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Intel Mac and ZBrush

ZBrush Usage Questions
#21

I wasn’t able to get Z2 to run on our Intel Macs without a fight and it still doesn’t start reliably. I’ve personally put about $600 into emulators (Parallels, VMware, 2 licenses of XP Pro, etc.) and ZB3.1 only runs minimally satisfactory with my Wacom tablets and Cintiq with my MacPro Quad and Macbook Pro Santa Rosa.

Since I have the privilage of beta testing other products, I can say that for our next projects (September through January), we’re using Luxology’s Modo, and are just looking forward to the Modo 301 release next month (or so.)

I’ve given ZB3 pleanty of time and effort since it’s initial release (May), but it isn’t up to snuff on Macs. Pixologic made its business decisions and I’ve made mine. Given that Pix isn’t saying anyhing about a mac version except “months”, I’m not expecting to invest more time in making ZB work on what is essentially an unsupported platform.

I may give it another look when (if) Pix puts out a complete (e.g. with Zmapper, Disp exporter, etc.) native version for Intel Macs. If they’re going to do the same thing they did with two (months late, missing zmapper, etc.) I think I’ll be writing ZB off.

Pix doesn’t care for the Mac and alternatives are available.

-K

#22

Thanks for the responce. We have the same equitment. After reading your email, I am going to follow your lead and kick the Z to the curb. After investing over $10,000 I want somthing that goes togeather like tits and beer. I downloaded the modo 301 video, and they have got their **** togeather. They used a daul quad mac pro for the demo, and it kicked ass. Modo reminds me of Apple when they went to a new platform with panther. As an old school scultor, painter, that is relativly new to digital art, it is making more sence to invest my time in an up and comming program. I do think that the concept of zspheers is so revolutionary and powerful that zbrush will be a must have tool in the future ( check out the insect by the French artist in the gallery). For now my study will be - continue my overview of maya8.5, and dive into modo301. I will put the $600 in emulation software towards modo. I will put zbrush on hold. Thanks. I would like to hear more about what you do.

#23

Modo 301 will be very nice and their development process allows them to simultaneously publish Mac & PC versions, so they don’t have the “we have to get the PC version right first” syndrome. I have the privilage of beta testing it now (it still has some rough corners.) I’m a traditional sculptor by training, so I know what you mean by the “digital world” (even though I started applying my knowledge of sculpting to computers back in 1979.)

I really like ZB and their are a lot of unique things about it I’ll miss–the Modo workflow is more work up front, while ZB let you leave things like UV’ing the model to last. ZB also has a great posing tool and very easy masking–these are harder in Modo. The plus side is Modo gives you full control over your base mesh, with an ample SDS toolset. My intent had been to use ZB and Modo together (ZB for detailing and Modo for base modeling.) The workflow simply isn’t there on the Mac side, and while we’ve been able to get around ZB’s shortcomings in all cases, it’s too costly in terms of our time.

Because Modo depends on image maps (called “vector displacements”) for fine-detail sculpting, you should look into learning more about UV’s if these are new to you. The plus side is that when you’re done detailing a model, you’re ready to animate/render in C4D or Maya in a few clicks, while in ZB you’d just start to work out UV’ing and converting the polygon density to maps for conventional animation.

Both Brad and Allen (the author of Modo’s render engine) use Mac’s very heavily–Allen is currenly playing with a oct-core monster!

Feel free to contact me at rabbitroo -at- mac -dot- com if you want more details on our paticular pipeline and techniques.

Cheers!
-K

#24

Thank you Jaime and Jayson, I am very grateful for your efforts. ZB is a fantastic product. The fact that it can not run on this very powerful machine I am sitting in front of is absurd. I hope that in the future Pix will not make the mistake of putting Mac in the closet. For now I am going to use MODO301.

#25

ZBrush freezes on startup on a G5 Intel Dual Core 9Gigs of ram and the latest OSX. Sometimes by chance it would run, but its a drag to try. Waiting for the universial binary version of ZB3. Running ZB3 on Parallels is not an issue at all!
T.

