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#1261

I think with the news of some of the features we will see in the next major OS release from Apple we are getting a glimpse at what may be possible for higher end content creators on the Mac.
With everything from Grand Central able to handle massive numbers of processors/cores to the ability to access GPU function calls at a system level rather than having to write them yourself I thin we will see a few other apps move over to the Mac.

Also, with the exception of the Carbon/Cocoa switch over the dev environment hasn’t really changed that much even with the transition to Intel processors so that is kind of a lame excuse. Apple made it clear long ago that switching to their dev tools was the way to go and those that did had a fairly painless upgrade path.

#1262

Sorry guys - I know aurick’s in a tough spot, but you’re falling all over yourselves to thank him for doing exactly what he’s done about once a month lately: show his face in the Mac topic, write a few paragraphs about “how hard we’re working” and “preparing for the future”, but saying absolutely NOTHING of note.

This whole project has been so badly botched and mis-managed, there’s no way to save it, but to come on here every so often and basically repeat what we already know gets a little insulting. That they somehow thought something “might” happen in February, FIVE MONTHS AGO, and put that info out there with anything resembling a straight face, is just unbelievable to me.

They’ve had my $250 (for the Windows > Mac crossgrade, which many companies don’t charge for) for those five months, since they were very public that the price would go up when ZB3 shipped, and I didn’t want to risk waking up one morning and finding I’d missed the deadline. Yeah, that really worked out. I don’t do this for a living, so the opportunity to save $50 was something I didn’t want to miss.

That Pixologic is STILL so poorly managed that they can’t even do what they did for the ZB3 Windows version, announcing a “rough” ship date that gave them a full 3 months to wrap up the loose ends and get the product out, speaks volumes. That is, unless we actually haven’t gotten to the point where they think they can get it wrapped up in 3 more months, which would just boggle the mind.

In the 2 1/2 years since I switched to the Mac, I’ve frankly found plenty of other things to do with my time. I used to love firing up ZBrush just to see what came out of it, but with no ZBrush for 30 months, sculpting has faded to the background for me. I still want ZBrush 3 because I so fondly remember the fun I had in the past, and want to believe I can recapture some of that, but this whole process has left such a bad taste in my mouth, it’s hard to know how I’ll feel when I finally have it.

#1263

I bought ZBrush 2 on Mac specifically for the free ZBrush 3 upgrade, as the app looked amazing and the results spoke for themselves. This was in March '08.

I do believe Zbrush 3.x is due shortly, but I’m now really worried that - some 5 months later - my expensive Quad G5 PPC machine won’t be supported.

As a fully paid-up owner of ZBrush, I believe I’m entitled to a straight answer to this question:

Will the next update of ZBrush on Mac run natively on my PPC Mac?

Thanks. I look forward to your answer shortly.

#1264

For me it goes beyond the one seat of ZBrush I bought.
I initially purchased ZBR for myself to produce work. The wait has been difficult and I toyed with adding a PC to my shop just to run it. I have used Windows machines before and the added headaches are simply not worth it to me.

Now I am in the process of opening a training center for digital graphics and I will be teaching CG and character workflow. I was waiting patiently for ZBR for the Mac as my workstations will in all likelihood be MacPros (Yes, we can and will run Bootcamp for apps that are simply not available on OSX) and we will prefer to stick with the native OS.

I have heard recently that there is a strong possibility that a competing product from Autodesk will be available on the Mac and if that is true then all 20 seats that were going to be ZBR will be Mudbox. Plain and simple.

It is simply not conceivable that a company would keep it’s customer base waiting this long with no real word on what is happening, I am sorry but a note from Aurick every month that just tells us they are still “working on it” is not cutting it. As has been said before we have been waiting since we were told in February. To miss that date and then give us nothing is the worst customer outreach I can imagine.

Let’s ask a hypothetical question to the people of Pixologic. Let’s just say that you are moving into a new office and you order some nice new custom made desks. You pay for them up front because you have seen the work of this particular craftsman and been impressed. So then months go by and you get no response from repeated calls. Finally you get a voice mail telling you the desks are almost ready and they will be available on a certain day, hell let’s make it certain week (give 'em some leeway). That week comes and goes and you get no desks and not even a call. You call them and still all you get is return voice mails telling you they will be ready soon.
What would you do in that situation?

#1265

That’s certainly not a fun situation, and you have my sympathy. I’ve been needing to upgrade my MBP and have delayed for about 9 months, waiting for this program (and Maya) to update.

I’ve heard it mentioned myself. But I haven’t seen a single thing objective to support this. I think it’s just a pipe dream. As has been pointed out, Autodesk doesn’t appear to have much of a history of porting to OS X. They bought Maya, which was already ported, and they’ve continued it that way. If you’ve heard something specific and official about Mudbox for OS X, I’d be delighted for you to share it. Otherwise, you’re in for even worse disappointment than with ZB3. (No levity intended)

It’s entirely conceivable. We’re getting an object lesson in precisely that. It’s conceivable. It’s just not laudable.

