L'Ancien Regime

Speaking of retopo and 3d Coat, I just stumbled on this; There's hope!

https://gumroad.com/bartoszstyperek https://bartoszstyperek.wordpress.com/2017/07/29/hair-tool-blender-addon/

Good work digman...thanks for sharing..

Actually there's lots of custom water blocks for Threadripper that sell for $75 or so. The only problem is that's just the waterblock. The entire system will hit you for $800 at least. And it's high maintenance and so risky and also outside my competency. If nothing else works I might be driven to such a solution but for now the Corsair is zero maintenance; comes pre filled and sealed and ready to go. https://www.singularitycomputers.com/shop/watercooling/protium-d5-reservoir-combo-150mm-polished-acrylic/ $217 USD just for a resevoir with built in pump.. In one sense it's a lot of money but in another perspective, how much will annual maintenance on a Porsche Targa cost you? I've heard $6500 but I don't know. I know a guy who had a black one with glove leather interior and you wouldn't believe the girlfriends he effortlessly got with that thing; little rich girls that were 10's. So maybe it's worth it. Also since this is ostensibly a thread on the Radeon VII and we've veered off onto cooling components, I was looking at the rear plate of the Radeon VII and it appears that this is a setup for cooling its GPU. I suspect but I don't know. Sure looks like that's for mounting brackets but there's no smooth GPU heat sink to press the cold plate to with layered heat paste. I'm a bit puzzled...

Enermax 1 was a disaster and looks like Enermax II is shaping up as a disaster too judging from the videos and NewEgg and Amazon reviews. One Enermax 2 review showed a tech opening up the pump and the water block and there was already goop in the heat dissipation vanes in the copper water block plugging things up with signs of rubber washers ready to fail in spots. You'd be lucky to just have it die on you and not flood your motherboard. here's that review; This corsair platinum block will work fine for 3 years and by then Corsair will have something better. Corsair is zero maintenance and the least likely to fail or leak Trust me I've really researched this and it wasn't pleasant. The problem with big air coolers is that they can block off your vital PCIE slots and make doing anything with your RAM a pain. And I'm going to want all those PCIE slots; I'll be getting a used Teradici 2 card for remote graphics over the internet at 60fps and maybe a second Radeon VII down the line. And like I said this is more than a one computer project. I want everything stowed away on a 42u server rack, including the UPS and later a hot swappable hard drive data server with a cheap CPU and mobo running it. And there'll be Cisco switches and routers in the mix for networking studies. A desktop rig just isn't going to do it for me. Not my fantasy. If I've made a mistake, there goes $160. Whooee. I was looking at tickets for the Roxy Music concert in Toronto next summer and they're $360 a seat. That's $360 for sitting in a concert for 2 hours. Got to keep things in proportion here. Damn I'd like to go though...I bet there'll be some good looking women there... So far I'm actually under budget. I calculated $6000 and I'm only at $5400 Cdn .

Which corsair H115i was it though? There's H115i v1, H115i v2, H115i Professional and H115i PLATINUM Platinums have a totally different cold plate than those first three and yes it does completely cover the Threadripper My H100i Platinum has the same cold plate but has a 240mm radiator instead of a 280mm radiator. The Corsair H115i and H100i PLATINUM were released in November 2018. H115i Pro H115i Platinum

Just about ready to start building this...just waiting for the heat paste though it's already pre applied on that Corsair H100i Platinum.

Personally I will never bother Andrew on this account; Zbrush has very deep pockets and I was at their Siggraph booth listening in on private conversations there with a top Zbrush manager in the year when Zremesher was first unveiled and the word was that they had hired 21 mathematicians with masters or PhD degrees to create it. I'm sure Zremesher v3 has had some very powerful thinkers toiling on all the topology problems inherent in this tool's development to this new level. It's unfair to expect Andrew to somehow equal this feat given his very lean operation. To me it's still a marvel that he could take a white paper and 5 weeks later create the first functional auto retopology tool in 3d graphics all by himself when so many other bigger operations didn't have the scope of imagination to do it themselves. What a guy.

SideFX has unveiled Houdini 17.5, the next major update to its 3D animation and effects software. The release, which is due to ship later this month, introduces the Procedural Dependency Graph (PDG), described by SideFX as a potentially industry-changing new technology. PDG, also due to become available in a new standalone application, PilotPDG, enables users to specify the dependencies between different parts of a project’s task graph, making it possible to do anything from running simulations and renders in parallel to ‘assetizing’ entire sections of a studio’s pipeline. SideFX also expects PDG to form the basis of new machine learning workflows within Houdini. Other new features in Houdini 17.5 include distributed fluid simulation, a high-quality new GPU-accelerated viewport smoke shader, and updates to the Vellum multiphysics solver. Key features in Houdini 17.5: the new Procedural Dependency Graph Although there are a lot of changes to the existing simulation toolsets and viewport display – about which, more later – the major feature of Houdini 17.5 is undoubtedly the Project Dependency Graph. In development for over three years, the new PDG API and an accompanying set of TOP (Task OPerator) nodes enable users to explicitly specify the dependencies between different parts of a project. For example, when calculating a simulation, each frame depends on the previous frame. When rendering, frames may be processed in any order, so long as the state of the simulation has been calculated. In a traditional workflow, simulation and rendering would be done sequentially. With the PDG and TOPs, the two can be done in parallel, with each frame beginning to render as soon as the corresponding part of the simulation has completed, greatly reducing processing time. more; http://www.cgchannel.com/2019/03/sidefx-unveils-houdini-17-5/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+cgchannel%2FnHpU+(CG+Channel+-+Entertainment+Production+Art)

Teya Constructor has some very strange stuff in it. The guy that's making it has some very original ideas and his program has a unique approach. I admire that a lot. For example, his take on drawing in 3D is enough to sell me on it; I'll be buying it as soon as my new rig is up and running.

