Autodesk Maya 2008 Extension 2
Hardware Qualification - Readme First
Last updated: March 3rd 2008
The information contained in this document applies to all hardware qualification executed on the above mentioned Maya version, and should be acknowledged by all users prior to consulting the qualification charts.
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General disclaimers
- In order to determine whether your system is qualified to run Maya and mental ray for Maya, you must have a qualified processor, operating system, graphics card, and graphics driver. See the following sections. You must also make sure you system meets the minimum systems requirement for Maya.
- The configurations shown are subject to change, and additional qualified configurations may be added after qualification testing has been carried out.
- It may be possible to successfully use Maya with a non-qualified or partially qualified configuration, but support and maintenance programs will be subject to the Autodesk Support services guidelines.
- Autodesk qualification team doesn't have the bandwidth to qualify all combinations of workstations/laptops and graphics cards on all operating systems.
- The graphics drivers specified in this document are the drivers that were used for the qualification process. While it may be possible to use Maya successfully on earlier or later drivers, Autodesk cannot guarantee their performance or behavior.
- Due to the many operating system and architecture differences between the supported platforms, the results of some operations will differ on different platforms. This is most noticeable with operations which iterate to reach their results -- leading to cumulatively large difference -- e.g., dynamics, some rendering. You may not be able to "mix and match" renderings on different platforms.
- Standard pen pressure sensitivity with Wacom tablets is supported. However, Wacom mice which are used with tablets have significant limitations and cannot be fully integrated with standard navigation in Maya. We recommend using a standard mouse with Maya, and limiting pen usage to Maya's Paint Effects and Sculpting tools. Autodesk is working with Wacom to achieve full support for Wacom products.
- When texture images are stored on systems remote from the rendering process; depending on network speed, specifications and load it is possible that the renderer may be unable to access a texture file on demand and may 'drop' individual textures on a frame by frame basis. To reduce this occurrence, store textures on a system local to the rendering process.
Important Notes
- There are many cards based on GeForce GPU chipsets. NVIDIA and Autodesk do not recommend these cards for use with Maya as you may experience various refresh, display and stability problems and inadequate performance. We suggest you choose from NVIDIA's workstation cards instead, such as the Quadro families which are much better suited to high-end 3D packages such as Maya. Nvidia GeForce VS Quadro White Paper [PDF]
- Video Cards without Hardware Overlay Planes: Using video cards without Hardware Overlay planes (or Hardware Overlay planes turned off) can result in poor performance for certain operations within Maya including (but not restricted to) use of tools based on Artisan or Paint Textures technology. There will also be visual differences compared with Hardware overlays that may result in difficulty seeing or manipulating aspects of the scene or Maya interface. Examples of Graphics cards without Hardware overlays include (but are not restricted to): ATI Radeon Family, NVIDIA GeForce Family
- Where Graphics Controllers are configurable, you must have at least 256MB of texture memory (TRAM). Due to the differences in the manner in which hardware vendors approach display memory, we suggest that you consult your hardware vendor to ensure that your configuration will support your required resolution.
- Autodesk recommends the use of "Span Mode" for Dual Monitor configurations using NVIDIA cards.