I’d say “Thank GOD I’ve got some choice and can go with another vendor.” And then I’d turn back to the ZB for Mac situation and wish it had been analogous :grimacing:

#1266

NO offense intended, but just a fact or two…

Mac is hardly a ‘niche’ market. :slight_smile: I’ve been using Macs (since they first came out) in corporate America (the largest aerospace company in the world to be exact), since the very beginnings of the Macintosh, and once upon a time, there was ‘almost’ exactly the same software available for both platforms. But Mac went a bit downhill until Jobs took over and pumped some new life into it, thank God.

More recently, the largest newspaper publisher in Europe that prints 130 different papers for 30 different countries, has switched over entirely to Macintosh. Virtually all publishing and service bureaus ‘prefer’ Mac format files, and it’s been that way for a vewy, vewy long time.

And btw, ALL of the animation software, graphics, etc., that I use IS openGL or Sree, etc., and the fact that some of the expensive and so-called ‘high-end’ software packages are written sole for PC doesn’t hurt Mac at all - it just limits the software publishers clientele, and that’s their loss, sadly. Perhaps some day they’ll come around.

:slight_smile:

Morbius

Btw, so I don’t have to post again, HIYA AURICK!!!

:slight_smile:

#1267

I’d love to know where you heard that. If there any reason to think it comes from Autodesk it’s fantastic news, if it’s just a rumour from another forum I’d take it with several pounds of salt! As Ronbo said Autodesk don’t have a history of supporting Macs! On the other hand I did hear from Dave Cardwell on the Autodesk forums that they still have control over Mudbox development and are not being dictated to by Autodesk. Skymatter allways said that a Mac version was likely to be available in the future so it could still be coming.

Autodesk won’t comment one way or the other though :frowning:

Incidently I’m trying the demo of Mudbox1 at the moment and I really like it. It’ll only cope with 3-4,000,000 polys (against ZB3’s 10,000,000 plus) but it’s very smooth, great UI and workflow and Mudbox2009 will handle many more polys.

#1268

Oh none taken :wink: I love my mac - I really like the ease of use to the package, the design and wouldn’t hesitate to recommend them to anyone bar, as I said, some 3d professionals. Mac’s lag behind PC’s (often) when it comes to available graphics cards and for ages even their top of the line 8 core workstation was shipping with a pretty poor graphics solution (a nvidia 7300? something awful like that?) at a time when a gamer pc could offer you dual sli 7900 cards linked together (never mind the high end 3d rendering ones). The industries wide adoption of direct x over open GL (which I hope changes) and the inability to use at least half of the big four 3d packages does limit things further.

On a plus side I could see Autodesk eventually releasing the long expected 3dsmaya version - for Macs as well as PCs and hopefully soon (by siggraph Aurick? :wink: ) we’ll have zbrush as well. But pound for pound I think I’d be hard pushed to win any arguments within this field as to why someone should willingly choose a mac over a pc if you ignore the case design, pleasant working environment and so forth.

#1269

While I understand what you’re saying Asyme I’m not in complete agreement. Windows certainly have an edge in 3d but I don’t believe it’s as big as you make out and it’s narrowing all the time. Mac Pros have some powerful cards available now though I think the GFX drivers could still be improved a lot. The more of these high end cards that are bought the more ATI/Nvidia are going to make available and Macs are being used more and more for 3d and even gaming now that they’ll run Windows.

As for 3d apps well, Maya, Lightwave, Cinema 4d, Modo and Houdini all have Mac versions. The only Pro apps I can think of that don’t are XSI and Max oh and Messiah qualifies as a pro app I suppose. I think that’s a pretty good range!

#1270

autodesk ported combustion [compositor with flame/inferno tools] to mac and have kept it uptodate on mac too…now at version 4 so autodesk do have a history of their own apps being ported…and they’ve kep maya uptodate on mac also…so it’s reasonable to believe that mudbox could surface on osx and also probably linux as linux has really taken hold in the film production pipline so maybe we’ll also see zbrush on linux too?

#1271

I’m sure Combustion was bought from Discreet. Autodesk have no track record of porting to the Mac platform. Maya was acquired already with a Mac version and user base. All their other products are Windows only. Have been for many years.

Unless Autodesk announce an upcoming release of Mac Mudbox. Consider any rumours of said release to be highly unreliable and unlikely.

That said. Given the choice between running Mudbox via Bootcamp or ZBrush via Bootcamp. I wouldn’t be too sure, that it would be foregone conclusion in favour of ZBrush. Certainly not for Mac users who were shrewd enough to wait and see.

#1272

windows xp is nearly ten years old, of course more will be out for it. think about it, ten years before that you were using a comodor 64 (and happy to make the screen blue).
I think those folks get lazy raking cash in. Just wait with this Iphone mania. the Ipod slowly brought my attention back to mac. In this world its all about who’s more profitable.
Right now thats mac and soon enough at least 1 person you know if not all ready will have a mac product. It will just be a mater of time.

windows is the clunkieist piece of trash. those who say the hate mac, are the same who wont give it a (stubbornly set in their old ways ) shot. I just don’t understand people and their need to bag on apple for doing new and great products.
turns out some of the folks that hate mac buy one anyway and run windows on it. he he
I have know idea where I’m going with this. I love how windows comes out with this ground breaking product (vista “sarcastically”) and most of the xp users wont even touch it. dinosaur bones!