Yesss...forget gaming...this is a creator's monster GPU. "This card is the deal of the century" Wendell, Level 1 Looks to me like it's still available at the Radeon store... (that's in Canadian pesos...it's still $699 USD)

Finally reviews that examine the Radeon VII and compare it to the RTX 2080TI and the Radeon VII is winning.

I actually handled one at one of Annex Pro's events in a night club around a year and a half ago. It was pretty heavy. And very expensive. You would be better off doing this; 1. Buy a used Teradici 2 card off of eBay. 2. Install it on your home workstation PCIE slot. 3. Buy an IPAD Pro 12.9". $999.00 USD. This will give you a pencil or scribe that rivals the Wacom pen and a Retina screen that is basically 4k. It's easy to pack with you wherever you go, super lightweight and just the right size. 4. Download the Teradici app for iOS. http://www.teradici.com/web-help/pcoip_mobile_client/ios_tablets/1.5.1/release_notes/ 5. Log into your home computer from any decent internet connection world wide. Now you can turn on your computer, literally power it up and shut it down from anywhere on earth. Once logged into your computer your iPad Pro will be a virtual client with all the functionality of your home workstation. They're saying 60fps " Teradici Tera2220 PCoIP Host Card • Specs: 2.713 x 6.8 in.; requires single PCIe slot (x1, x4, x8 or x16); maximum resolution: two displays at 1920 x 1200 at 60Hz; frame rate: 60fps; includes 128MB memory; consumes 13 watts There are other alternatives including a monitor on a stand that contains a Teradici Zero Client in it. https://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-t310-AIO-TERA-2321-PCoIP-Zero-Client-512MB-512-MB-DDR3-SDRAM-J2N80AT/152769462418?epid=691469029&hash=item2391c50092:g:wvsAAOSwGwlZ-gX8 You could use all your programs, Maya 3D Coat Zbrush, Houdini on your iPad or any cheap laptop or even that zero client. This is the technology that hundreds of thousands of engineers use worldwide for Catia and Siemens NX. The movie industry, (ILM) uses this extensively as well. https://www.digitalengineering247.com/article/access-your-workstation-from-anywhere/

I didn't want to create a separate thread for it but since this is here I suppose we could also note that Polybrush3 has come out and it's been renamed Teya Conceptor. http://www.cgchannel.com/2018/12/polybrush-3-renamed-teya-conceptor-now-in-free-beta/

Gaea looks very nice but now there's World Creator with real time GPU landscape generator. This is the first time I've heard of it and the results look really impressive. https://www.world-creator.com/

For those who don't want to spend hours and hours watching tedious demos, here it is in under 3 minutes A longer harsher assessment; haha 2:40 min mark; Folders. "A lot of people coming from 3D Coat already have something like that.."

Not worth a separate thread but while we're on the topic of new releases, Houdini 17.5 gets released on Thursday evening in Montreal. I'm hearing talk about USD improvements and perhaps GPU rendering for Mantra...if not 17.5 then 18.0 https://graphics.pixar.com/usd/docs/Introduction-to-USD.html And I keep hearing about something called Project Solaris; " Project Solaris is focused on Lighting/Rendering/Assembly + GPU support was top-wish last years), there is nearly zero chance it will support AMD chips. Same thing as every GPU renderer out there. I'm MacBook houdinist myself, so I feel your pain, but don't have hopes, buddy."

And that is why I love 3D Coat. Mudbox has a simple interface, but it doesn't even lay a glove on 3D Coat for functionality. Zbrush has only one thing I want; Zremesher. That's awesome. Other than that, forget about it. "would snap me out of creative mode". You're very polite. How about "would throw me into a murderous purple faced rage for hours"?

Exactly. That's the sticking point for me right there. I can't stand all the nonsense that goes with that.

Actually I distinctly remember it wasn't you. And it will be interesting to see if the make any changes to the UI. I just don't like Zbrush UI.

I was tempted to post about this several days ago but in the past I've had the moral committee scream at me for being so rude as to post about Zbrush on Andrew's forum. Of course this is nonsense but nevertheless... http://www.cgchannel.com/2019/02/pixologic-teases-zbrush-2019/ http://docs.pixologic.com/user-guide/3d-modeling/topology/zremesher/ I looked over the 2019 release and the most interesting thing to me was the extensive amount of work they've done to upgrade Remesher, since after all it was Andrew who offered the first remeshing for scupting in 3D in history. The problems they struggle to solve are apparently the same ones Andrew has struggled with.

Ouch. What exactly broke and how?

The other benefit of the M2 NVME is less wires and cables to manage. It's a cleaner build.

So I just bought the Samsung 970 EVO Plus 1TB from NewEgg. https://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=SAMSUNG+970+EVO+PLUS+M.2+2280+1TB&N=-1&isNodeId=1 It came to $349 Cdn from NewEgg and free postage. That was almost a $50 saving from the price at Amazon.ca Some facts I picked up on my shopping forays for this item; 1. The larger the storage capacity of an M2 device, the longer it lasts. A 1TB M2 lasts twice as long as a 500MB M2 drive. 2. Samsung EVO Plus > Samsung EVO Pro. The Plus is the more recent model with superior stats. Bascially it's faster.

DM 2.0 is in Alpha now;