Mailing List AE-List@media-motion.tv — Message #63684
From: Marie T <AE-List@media-motion.tv>
Subject: Re: [AE] Jump to PCland
Date: Thu, 1 Feb 2018 22:13:29 -0500
To: After Effects Mail List <AE-List@media-motion.tv>
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Your responses have been incredibly helpful! I appreciate everyone's suggestions and advice, as finding a quality PC laptop has been a daunting task. 


Teddy Gage–you asked about the class itself. It is called Environmental Animation. Instead of strictly building scenes in the literal sense, it is about experimenting with code, exporting data between Max/AE, utilizing forces/particle systems, etc. My classmates come from all different backgrounds (some are city-planners, game designers, and motion graphic designers, like me). 

I'm a working professional and have done a lot of 2D animation and video. I’m enjoying this class for the experimentation, 3D integration, and cross-pollination of programs.


Thanks again for your advice.


Cheers,


Marie V. Thresher

Animator, Published Illustrator, & Interactive Designer

www.marievthresher.com




On Mon, Jan 29, 2018 at 11:04 AM, Evan Fotis Georgoulakis <AE-List@media-motion.tv> wrote:

The Surface pro and Books are realy nice for being on the go and working with projects where all assets are stored internally only (not on external drives).
Why?
Because they lack Thunderbolt 3 ports or any TB port for that matter.
Only USB3 port(s), which share its bandwidth along peripherals, drives mouse etc, with slow transfer rates.

If a tablet hybrid is needed, I would suggest the latest HP ZBOOK x2 14" powerhouse.

For a laptop the latest Dell XPS 15 laptops announced at CES, really light and small for 15.6" and with two TB3 ports & nvidia GPUS.


On 29-Jan-18 14:16, Mr. Eric D. Kirk wrote:
You might look also at the high end Surface Pros.  The Surface Pro 4 I think goes up to an i7 processor.  I've had the Surface Pro 3 for about 4 years and it has After Effects loaded and performs pretty decent and that's with an i3.

The only drawback at least on this one is check the graphics support.  I'm unable to take advantage of GPU and therefor can't use plugins like Mettle's ShapeShifer, FFP, etc. (a couple of my favorites).  That may be resolved in the Pro 4 series though.

Eric

On Mon, Jan 29, 2018 at 2:54 AM, Jim Tierney <AE-List@media-motion.tv> wrote:

We’ve got an MSI and an Alienware, both are good, powerful machines. The form factor is typical PC laptop, so bulkier than a MacBook. Make sure you get a large SSD as the boot drive. I attempted to move the OS to a larger SSD on the Alienware and it was a bit of a disaster. I got it working but some things still aren’t quite right. Drivers on PC laptops are particularly difficult to get re-installed.

 

That said, for normal upgrades the Alienware is easier. The MSI requires you to jump through a ton of hoops (not as bad as a MacBook, but it’s not as easy as it could be). Before buying, find out what it takes to add memory or an SSD.

 

I don’t know what’s up with the Lenovo’s, but I see black screens occasionally on both the MSI and Alienware, where the external monitor goes black for a moment or two and then comes back. Usually indicates the driver crashed or the GPU got overloaded and restarted.

 

 

Cheers,

Jim

-------------------

Jim Tierney

President

Digital Anarchy

 

 

 

From: After Effects Mail List [mailto:AE-List@media-motion.tv]
Sent: Sunday, January 28, 2018 12:39 PM
To: After Effects Mail List
Subject: [AE] Jump to PCland

 

Hello,

I saw a few threads before on jumping from Mac to PCs, but if I recall correctly, it seemed like it was mostly for desktop. Can you offer advice on a good PC laptop?

I'm currently enrolled in an evening class utilizing 3DS Max and After Effects, so I need portability with decent rendering power.

 

My teacher suggested a Lenovo Yoga 720, but the reviews elude to a black bar screen issue that hasn't been solved in years. 

 

Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you!

 

 

Cheers,

 

Marie V. Thresher

Animator, Published Illustrator, & Interactive Designer




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