Maya for MacOSx, have you used it?

[Imagineer]

plenty of folks around here will tell you to pass on the Mac, and get a PC...

and they will flame me for telling you otherwise...

but I say go for the Mac...

after all, it is YOU using the machine, not others...

so if you prefer Macs, then stick with them...

you will still be using Maya, you will still be doing 3d...

besides, PCs are for wankers! ;^p

good luck!

[Grgeon]

I too am using a mac...and no problems here.

Grgeon

[ALIASWAVE]

If you want a slow 3d system go with the mac.
I have a Dual g4 with a 1gig of ram and it runs slow so I'm boxing it up and get 3d boxx or a SGI .
OSX is cool but runs everything slow i have nothing but maya on there and it still runs slow.
You need to wait util the new g5 maybe that will be a good system.
I'm going to a pc when the new AMD 64 come out .
I'm giving up with the macs.
Good luck with the mac!:grin:

[greekdish]

ROFL...an AMD 64?? A G5??? Ok...this guy was obviously just spewing whatever came to his mind. None of those are even slated for any release date...so he's wishing upon a dream. Maya runs great, to me, on OSX...rock solid and stable....cant say the same for Maya on Winblows...where I constantly crash and it gets just way to frustrating. Try finding any off the shelf video card to run Maya in Windows.....Ive heard many horror stories about ATI's and nVidia's. Yes, you can get better OpenGL performance on a PC...but you have to buy an expensive video card. Maya also runs very stable on an SGI an IRIX.....havent tried Linux.....so....Im guessing that any flavor of Unix would be just fine....OSX, Irix, Linux, etc. .... In my opinion. Like it was mentioned before...if you use Macs normally....if you are comfortable with Macs normally, stay with Macs.

[SheepFactory]

nothing against the macs but wanna clarify a bit on the windows site.

Maya runs just great on my win-blows (the mac away)

you can get a g force card and hack it with softquadro and get the quadro performance , cant do that in Mac.

also maya unlimited is not avaible for mac not to mention the mac version is older than the PC version.

if you are a Mac Fan stay with mac , but know that it runs flawlessly at the PC side. The people who are having trouble with it are probably using unqualified hardware. Check alias wavefront website for the hardware requirements.

your call

A|i

[beaker]

>>you can get a g force card and hack it with softquadro and get the quadro performance , cant do that in Mac.

true, but there are still many things that are broken with the crappy gforce drivers(even the quadro ones). Painting weights is still slow as piss and try painting attributes for fur on a poly surface.

>>also maya unlimited is not avaible for mac not to mention the mac version is older than the PC version.

This will be remedied soon. By maya 4.5(5?) the mac version will be at the same version as the pc version in june/july. It is quite normall for a/w apps to be behind by 1 version for about a year. Windows version and linux version had the same thing happen. It took 1.5 years for the windows version to catch up and about the same with the linux version.

>>but know that it runs flawlessly at the PC side. The people who are having trouble with it are probably using unqualified hardware.

Flawless, hehe, yea right. Try using 4-8k shadow maps or large texture maps. Try adding 1 million particles to a scene. Maya on windows just croaks even with 1 gig of ram. Stupid memory exception thrown error. The scene wont even render. Try the same thing on the unix versions of maya(irix, linux, osx), none of these problems. Maya uses 1/4th the ram on the unix versions too. No problem rendering large texture maps/large shadow maps with 256 meg of ram.

[SheepFactory]

for the first one:

I am painting weights and fur attributes here without any slowdown at all , (gf3 ti 500 + softquadro)

now are you telling me that the ATI radeons and gforce4 mx runs maya better than a gforce quadro?


I am not saying mac sucks or anything , but you guys are making it sound like its the best platform in the world without any problems whatsoever. we all know thats not true.

oh and what about the plugin support and application support for mac , or should i say the lack of it?. (ie: deep paint , renderman , 3d max , xsi , etc , etc , etc)

some of those softwares comes handy in a production environment dont you think?

so i guess the best way to go is to have both mac and pc running side by side
:deal: :cool: :beer:

[graphiouz]

ive been to a few studios and schools for short visits, and they praise the Mac to the skies. oh its easy and smooth they say,,
i dont think they have been using a windows workstation for a decade or so. because you cant compair todays Win machines to yesterdays machines..
And the prize on Mac´s ooshhh:thumbsdow

.

[beaker]

>>now are you telling me that the ATI radeons and gforce4 mx runs maya better than a gforce quadro?

I have no idea how the new firegl 8k series are, I'm talking about the Firegl 1-4 that are based on the ibm chipset.

