vermeer replying
I'd stay with XP. maybe make a try to see how it goes in linux, if you configure it well. But xp eats way less memory. I don't talk about efficiency, maybe Vista has improves on that, but my experience is you need a lot more memory. And xp works quite well, so...I'd have it clear.
There are optimized versions, more eficient than others, blender builds, I mean.I doubt you notice a lot of difference, though.
For people experienced in sculpting tools (vermeer please reply Wink ) is editing 1.5 - 2 milion polygons fine on a 1gb ram?
with 1 GB of ram, Vista already is eating that or almost all that ram, just "to put the logo".Is thought for way larger quantities of RAM, if you ask me.
You say your pc is near to die. That means, old hardware. Old moboard, slow buses, slow memory, surely underpowered card, low cpu, etc, etc.
A friggin' crazy thing to edit a 1,5 million polies with that. To be true: a royal merit for blender, if it could allow you something, with that count, in that machine, and with Vista behind all!!!!
I'd say, for editing a (not necesarily 1,5million, though is usually a good count for game wel detailed models in AAA games) hi res version of a character model, I'd go fo rthe 2 gigs and xp, and still, u need clever techniques. The machines used for this things are way way more powerful and modern.That's what many ppl don't know when they run to buy zbrush or mudbox.
Blender has traditionally make a good deal with loads of polies. I'd say, Silo is probably better in this, but is a fast very impression, so don't count on it.
The key advice:
a tirck It's used since ye old Amorphium 1, which I had and have: You can mask areas, and invert masks, etc, in many of these softwares, so that you just subdivide areas that you painted, as you there you will need loads of detail...while others can stay at even mid polygon count. This kills amazingly the overkill that is modelling such a brute mesh. halving or way more, the polygon count.
ALso, there are softwares that allow making only calculations in the area being worked on,and when zoom aout, global calculus is done, or put in wireframe what is not area of interest, etc.
Last time I checked in blender's stuff, it was allready achived, that feature. Dunno if was a build, or if was a release. But very recent, anyway. Also you have retopo blender tool, allowing to paint over a low res mesh over the hi res mesh, similar to topology brush of Silo, the first one to grab more fame in this technique.
I used to model " hi res " dunno if back in 1997 , of several thousands of tris, with Amorphium 1, witha pentium of 32 mb de ram, and later 64, dunno if with win95 or 98 SE. go guess. It was jumpy but could do...
I mean: depends a lot on how much the software eats..
Also...You'r not making a model for a AAA: think very well if you need all that friggin quantity of tris everywhere...probably not...
