. I Love Houdini!, But my current computer blows, so I am in the market for a new one.

I want to be mobile so a laptop is choice, and I was wondering if anyone could help me with some detailed recommendations. I was looking into buying a Mac but I don't know what to get..

Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks,
.:Kenny:.

Hi Kenny,

I've been using for some time now H10 on MSI GX 620, both on Win and on Linux - runs fine on both systems, either in single or in multi-monitor setup.
Seems to be running smoother on Ubuntu than on Vista, but this may be just my subjective feeling.

Cheers,
Greg

Houdini 10 runs on my mac book pro like a dream

r

Thanks guys,

Could you please post the specs of your Macbook Pro, circusmonkey? If I were to get one, I would like to know which one Houdini works well on.

.:Kenny:.

I can also recommend the MacBookPro.
I work professionally with it and it is very reliable.

My MBP's stats are:

MacBookPro4,1
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.5 GHz
RAM: 4 GB
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT
VRAM: 512 MB
Color-LCD @ 1920x1200 (32bit)
HDD 250 GB

I can work 3d apps from 3 to 4 hours. If you just read or work office apps its even longer naturally. If you buy one now you should get a GeForce 9.xx series GPU if I am not mistaken.

Get the bigger screen if you have some spare money it really helps. Also you don't need the fastest CPU. one or two options below max will do. RAM go for 4 GB.
HDD I took the 250 GB option but now standard is 300 GB I believe, so just stick with that.



Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Andre

That helps a lot Andre, thank you very much for your help! So your Macbook Pro supports OpenGL as well? Do you run Ubuntu on it also?

Thanks,
.:Kenny:.

I also run Houdini HD on my 1,5 year old MacBook Pro without any problems…any newer MBP supports OpenGL btw.! And I ran Houdini on Ubuntu without any problems before the OSX version was released! So go for it! :wink:

Up until now I have only been running Ubuntu 8.04 and 8.10 via Parallels/VMWare/VirtualBox and it works reasonably well.

I couldn't get Houdini to run however on these virtualized systems. Anything that requires heavy use of 3D drivers will be a problem on Linux based guest OSes. I can't say how Linux will perform if it is the primary system.

OpenGL is supported yes. And Apple's nVidia drivers aren't bad as some may claim. There is a slight speed difference if you compare the same GPU hardware to Windows, with Windows being a bit faster but it's not big.
You can also install nVidia Cg if thats your thing. I haven't been doing much with it however so that's all I can say about it.

Also note that Mac OS X since Leopard I believe is now a fully POSIX compliant system which gives you wealth of *nix/Linux based ports that run very well. This was the selling argument number one for me since at the time I wanted to switch to Linux first. You can get quite deep into the system through the Darwin (command line) layer alone. There's a lot of scripting languages pre-installed (python, ruby, etc.) and if you want to get serious learning to program ObjC and C on the Mac is not difficult.

Personally I feel that OSX gives me the perfect balance between command line attendance if I want to and GUI comfort if I just need to get work done.

Of course these are just my experiences since I made the switch about a year ago so take these statements with a grain of salt please.

Cheers,

Andre

Houdini runs great on OS X. If you've got the time, watch the Apple Store refurbished section. Yesterday, there were some of the previous generation unibody MacBook Pros going for around $1300, but they go fast.