>>oh and what about the plugin support and application support for mac , or should i say the lack of it?. (ie: deep paint , renderman , 3d max , xsi , etc , etc , etc)

You don't need every single app in existance to do 3d/2d. The ones that are avaliable work fine. We have Maya, LW, EI, Kaydara, Combustion, Shake, Rayz, Realviz products, Kaydara, plus many more. Having 75% of the apps works fine. Anyways no one goes out an buys every single app.

>>ive been to a few studios and schools for short visits, and they praise the Mac to the skies. oh its easy and smooth they say,,
i dont think they have been using a windows workstation for a decade or so. because you cant compair todays Win machines to yesterdays machines..

Just because you use a mac in production doesn't mean you don't know what you are doing. Faster is not always better. Many people prefer stability and usability first. Many studios also use linux and sgi exclusivley. Do you think they are any better simply because they are more "socially acceptable" to you. You would be surprised how many people in hollywood use a Mac. At our studio the producers, directors, visualfx supervisor, and half the staff 2D/3D artists all have an ibook or titanium g4. Everyone is using g4's now for their editing boxes with Final Cut Pro.

http://www.pixelmagicfx.com/
http://home.earthlink.net/~tvaziri/pro.html

[ALIASWAVE]

First off schools praise macs for one things Apple gives them a huge discount. Its fun how the company I work for is getting rid of all the mac's (which were used for 2d only)and are getting SGI and 3d BOXX mostly running NT base OS and so Irix base render farms to replace them (For both 2d and 3d).
Pixar even use NT/IRIX base systems for their modeling even though there is Mac ver of Maya.
Have you seen the benchmark test on OSX its some the lowest rated compared to IRIX, Linux and NT (www.highend3d.com). Nvidia won't even make the drivers for the GeforceX cards for the mac, Apple does that. My win blows system is very stable never had any problems unlike the Mac (NOT STABLE!) I was using that crashed every time I tried any CPU intense work in Maya or Lightwave.
AMD will have their 64bit out by next year!!(Q4 2002) Read Toms hardware!
Mac run 2d software and video editing very well but 3d HAHA!!
I still have a G4 for photoshop but thats all its for!

[SheepFactory]

Originally posted by beaker
>>>>
You don't need every single app in existance to do 3d/2d. The ones that are avaliable work fine. We have Maya, LW, EI, Kaydara, Combustion, Shake, Rayz, Realviz products, Kaydara, plus many more. Having 75% of the apps works fine. Anyways no one goes out an buys every single app.

http://www.pixelmagicfx.com/
http://home.earthlink.net/~tvaziri/pro.html

yes you have maya with more bugs than features , you have Combustion which runs slower than a turtle and which will probably be discontinued due to apple screwing them over with the shake deal , you have realviz? , well you know stitcher is not the only realviz product , what %75? what many others? you pretty much listed the whole apple 3d line there. I didnt know shake was out already by the way.

sure you dont need every app under the sun you are right on that. but its nice to have the ability to run them if the job demands it.

A|i

[jeroentje]

Thanks a lot for all your replies.

Appearantly there is not very much difference between the Maya versions and both have their pro's and contra's.
So my choice is a choice between OS's. And since I'm familiair with Windows aswell as with MacOS, I'll go for the OS I like best.
A Mac it will be.

Jeroentje

[Grgeon]

A wise choice you have made young Padawan:)

Grgeon

[Array]

GreekDish- Get your facts straight before you make an ass of yourself.

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1611
http://www.aceshardware.com/#55000488
http://www.theinquirer.net/23040208.htm

kthx 0vv|\|3d!!!

[-wT-]

Originally posted by greekdish
ROFL...an AMD 64?? ...this guy was obviously just spewing whatever came to his mind. None of those are even slated for any release date...

Ok maybe someone should shut up too if they don't know what they are talking about...
AMD Hammer processor has been showed in many places, running 32bit ASWELL as 64bit applications... STABLE...
Oh and the name for the processor ment for 2-8 CPU systems, formerly known as SledgeHammer, was just changed by AMD to Opteron, so we already know what they will be called when those finally ship to stores.
Here's the official AMD roadmap: http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/VirtualPressRoom/0,,51_104_608,00.html
Convinced?

I can't say anything about G5 though... never used Mac...


EDIT: Ah heck, didn't see (the important) reply of Array :)... sorry

[greekdish]

Array......excuse me??? Since when did we live in China and I was not allowed to have my opinion??? Im sorry, like you..I dont wait to buy hardware based on vaporware....product hasnt been released, and thus, is non-existant...just like the Itanium chip....when is it's release date??? So before making an ass out of YOURSELF for criticizing other people's opinion's.....get a life and worry about YOUR opinion's. Oh joy...they named their future chip!!! ROFL. Come see me when you can actually get your hands on one of these before Xmas. A FACT is only a fact if its true...and based on your posting....none of what you posted is fact, but theory based.