#1273

It’s Angus. Asyme sounds weird ;).

I throw my hands up coming from a games bias - where 3dsmax is a very heavy contender - and where we swapped for our recent project to XSI. I’m also one of the few studios in the world that can say hand on heart that we will never EVER swap to macs as we’re a subsidiary of Microsoft. But I use macs at home as do loads of the programmers and its a popular and admired platform. I love the things - they’re beautifully put together and I’m positive if apple hadn’t gone through its bad 85-95 period we’d be seeing a lot more of an even spread of programs on both apps.

Just saying at the moment, and for 3d, the weight is definitely in windows favour - in the way you could argue it was definitely all workstations and linux back in the days of softimage, alias and so forth.

Here’s hoping it changes over the next couple of years. A timely appearance of Zbrush would go a long way to providing the high end organic modelling app the platform needs :wink: (annnyyyy day now)

#1274

Combustion was originally produced by Denim Software under Greg Niles and a bunch of former Amiga programming gurus.
It was bought by Discreet and then the code was updated to make it more in line with the Flint/Flame code. After which the original group was summarily canned by Discreet. Many of them work at Apple now and were the creators of Motion.

If there was existing code for MBox and the programmers are given the opportunity I don’t see why Autodesk would abandon a possible revenue stream. BTW, I don’t have any evidence either way and if I did I would not break confidence and share it.

#1275

no, actually if you remember ALL of it…*paint and *effect were by discreet logic…discreet [then part of autodesk] created combustion and ported several tools from flame and inferno down into combustion directly…and made the mac versions…gee will someone EVER give autodesk credit for the work they do?

i bought *paint and *effect then upgraded [free upgrade] to combustion [on pc]

#1276

and zbrush…

#1277

I have aleways been a Mac person. I took up Windoze when I went to a boutique that was Studio max centric and that app is, probably forever, tied to Windoze. I have been with zBrush since 1.55 and a major part of its attraction was that it ran on my Mac. I have adapted my workflow to use zBrush 3.x on Windoze running on Fusion. It works. My question is, besides the onerous necessity of running Windoze on our Macs, what does not work in this version? Some of you talk about abandonong the Mac because zBrush won’t run, natively, on it. Why? To me, that is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I use a Mac because, as an OS, it is better that almost everything, with the exception of Linux, which I deem to be a cousin. I hate Microsoft and everything it stands for, but I don’t see a choice, here. Fortunately, we have been given an ability to use it on the Mac, for what drives us to use it, zBrush, Studio Max, et al. Will I ever use these apps in bootcamp, even though I have been urged to do so? Nope. Because, if I wanted a Windoze machione, I will buy one rather than turn my Mac into one. And as I said, fortunately, I can share with Windoze when it is necessary. So, I wait for the Mac version, which I truly hope is coming. I would like to know what can’t be done be on a Mac using Fusion or Parallels. I just haven’t found anything, myself.
Also, I have used VmWare to run my machine on a Linux system and use zBrush on my Linux box. I would truly love a Linux native version of zBrush, because I would like to move from Macs to Linux. Guess that makes me even more disenfranchised than all the Mac users here, because I expect I will see a Linux version of zBrush when hell freezes over;-)

neilford

#1278

Damn, good memory. With all that goes on in this industry, that is some old news that easily gets forgotten.

So do you think they will do a port of MB to the Mac? I wonder if they’ll be raising the price? If they can lower the price I can see them just cleaning up, even if they stay PC. I would imagine people would fire up boot camp in that case just out of spite LOL!

#1279

Fair enough Angus, I’ll give you that! :wink: Look at big 3d studios and the number of Macs must be vanishingly small especially in the games industry! Small studios and freelancers seem to be using Macs more though, I even know a few who have bought a Mac Pro just to run Windows and of those a few have become OSX converts! :smiley: I think Macs make great 3d machines and if we can ever get decent OGL preformance (still way behind Windows IMO) and a good range of GFX cards I think they could start appearing in the big studios and become much more common for 3d workstations. Here’s hoping eh?!

Oh yeah and ZBrush. Mudbox too I suppose, So XSI, Max, Messiah, Mudbox and ZBrush all Windows only, damn that is quite a lot :wink:

#1280

Hmm. I’ll ask again.

I bought ZBrush 2 on Mac specifically for the free ZBrush 3 upgrade, as the app looked amazing and the results spoke for themselves. This was in March '08.

I do believe Zbrush 3.x is due shortly, but I’m now really worried that - some 5 months later - my expensive Quad G5 PPC machine won’t be supported.

As a fully paid-up owner of ZBrush, I believe I’m entitled to a straight answer to this question:

Will the next update of ZBrush on Mac run natively on my PPC Mac?

Thanks. I look forward to your answer shortly.