#26

tobemanu, you have a G5 Intel Dual core??? Interesting. Love to see that. If actually mean a Dual Core G5 (PPC) then ZB3 won’t run. ZB2 will, especially if you follow the info above in the thread. If you mean CoreDuo or CoreDuo2 Intel MacPro, then currently you have the options of dual boot setup of BootCamp with a Windows install or you have Parallels with a Windows install for ZB3. If these don’t work for you, then patience is the last option as we are all waiting for the Universal Binary version of ZB3. :wink:

#27

Hi, I’ve not posted before. I’m looking into buying one of the new 2.4 intel macbook pros with 2gb ram and 256mb graphics. If I run zbrush 3.1 on windows xp using bootcamp, is the performance going to be the same as on an equal spec pc? Forgive the ignorance i’ve not got my head around the whole macs running windows thing! Obviously a native zbrush 3 for mac is what everyone wants but is running one of the new macs with windows a viable solution while we wait? or am I better off buying a pc laptop?

cheers for any help or advise
Lee

#28

Jason, it´s a CoreDuo Intel MacPro of course - sorry, my mistake…
T.

#29

I have the same machine. If you use Bootcamp, it will be the functional and performance equivalent of an XP machine with the same specs. If you don’t mind the re-boot times, between OS switches (reboot is pretty fast if you stay on the same OS) then this will be a nice laptop with a fine display.

If you juice the memory up to 3GB or 4GB, you’ll be able to run WinXP in Parallels with a full 2GB WinXP machine. Performance will be slightly less than native for most things +/- 5% running in Parallels.

(Parallels just uped the memory partition size to a full 2GB for emulated XP machines.)

HTH,
-K

#30

Thanks for the info Kerwin. Looks like i’m getting that macbook pro then! I can’t afford the extra ram at the mo. Is there a significant slow down in performance if running with paralells and only 2gb ram? Would I be better off getting the lower spec 2.2ghz machine with only 128mb graphics but with upgraded 4gb ram? I would assume I would be better with my original plan and upgrade the memory at a later date?

cheers

#31

Hi Lee Kiff, yes. In fact if you have Apple RAM and it’s paired, you will be pleasantly surprised. :wink:

If you look way up I have the MacBooPro 17" 2GB RAM, since early beta of Parallels and Zbrush 2.5/3. Zbrush really is about RAM and it’s quality. With 1GB assigned to Parallels I have models in the 40 million plus poly range with ease.

Under BootCamp you should get considerably better performance - many people have posted some excellent numbers. :wink:

Buy the Mac version of ZB3, then get them to give you the Windows version for now so you are ready for the future and functional now. It is a deal they offer everyone.

#32

In the long haul, take the higher spec machine and add the memory later.

You can get a good deal on additional memory from OWC (Apple’s price is awfully high for their notebook memory.) A full-spec’ed and matched 4GB set is $269 from them. I’ve been using this kit for 2 months without a single problem or slowdown:

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/53IM2DDR4GBK/

I’ve been using OWC now for a while when it comes to Apple memory upgrades. :wink:

As Jason said, you can get by fine on 1GB, but the extra “elbow” room of a 4GB notebook is awfully nice.

-K

#33

Cheers for the advise guys. I just wish Apple would get a shift on with Leopard! I’m holding off getting my macbook pro so that I don’t need to upgrade from tiger almost immediately! getting itchy pockets tho! While i’m writting this, and off topic I know, if there is anyone here who currently uses Zbrush in the toy or rapid prototyping industry or knows someone who does it’d be great to get in touch :slight_smile:

#34

Leopard will represent big changes to OSX. I’m not sure many production users will switch from Tiger for several months until their key software is certified on Leopard. I wouldn’t count on shifting to Leopard on Day 1 (pretty much the same way not everyone on the PC has shifted to Vista) unless you like be a trailblaze. :wink:

I’ll upgrade at least one machine here to Leopard, but I expect it will be a few months and (and one or two “dot” releases from Apple) before we’ll be able to consider a Leopard switch on our main workstations.