[greekdish]

WT...still havent proven me wrong...is there a release date yet??? I dont care what they name their chips...if it isnt released, its not available. Its called Vaporware!!!!! Marketing to let everyone know how great their latest chips are...but I bet you wont be able to get one before Xmas. You going to base your purchasing decisions on a chip that wont be available for at least 6 months to the public??? Yeah, IBM has demo'd PPC processors running at 1.7 Ghz also, and stable. Big whoopie doo.....is it available in my Mac?? NO.

[-wT-]

Oh geez, first you say how it's vaporware and blahblah, and then you tell I have to get it BEFORE christmas to prove you wrong?... I mean, what the heck are you trying to say? We need to see a product that's most propably coming out after christmas, before christmas. And if we can't, Hammer will be vaporware for you forever?

Geez... I'll sure do write your email address up and send you a nice email as soon as Hammer AKA serious vaporware will be released...


Oh god these hardware geniuses. Some ppl might even know why the IBM chips haven't been introduced yet... atleast you aren't one of 'em... (Yes, once more: ) geez...

PS. It's wT

[beaker]

Another thing you guys have to remember is that the AMD64 chip is aimed at servers/workstations. AMD and intel make very little money off of the consumer chips. Just like the xeon and the itanium this chip will cost 1-2k and up per processor. Just like the itanium, not many of you will be purchasing it.

[greekdish]

WT...sorry, wT (sic).....vaporware are product announcements that arent ready for release yet....how do you know that AMD's or Motorola's and IBM's roadmap wont change in the next 6 months??? The original post was concerning ALIASWAVE's post concerning waiting for a G5 that will maybe be a good system. How he also was going to purchase an AMD 64 when it comes out. Basically saying the G4 sucks compared to a G5, AMD 64 (when they're not even out), when in all actuality, is one of the best processors out there today. Point being....if people kept on waiting until the next greatest and latest, no one would ever buy anything. The whole point was for Jeroentje, who simply asked Mac Maya users opinions, not PC Maya user's opinions....he asked if it was stable on the Mac, or if he should get a Wintel and Maya. Basically, all the Mac users, including myself, told him whatever OS he's comfortable with, to stick with it....both Maya for Mac and PC have their pro's and cons. But "geez", had to have the PC users come in here and tell everyone that PC's are better, and anyone who disagrees should "shutup if we dont know what we're talking about". Like I said...I posted my opinion favoring Macs, and got flamed for it by PC users. Typical.

[-wT-]

Hmmm... ok someone could seriosly point out where did I praise PC's over Macs? I haven't EVER said anything bad about Macs, it wouldn't be anywhere fair as I haven't used one.

The ONLY thing I've said here, was that Hammer will be released. Period.
After reading craploads of info about it, and after AMD made a engineering sample (though propably running quite low MHz's) of it running both 32bit and 64bit applications (Which btw is something Intel 64bit CPU's can't do... yet...), it would be like you making 10y of some 3D work that would be so revolutionary and perfect that no one would imagine how cool it was... and then you formatted your harddrive(s). (And don't translate those "revolutionary" / "perfect" words from my example to the AMD situation itself)

That engineering sample is quite an achievement, as for an example those 1.7GHz IBM chips you were talking about, were just some small portion of a working CPU (Like the FPU unit/memory controler or something different), and you can't compare it to a working whole CPU running something other than what that working part was ment to. Even if IBM could do a 100GHz working FPU unit, it wouldn't mean that 90% of the other parts CPU definietlly needs to operate could be used 100GHz. (The numbers are all imaginary)

BTW, Clawhammer, which will be released first, is really ment to a desktop (max 1-2 CPU's) systems.
And like I've said, Hammer's can run both 32bit and 64bit applications (Even at the same time if you like), that won't be an option with the new Intel CPU's for an example.

Bah, ok, maybe I understood your first post abit wrong, but... ah heck my english vocabulary for today seems to be at quite low level, I'll just call it quits...

[Array]

Once again....check your facts. Itanium is vaporware? Hardly. Check:

www.pricewatch.com

You can allready purchase them.

:rolleyes:

[Array]

Regarding your statement about "horror stories" relating to maya on ati and nvidia cards....in case you weren't allready aware (im guessing your not) allmost ALL macs run either an ati or nvidia card. Granted ATI doesnt make the best cards, Nvidia geforce cards run maya flawlessly. In fact, geforce has similar performance to quadro (same chip, differant drivers).

