3D Modelling on the SP3

[Matthew Laverick]

Hi everyone,

I am a freelance 3D artist and am looking at getting a surface pro 3 i5 256gb 8gb RAM to use as a secondary development machine.
I was hoping that some of you could shed some light on some similar experiences you may have had.
I've worked in the industry for over 10 years and from previous experience I think the processor and RAM will be adequate as a development machine but I'm a little concerned about the graphics chip.
Has anyone used their SP3 as a 3D modelling machine? What kind of polycount is possible on the SP3? Have you had any issues with frame rate? Have you used the SP3 for animation ?
Any feedback would be great.
Thanks

Matt

 

[Hingle McKringleberry]

Maya, 3D studio Max? What's your platform?

 

[Matthew Laverick]

3D Studio Max and ZBrush

 

[kundas1]

I have seen a video of MS engineers using the SP3 to render all their 3D modelings and designs of the Sp3.. and it looked like it handle it very good and smoothly..

 

[Liam2349]

There have been some other threads on CAD. I believe SolidWorks is supposed to work well.

 

[Gary.M]

I am by no means a professional artist, but I dabble with Zbrush on my i5 4gb and find it can easily handle upwards of 8 million polys. It starts to chug at around 10-11 million for me. With double the memory of mine you should have no problem. Just beware of the fan going supersonic

 

[Matthew Laverick]

I'm not too concerned about rendering from 3ds max as most of this is dobe on the CPU. Nice to know about ZBrush though. That should be more than sufficient. How do you find the touch screen for sculpting? How does it compare to a graphics tablet ?

 

[Gary.M]

I much prefer sculpting on screen as opposed to using a graphics tablet as I seem to have trouble coordinating between a using a tablet and looking up at a screen. While I would like to have hardware buttons on the bezel for ctrl shift, alt and various shortcuts - I have found that by installing the ntrig Wacom drivers (had to for Corel Painter compatibility) the lowest button on my pen acts as alt in Zbrush and I make use of a Razer Orbweaver gaming keypad for all other shortcuts. Having previously used a SP1 with Zbrush (with Wacom technology) I was initially worried about ntrig's lower pressure settings but I honestly prefer it as firstly, I do not notice any lack of pressure in actual use, plus the pen is so much more accurate. The only thing I had to get used to was the apparent lag with the on screen cursor - once you start ignoring where the cursor is and have absolute faith in the fact that when you put pen to screen that is where your brush will be, you'll be fine

 

[kozak79]

I use Maya 2015, Mudbox 2015 and ZBrush on my SP3. It runs great. I am also testing the new Maya Beta and it's actually optimized for the SP3 and runs really well.

 

[Matthew Laverick]

What sort of poly count can you navigate in maya before noticing a frame rate drop?

 

[Maximus3D]

Zbrush runs just fine on the Surface Pro 3 as Zbrush is not that picky about what type of GPU your system has.

But any rendering you do should not be final renderings, those you do at home but quick testrenderings are okay.

Modo runs great and so does Cinema4D, which means that your 3DSMax should run without major issues except for the usual amount of bugs Autodesk introduces in each new release.

/ Magnus

 

[kozak79]

I just made a little video using Maya 2015, Mudbox 2015 and Zbrush 4r6 with some of my models.

I'm using the Surface Pen in Mudbox and Zbrush, they both have pressure support, but sadly, Multi-Touch is not working in any package. The next version of Maya does support multi-touch, and it works great (I can't make a video of that though).