Cheers!
-K

#35

From another forum on the future ZB on Mac:

Thank you for your interest in ZBrush!

We definitely want to get the Mac version released as soon as possible. However, there are very good technical reasons why it is not possible for us to work on the Mac version until after the next update.

If we were to make a Mac port after each update, it would quite possibly be a full year between the release of ZBrush 3 for the PC and the final release of ZBrush 3.2 for both PC and Mac. On the other hand, by getting 3.2 out for the PC (with ZBrush 3’s full feature set and the resolution of known issues which have cropped up), then making a single port of this finished version to the Mac, we can get 3.2 out for PC and Mac both within 4-8 months of when ZBrush 3 first launched.

In short, trying to port to the Mac before all bug fixes and features are in place would actually do Mac users a disservice. This is not something that we are willing to do!

We still believe that our original estimate of 4-8 months for the release of the Mac version is going to be able to be accomplished. Exactly where it will fall within that four month time frame is impossible to predict at this point, but we do hope that we’ll be able to release the Mac version earlier rather than later.

As for pricing, I am checking to get an answer as to whether the upcoming price increase will wait on the Mac side or be applied to both platforms at once. I’ll let you know as soon as I hear back.

Sincerely,

Pixologic ZBrush Support
http://forums.luxology.com/discussion/topic.aspx?id=19441

#36

Thanks for that Kerwin.

So it went from: “The Mac version will be released 4-8 months after the PC release of 3.0… no wait… after 3.1… errr… did we say 3.1??? We meant 3.2 ofcourse…” :lol:

In short, trying to port to the Mac before all bug fixes and features are in place would actually do Mac users a disservice

:qu: :confused:
I don’t even know how to respond to that one… The word incredulity comes to mind.

#37

I guess there must have been unforseen problems with the pc version that need ironing out before the mac version gets sorted. It’s not a great situation for mac users but I can see why it would be pointless porting a buggy piece of software over to mac and then have the issuse of re-working zbrush for two platforms instead of just the one. I guess the development team can only handle so much work and I would think that that is why zbrush retails at the price it does. If zbrush were to cost more money to buy, then I would assume we’d be seeing the mac version sooner. As things stand I’m personally happy to wait for a bug free mac version and run the pc version while I wait…once it get my macbbok pro that is :wink: Although I totally understand the frustration for mac users pre-intel chips that mean they can’t run the latest version of zbrush at all…as yet! Which is kinda naughty on pixologics part.

#38

Just bought ZBrush2 for Mac (saved $106 - it’s going up when v3 for Mac is released!), and after having read all the troubles here, I was delighted when it ran right off the bat. I have a new 2x2.66 GHz Dual-Core Intel.

Anyway, it ran for a while. Then froze. Pretty much end of story. I can get it to run by removing the ULicense from the folder to the desktop, restarting ZB - which doesn’t work, but generates a new tempSN.txt file, then Force Quitting, dragging the ULicense BACK into the ZB folder, and relaunching.

It usually works. Sometimes takes a few tries, sometimes not. Weird.

At any rate, waiting for v3 to be released for Mac, and having saved $106 by buying it NOW, it’s worth the wait! I don’t want to run an emulator to run the Windows version of 3, so in the meantime I’ll learn what I can!

#39

Once running, under Preferences, disable the Startup Screen and see if you are good to go. Also make sure you OS is up-to-date. Yell if you are still having an issue. :wink:

#40

Yes, I disabled the Startup screen yesterday, but it didn’t seem to make any difference. Today, I can’t get it to run at all no matter what I do.

Yes, OS is up to date. 10.4.10

It’s no big deal. Naturally I’d like to be able to learn it while waiting for v3 for Mac, but one can’t have everything. I just hope v3 is reasonably soon.

Thanks!