Also, your post was not based on opinion, but on brash immaturity. You basically flamed AliasWave because he stated in his OPINION that G5 would make a good system. He also went on to say he would rather wait on a 64 bit pc rather than buying a mac. How does that deserve the response you gave him? Next time, think before you speak.

[greekdish]

The horror stories were from PC's and ATI's and nVidia's.....not Mac's and ATI's and nVidia.....if you go to Alias' support section, all you see is horror stories...as well as my own experience with ATI Radeon's and Maya. BUT....I havent had the same problems running Maya on Mac OSX with an ATI card. As for the pricewatch...I stand corrected on Itanium not being released....but I hardly consider a price range of $1100 to $6700 for a processor readily accessible tp an end user. Will that Itanium also run Maya?? I'd appreciate any benchmarks as well...and Im not demeaning you in any way here....just really curious to see Itanium's performance....especially since after the Ghz wars with AMD....they are now releasing 733-800mhz chips??? I guess people wont view Macs and their G4's and "only" 1Ghz chips as slow anymore.

As for my response to ALIASWAVE's post.....my comments werent any different from his tone in his post...."if you want a slow 3D system go with a Mac".....when its simply a matter of high end 3D cards not being available for the Mac, i.e, Quadro, Wildcat.....the processor isnt at fault.....so to say a G5 would make it better is not a correct statement...and sounds like it comes from a PC troll. His wasnt opinion, but bashing. Wasnt being harsh or anything...just responding in the same tone towards him....if I offended anyone else, I apologize.

[Array]

The itanium is all but dead (largly due to it's rediculous price, and unfriendliness towards programmers). The only CG related application for an Itanium that i can think of is a render node.

Where as the Itanium is dying, AMD is poised to take windows into the realm of 64 bit processing (Microsoft is officially supporting AMD's x86-64 standard). The backwards compatibility with x86-32 will eliminate all excuses NOT to switch to a 64 bit platform.

[ALIASWAVE]

listen I said I use both mac and Pc
The mac doesn't have the Open GL support as well as a Pc
Maya also crashed more on the mac but the os is fine and stable.
I was not bashing the mac I have one!
but from my exp. the pc runs it better and more stable (MAYA)
I don't hate macs

So I am waiting for the Hammer so what!
my system right now is fine so why upgrade to a faster 32 when the 64 is just around the corner.

Also price is a factor when buying a computer
my pc system cost me $800 (dual cpus) the mac 1,999 (dual cpus)

Also the support thing on Alias's site on how the pc has trouble with video.
Its because the PC as how many different? videoscards ,cpus and Motherboards!!

when its simply a matter of high end 3D cards not being available for the Mac, i.e, Quadro, Wildcat.....the processor isnt at fault
Make sub d or nurbs char then animate it on your mac and watch it slow to crawl like mine does. it is a processors prob

[Antilles]

MacOSX users, when you work in Maya, what do you do if your mouse doesnt have a 2nd or 3rd button? Im just wondering, my friend was in a class and they were talking about this.

[SheepFactory]

you buy a 3 button mouse.

i think maya comes with one.

A|i

[kfc]

hmmm.... interesting thread.
i'm not here to flame any side. but I just want to voice out my opinion from the point of view of a freelancer.
Mac is nice if u aren't a computer savvy ppl. or for a person who is not with alot of computer background experiences. for some of my old classmate, they picked up mac quite easily and they always have the fear towards PCs. but on another hand, PC does alot of wonderful things (of course, horror stuff on wrong hands) with it's customizability. It's interface has got so much to learn than mac. not as easy to crash if u are on NT based OS. it would be more stable if u are using a Linux os.
obviously, Mac is ment to be easier to pick up to an artist. Pc's maya is just ment to be everything (can be artist oriented or programing oriented) since almost everyone can own a PC (due to the price).
If u think u've got experience in PC. i don't see u should switch to a mac. but if u are a fresh newbie. maybe Mac is a good starter and quicker to get along with. as for me, I still love pc no matter how ugly is the interface is.
Performance wise, I've got to admit. Being a freelancer, I couldn't afford to lose time on renderings. Win-blows, Irix an Linux have Dos shells. with no doubt rendering from dos-shell is always faster and more reliable. I'm not sure whether Mac has got the similar solutions but i'm sure it's not as good as running batch renders from dos.
http://www.highend3d.com/tests/maya/testcenter/database.3d?page=1&sortby=
Sorry. this webbie shows us the fact that PCs has dominated in renderings. so, in the end if u are using a PC for ur job. Means u can catch up with deadline easier. In production environment, TIME IS MONEY. we can't afford to lose time.
ok, some ppl might think. "hey, what if ur PC crashes halfway when u are working on ur scenes? i knew it renders faster but how's the stability?" If u want it to be stable, buy a branded PC. save ur time on customisation or build ur own pc.
Or, Why don't u work ur scene in a Mac. and render it in a PC? Win win for both sides.

as for Vaporware which someone has mentioned here. Let's throw away hardware issues. someone mentioned that Maya 4.5 is going to realeased for Mac. and they think it's worth it to wait till it's realeased. Does this sounds like "Vaporware" too?
Atleast i'm using a steady Maya 4 on PCs now.

I guess that's much for tonight. Hope u guys will be enlightened and realise that Maya is just a tool. Make Artworks with it. don't waste time comparing how it runs on both platform.
cheers.

[greekdish]

Antilles.....if you only use a one button mouse...you can use the option and command keys, ala Lightwave. There is only one little text line you have to write in Maya's preference's. It's all explained in Maya for Mac OSX release notes in the help guide....very simple really. That is how Im able to use Maya on my laptop without having to get a 3 button mouse.

KFC...I disagree with your remarks about Mac users not being computer savvy. Ive seen more PC users be computer illiterate than Mac users. The Mac makes it easy to understand how a computer works, in my opinion. When I bought my Wintel station.....it wasnt any problem working in Windows, although I found a lot of the ways it does things very clunky and awkward. As for your benchmark list...I find it highly unfair to criticize the Mac for rendering performance with Maya right now as Alias hasnt even made Maya on Mac utilize the dual processors....there are many variables in benchmark tests....Maya on Mac is a brand new port from an SGI and WinNT code base...there are still optimizations that need to be done, as well as the optimizations Apple has to do with Mac OSX...WinNT wasnt a speed burner in its first incarnations either. One thing to understand is, if Maya on a Mac wasnt a viable option, then Alias wouldn't have bothered porting it. We could very well see minimum double speed increases within 6 months once Alias updates Maya to 4/5 (or whatever their next version is for Mac), and Apple tweaks OSX even more....with every release, MacOSX has had speed increases. As for vaporware....people just dont understand what that word means in my context....my whole point on vaporware is not basing a decision on anything that hasnt been released. Would you hold off on buying Maya right now because a new release is coming out?? Well, gee, in that sense...hold off on buying Maya 4.5 because hey, in one year, Maya 5 will be out, but sheesh, Maya 6 will be out in 2 years, so Ill wait for that now. ????? Understand my point?? I think its absurd to wait for products tht havent been released in this industry, because no matter when you buy something, its obsolete in 1 month anyways. If you work as a professional, and make money off your 3D, why would you wait to buy something that can possibly be stalled longer?? I dont see the logic behind that. And like you, I posted also...Maya is just a tool, use whatever platofrm you are comfortable with. For me, I get more done with Maya on my TiBook 500 with an 8MB video card, than Maya on my dual 1Ghz PC with a 64MB Radeon and 4X AGP.

[Irie]

Antilles,

Good question. If you dont have a 2 or 3 button mouse, you can set your mouse up to work with hotkeys. Search in sherlock for maya.env (maybe Maya.env). Open that file in text edit, and type in

MAYA_MAC_BUTTON_MAP=1

Save the changes and start maya up. Presto, problem solved.

From there on, use the control, option and command keys to tumble, pan and zoom

irie

[Marc Andreoli]

It has been a while since the last post, are there any other artists out there using Maya on OSX ? I am not interested in a mac vs. PC flame war, I would just like to know if the program is stable and 'smooth'. How does it compare to Lightwave3D (uh oh, I might start a new flame war with that one :hmm: ). I know the LW renderer is probably better, but how about modeling ?

thanks,
-marc

[Irie]

for what my opinion is worth...

Maya on OSX is worth a shot, depending on the machine you are planning to run it on. With a new dual g4, i think would be a beauty, i was running it on a 400 mhz g4... the stability was there, but the speed was terrible ( of course)

I have heard rumors that 4.5 for OSX is around the corner and you will see massive improvements and addons.

As for modeling in maya, i love it. But that is with some classes on how to model in nurbs, as i havent touched the poly tools in maya really. But that is where lightwave comes in, model in sub-d, export as OBJ, import into maya and do a poly smooth.

It will look perfect ;)

feel free to smack down my opinions and advice. :shrug:

irie

[phatgroovn]

I run Maya on a Mac and a PC. My mac is a dual-gigahertz with the Geforce 4 Titanium (1.5 gig ram). For the most part, maya really cooks on it. The only thing that annoys me is that the marker menus come up a lot slower, due to the Quartz drawing engine in OSX. Since no video card supports 2D vector-based UI yet, this is understandable (albeit annoying). In a month or so when OS X.2 comes out, and with the upcoming release of Maya 4.5 with promised platform version equality, it will get a tremendous boost. But, for now, as far as UI interactivity is concerned, my PC is quicker (p4, Gloria III, 512 rdram).

[bigfatMELon]

Ok. My turn...

I've been using Maya since 2.0. I've logged plenty of hours on both platforms. I know Windows. I know Mac OS. I've used both in heavy production. I have Maya on both OSes on the same desktop for direct comparison.

I use the OSX version most of time because I prefer the OS, it's system level scripting language which MacMaya speaks, the way AE and PS run on the Mac (better) and rendering to QuickTime.

Now...

Is the OSX version of Maya a bad choice? No. See below.

Is is THAT much slower than the PC? No. Unless you plan to spend all of your time rendering, it's plenty fast. Most people spend more time idling on a project than anything else anyway. Not that I would intentionally pick slow hardware, but the difference for what most people do most of the time just isn't big enough that it really matters. Perhaps if you have massively gigantic projects where every tiny ounce of speed is absolutely critical and you need that speed right now... then you are making a case for the PC, probably Linnux... today.

But what about all those Quadro cards and software hacks and stuff? Ever look at the actual performace difference between a Gf4ti and a Quadro. It's measurable, sure. But it ain't THAT big either. I would buy a Quadro for my Mac if it were available but I'm not exactly missing it. I still get work done and I'm not cramped for performance on the Mac in the least. I know this because the PC with the $1,600.00 video card right next to my Mac just isn't that much faster. Nor were any of the PCs where I used to work.

What about the Mac being a version behind? Well, it's really only a half version behind. Most of the really important parts of 4.0 (rendering improvements) are already in 3.5. Seriously, anyone buying Maya today who doesn't already know it cold will spend enough time catching up with it that 4.5 will be out before you finish. Then the playing field will really level out as the renderer sees the second Mac proc.

What about Unlimited? If you need Unlimited features, then buy it on a platform other than OSX. This will change, but you gotta go with what you need today.

If I go with OSX, should I buy a new Mac for it? Get the fastest one you can afford but don't buy anything this close to MacWorld, NY.

What about the mouse? It's nice that they added one-button mode. But seriously... for a $2,000.00 app, you can afford to buy a $20.00, 3-button scroll mouse for it.

Now, I'm not trying to convince anyone to buy or use Maya for OSX. But if you are considering it and the Mac is your preferred platform, then there isn't any reason not to unless you must have Unlimited or you need the best rendering speed available. Anyone who tells you different is talking out their backside.

-jl

[seasterling]

Hey Marc, I'm a LightWave user that recently picked up Maya on OSX. I'd still much rather model organic poly stuff in LW, but objects import into Maya as objs and smooth just fine.

I'd much rather work with Maya's animation tools though. There is no comparison to me. Maya rocks here. Mark Brown is doing some cool stuff in LW, 8 should be really nice. Its probably going to be awhile though. There are more deformation options and rigging is much easier in Maya. Everything is just more flexible. It may take a few extra steps because of the flexibility, but it is well worth it. Not to mention the dynamics. And Paint Effects. Maya is deep, I've barely scratched the surface in most of it yet.

Maya is kind of slow on my box. DP450. Probably since Maya is only running on one processor right now, and by box is slow :) I hope Apple has something really good for us next month.

Also, LEARN MEL! Right bigfatMELon?

[bigfatMELon]

Damn straight. :)

-jl

PS: I'm still lookin for those damn MEL class transcripts. They might be gone for good. Ugh...

[alphatron]

Don't forget that the Mac version doesn't support booleans.. which is a huge omission.

And you can't make polygons Live in the Mac version either.

Alias has been having a lot of Maya on the Mac demos at their offices, a few of which I've attended. I've been less than impressed. They are using it on a decked out dual 1 gighz 2 gigs of ram and it's running a lot more sluggishly than my PC with half those specs. Not to mention a lot of wierd display bugs.

[RedRaver]

MAC suxx bigtime!
I used it for years and I can assure you that pc is MUCH faster, better and more stabile for 3D.

Mac is good for printdesign and thats it!

You will also have to pay a lot more to get a powerfull MAC. A powerfull PC cost much less...

Greetzzz
RedRaver

[Tob]

Just adding my 0.02 $

I've been using Maya since it was first released. Back then it was just IRIX. Later on we moved on to NT. Just a couple of reflections (and this is in regards to using Maya only ):

I have to congratulate the guys att AW for their work on the osX port; compared to the first NT port it's miles ahead in terms of stability and functionality (and speaking of lacking features; anyone remember Maya 1.5? :) ). Now, this doesn't say anything about today, except, that looking at the quality of the first osX version I have much faith in what's to come.
Sure, there's quirks and odd ends, but nothing that should get in the way of work. Hell, quirks and odd ends is what Maya is all about anyway, isn't it? :)

Second: In terms of speed and stability; well you can debate the pro's and con's of each OS forever. We're running Windows only now - which works fine, apart from one fundamental issue: Stability is still flaky, at best. Flame me for this if you like, but from my own personal experience, I think that you spend way to much time doing damage control, when instead you could be working.
The bright side of things is, of course, that hardware is dead cheap, and speedwise still ahead (Mhz myth included). The macs are still way to expensive when it comes to pure rendering power .

If I were a newly fledged 3d-artist looking at the choice's of today, i'd probably go for a PC version after all. Now I'm a Mac-addict myself, so before my fellow mac users string me up for heresy, consider this: the hardware is still too expensive, the current versions is still short of some vital features, and the program is still not fully optimized.
HOWEVER, if the next version gets up to par with the other versions, and hardware becomes a tad more accessible, I'd buy a Mac in a heartbeat. :buttrock:

[Marc Andreoli]

whow, thanks guys. I will check out the learning edition and certainly wait for Macworld to see what hardware comes up...
...it should be an interesting one (again).

In the meantime, I am back on my PC at work running 3DSmax.
Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo...

:annoyed:

-marc :beer:

[greekdish]

How old are you RedRaver, 10??? Macs only good for PrintDesign??? Obviously you've never used a Mac before. Ive heard the same tired arguments in gaming as well....I just upgraded my dual 1Ghz PC to 1.5 gigs of ram, and a GeForce 4 Ti4400....I dont notice much difference between that setup, and the one before with 512 ram, and a 64meg Radeon 1st Gen.....my framerates in games isnt anything to hoop and hollar about...I expected more. Sure...when Im facing a wall, my fps goes way up, but who plays games facing a wall all day??? In RTCW I still get 45-75fps, which is what my dual Ghz Mac also gets. As a user in 3D....I notice a little bit of a speed difference...not the typical PC zealot who can only say Macs suxxx, or whatnot, and not back it up with any facts. I use my Mac for high end 3D, video, pre-press, web design and gaming....only for printdesign??? Whatever you want to think...go back to your XBox.

[alphatron]

go back to your XBox

Let's at least try to be civil here ;)

[graphiouz]

yea! its getting out of hand.
everybody knows that games arent that Ram-heavy. its the graphiccard GPU-chip that handles the calculations.

.

[bigfatMELon]

This, of course, steers this thread in a new direction...

Generally speaking, GPU is only part of the picture for most engines. Certainly the display portion of a game engine utilizes all of the GPU bandwidth. But it has too because the CPU is often too damned busy with other tasks like skinning, AI, hit detections and other ray casting issues. Of course, getting that skin information to the display buffer on time means that you need a fast bus as well (can't draw what isn't there).

And with WarCraft3 wanting 256mb (as will a number of other games now in the pipe) I don't think it's fair to say that games aren't RAM heavy.

So, it looks like having a well balanced system is important after all.

-jl

[graphiouz]

ofcourse you need Ram!
but you will not see a Huge boost if you upgrade from 512mb to let say 1024mb.

.

[bigfatMELon]

Well... not until next year's games ship. I know we skirted around the idea of some pretty large ram options before we came to our (read: marketing's) senses.

-jl

[graphiouz]

but you can develop two levels on the same game:)

Level1 on the shelf to the right: with fansy light flashing
only for people with 1024mb 2ghz and the latest graphic-card

Level2 on the shelf to the left: just a old spotlight pointing.
only for poor suckas with useless Pentium3 and 256mb and mediocre 64mb card

:applause:

[Jhonus]

Greekdish, maybe you should remove the 'r' from your name?

y00 r 1337 hax0r!!!!!!!

:bounce:

[greekdish]

Gee, that was a mature and fact based post there....man, you sure got me there. Im gonna have to go do some research to come back on that one. :rolleyes:

[Jhonus]

Damn, I thought i captured the tone perfectly.

[greekdish]

Man Kruger.....what a hypocrite it is of you to come in here and talk about Mac OSX and Apple hardware being crappy.....when I find these words straight from your mouth.....

"I had sooo many problems with win2k and my geforce card (bluescreens x 4000000)... i tried all the latest drivers, win service packs etc.... as soon as I swapped to winXP all problems disappeared. i then lay on my knees and worshipped the god of circuitry."

What I wanna know is, what work did anyone accomplish using Maya and Windows?? You had better luck with XP, as I did, compared to Win2K Pro. I think Win2KPro absolutely was the WORST OS Ive EVER used. And then the whole thread is about other people having problems with XP, and staying with Win2K Pro. Can MS actually make a decent OS that actually works for everyone?? Thats been my point from the beginning. Expensive schmensive. No one complains about a $3000 computer when you are running $7500 software (at the time) and its stable. If my Mac was unstable, then yes, I'd be bitchin like a madman. I dont read about any system crashes with Maya on Mac OSX...mainly glitches and bugs, which are typical of a first release of a major software package like Maya. Im just glad that my PC now has XP, and is fairly stable, cuz I was gonna just throw it out, and crossgrade that license to Mac OSX, and have two stations that actually work. Im can live with the PC until Unlimited comes out for Mac...then its bye bye PC.

[Jhonus]

Originally posted by greekdish
Man Kruger.....what a hypocrite it is of you to come in here and talk about Mac OSX and Apple hardware being crappy.....when I find these words straight from your mouth.....

Well I would accept you calling me a hypocrite if I had actually said anything about Mac OSX and Apple hardware being crappy. But I haven't. So unfortunately I cannot be called a hypocrite under your given example.

All I did was play around and tell you to change your name to Geekdish.

But if you do want to hear my opinion then here it is.

I have an unfounded bias towards PC. I even hated Macs when they tried to push them on me in school (Age 5 - 14). I don't know why. Maybe because its dumb-proof?

I don't actually know enough about hardware to to say Apples hardware is crappy. I do know that I enjoy being able to pick and choose my hardware. I find the interface of mac no more intuitive than XP or 2K. This is probably because I've spent so much more time on windows compared to mac. I actually hate the new XP interface and have configured it to look as much like 2K as possible.

I like problem solving technical issues and gain satisfaction from solving them.

I rarely have stability problems and when I do I fix it. It doesn't make me angry and I don't complain about it. Thats my attitude.

The post you quoted me on was just me sharing my experience, I wasn't complaining about it, nor angry.

[svenip]

just the experience i have.

we have both here at university, pc and mac. i really gave mac a chance, but this sh... (15 new G4 with DVD writer etc) is having errors everytime i just work 10 minutes on it. i may agree that for designers it's a nice box. but for real professionell work i would never never remmonded it. it's just not professionell enough for me (soft and hardware from apple).
just a little dumb thing that gives me so much questions :

to open the dvd drive you have a key on keyboard, which actually is a nice thing, problem is that i can only open it if the whole OS is totally UP. what if my systems crashes and i have a different cd in the drive then the OS cd ???

this is just a little one as i said.

also i really don't like the market tactic apple has noew. they buy every good software and stop the development for other OS. just in the last weeks the two best desktop compositing suites. this sucks, i tell you. microsoft may have been done the same. but not in this market and not so massive. remember me then we will see in the next weeks apple buys the next good software.

[Marc Andreoli]

Don't want to add any fuel onto that 'hot' debate, but the reason why I kind of 'relaunched' this thread is because I really think OSX is more stable than win2K, which I currently use for work. I am not talking about the apps at this point, just the general foundation... I lose so much time with my crappy PC (old) that I think there must be a better way. I could get a new and faster PC, but when Explorer crashes and won't shut down (debugging, yeah right...) or 3DSmax restarts my computer, I don't see how this is going to get much better... and I am not technical enough to get my hands dirty with Linux.

I have used OSX on the side, mainly for 'simple' stuff like email, word, excel and a little Phoshop and Golive and the system did not crash a single time ! Apps did (only Explorer so far, do you see a pattern ?), but they always close down and don't affect anything else...and that is on an old G3 Powerbook, too. All this might change if I used more intensive 3D applications, but I don't really know, hence my question about maya on mac.

As for the 'mac being dumb-proof': The mac is dead, long live the mac ! OSX is a new OS, not much to do with the old mac. It is not 'as simple and intuitive' as it used to be (IMHO), but also much more powerfull...I agree about Apple hardware being more expensive, but then you get that extra 'quality control'.

And yes, Apple is 'an evil' company, just like every other company, their main focus is to make money... but at the moment they need to innovate and strive to improve their products in order to gain market share, which I'd rather support than a big company who pretty much owns the market and does not really do anything to improve my computer experience...

Diversity is good !

-marc

[seasterling]

I usually stay out of platform wars, if for no other reason than they are a complete waste of time. But in the interest of the original topic, I'll burn a minute. I've been running OSX for over a year and have NEVER had the system lock up, period. The only time I've ever had to reboot was after installation of software. Pretty amazing really. Most of my time over the last year has been in LightWave and now Maya. I also run the entire Adobe suite of apps on OSX now.

I'm no gearhead, but I will note that I've heard directly from a senior engineer of a major 3d software developer that OSX is far superior to anything MS has to offer, and that OSX is actually their choice of platform.

And BTW, Apple bought another one this week.

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